The dust and heat of the Australian outback feature strongly in Blood Junction, as do Aboriginal dispossession, casual racism and petty prejudice. India Kane goes to Cooinda hoping to find her last remaining relative, and gets much more than she bargained for. Physically, she is the perfect heroine: tall, long-legged, beautiful, but India is not an easy woman to like, for she is also hard-nosed, argumentative and waspish. She is wary of allowing people to get close to her, and the only person who really knows the vulnerable, warm woman beneath the brash exterior is her childhood friend, Lauren. Despite her less attractive traits, India has a redeeming feature: she is loyal to the point of lunacy – in the direst circumstances, where most would turn and flee, India is determined to ‘tough it out’. Which is just as well, since on her arrival in Cooinda she is first pursued by a lynch mob and then arrested for a double murder.
India finds herself part of a dangerous investigation – one that has already resulted in several deaths – cut off from her friends and with only one Aboriginal policeman who believes in her innocence.
The sudden shift from India’s point of view to
Mikey the Knife’s in chapter ten is disconcerting, and from this point, we get
glimpses of insight into various characters’ thoughts. But this aside, Blood
Junction is a thriller that keeps the pages turning. The developing relationship
between India and Polly, an Aboriginal girl, is engaging, without being over-sentimental,
and Carver keeps up a cracking pace, with a high body count and plenty of incident.
India Kane is gorgeous, fallible and flawed – in short an interesting series
character.
———
Margaret Murphy
Author of Goodnight My Angel, The Desire of the Moth, Caging the Tiger, Past
Reason & Dying Embers.