The Rules of Backyard Cricket

I knew this in childhood, this feeling of the irretrievable past slipping away behind the car. I’m staring once again at the darkness. These things, gone and unrecoverable. The blackness chasing but never catching us.

Darren Keefe is in the boot of a car. The gag, the cable ties, his bullet-shattered knee: all the signs point towards a shallow grave. Nonetheless, he thinks there’s a chance he will be able to free himself. And although he will still be incapacitated and outnumbered, he sees no harm in trying. As he does, he thinks of how he got here.

A cheeky kid with a pure talent; a mischievous boy growing into misadventure. A young man becoming a sporting star, gorging himself on fame seasoned with all the usual spices. A kid who got away with things, and just kept getting.

The Rules of Backyard Cricket is a literary thriller in the tradition of Peter Temple’s Truth. Jock Serong’s exhilarating prose drives a narrative that observes celebrity, masculinity—humanity—with wry lyricism.

Jock Serong lives and works on the far southwest coast of Victoria. He is a lawyer and features writer, and is the editor of Great Ocean Quarterly. His debut, Quota, won the Ned Kelly Award for Best First Crime Novel in 2015.