The Pit by Peter Papathanasiou

Publisher's Synopsis

With DS Manolis on leave in Greece, Senior Constable Sparrow receives a phone call from a man who wants to turn himself in.

Bob is sixty-five years old, confined to a Perth nursing home. But thirty years ago, he killed a man in the remote northern Kimberley mining region. He offers to show Sparrow where the body is, but there's a catch: Sparrow must travel north with him under the guise of being his carer.

They are accompanied on the drive by another nursing home resident: Luke, thirty years old, paralysed in a motorbike accident. As they embark on their road trip through the guts of Western Australia, pursued by outback police and adrenaline-soaked miners, Sparrow begins to suspect that Bob's desire to head north may have sinister motivations. Is Luke being held against his will? And what lies in store for them when they reach their goal?

My Review of The Pit by Peter Papathanasiou

The Pit is a noir tragedy that had me hooked from the opening phone call. It’s a journey of discovery through some of the harshest, most inhospitable land on the planet. Throwing three completely incompatible men together in a clapped out Hiace is an exercise fraught with danger, particularly when the end goal is to locate a body that’s been buried in the desert for over thirty years.

Andrew “Sparrow” Smith the police constable who was a prominent character in The Stoning finds himself centre stage and taking an epic trip from Perth, through the Pilbara to Australia’s Kimberleys in The Pit.

The book is described as part of the series starting with The Stoning and continued in The Invisible, but DS George Manolis does not make an appearance. Apparently he’s still over in Greece solving the mysteries described in The Invisible. Instead, the aforementioned DS Sparrow ostensibly takes the lead however, he largely plays a more minor role with two much larger personalities sitting in the car with him.

Bob, an elderly resident in a Perth aged care home phones the WA police to confess to killing a man in a remote location in the Kimberley region. It’s Sparrow who takes the call and agrees to accompany Bob to find and recover the body. Joining them on the trip is a young paraplegic man named Luke, another resident in Bob’s care home.

As the journey continues, meeting with the inevitable hiccups and setbacks you might imagine will befall most unprepared travellers, Bob’s story is gradually revealed. The focus switches between the present and over thirty years earlier when Bob was a young gay man taking up a job as a truck driver at a massive iron ore mine. There are prejudices to endure, rituals to take part in and steps taken out of necessity to survive in a hostile environment and they’re all part of what turns out to be a rather tragic story.

The vastness and emptiness of the landscape through which the three men travel plays a significant role in the story. The sheer nothingness through which they travel plays on their minds, creates tension in the car and begins to fray the nerves. It also highlights just how isolated you are where any minor problem can become a major setback. Not surprisingly, Wolf Creek gets a mention.

I must admit, this is not the story I was expecting when I started reading The Pit but its tone and pacing ensures that there’s little chance of looking away. It turns out that this is primarily a character driven analysis that puts some significant social issues under the microscope. Bob’s story is both fascinating and harrowing and demands your sympathy and respect.