Simon McDonald

This is a perfectly calibrated thriller about a group of friends who decide to buy an idyllic chunk of land in the bush, whose first weekend at the property turns into a nightmare when someone ends up dead—and a decision is made to tell nobody. Hence their camp is divided between those aware of this major transgression, and those who aren’t; and there are plenty of other ruinous secrets bubbling beneath the surface of these friendships.

If the setup of Kate Mildenhall’s The Hiding Place sounds fairly orthodox—friends gathered together are gradually fractured by secrets—her execution is masterful. The plot doesn’t necessarily dip and swerve; it’s not about earth-shattering revelations, or pulling the rug out from under the reader. Rather, it’s the thick tension created by the gradual unravelling of this major deceit—the weekend slipping out of control as various infractions come to light, and characters seeking to rectify their mistakes with devastating consequences—that keeps you turning pages. Just how deep will they fall into this hell of their own manufacturing?

There’s nothing slapdash about The Hiding Place; it’s propulsive, yes, but Mildenhall’s control of her narrative is superb. It would be easy for this many characters, and this many subplots, to become a knotted mess. But everything here is precise and assured. There is a filmic quality to this story that makes it a shoe-in for adaptation to television. Blend the beautiful cinematography of Eric Bana’s Untamed with the melodrama and interpersonal relationships of Reese Witherspoon’s Big Little Lies—you’ve got a winner, surely. Of course, the book is always better, but such a development would enable Mildenhall to become one of the household names in Australian literature that she deserves to be.