Junkie Pilgrim by Wayne Grogan

Chris Coates is the pathetic addict whose tormented life we follow. We get a sense of his early life, the son of a waterfront worker who follows his father onto the docks. The inevitable spiral grows steeper and steeper as Chris resorts to petty theft to feed his habit until finally he is arrested and gaoled.

It seems at this point that his luck has taken a turn for the better as the prison stint puts him through a forced withdrawal and he comes out clean if not exactly full of confidence that he was done with heroin forever.

He moves quickly from one addiction to another, slipping into an alcoholic haze, drinking by day and working the night shift on Sydney's waterfront. At this point he meets and begins dating Patricia Holgarth, a customs officer who is on the fast track up the ranks.

Seeing a golden opportunity to use the vulnerable Coates and Holgarth union, enter Snowy Johns, a thoroughly dangerous and corrupt bloke. Johns puts a prospect to Coates to tell his new girlfriend to turn a blind eye so that a shipment of drugs can be brought in through the Sydney docks where they both work. Coates knows darn well what happens when you cross Snowy Johns, there are corpses littering the bottom of Sydney Harbour to prove it. If he knows what's good for him, he'll go along with the Snowy Johns plan.

But Chris is back onto the heroin and is seriously strung out. Now he's in fear for his life and the spiral he was already on is beginning to steepen dramatically. He's gone from barely holding it together to losing it completely.

Junkie Pilgrim is not the kind of book you look for if you want a feel good story of a brave character who manages to triumph against all the odds. This is a stark look that simply oozes in reality.

There is a serious message to be taken from the book and it is screamed rather than whispered. Drug addiction is ugly. It's depressing, demeaning and will reduce you to your lowest low while being completely unforgiving. This is never more evident as it is when Chris repeatedly loses control of his bodily functions and is forced to simmer in his own stench. Nothing is sugar-coated which at times makes for uncomfortable reading.

But at the same time, in a literary sense, it is of impeccable quality with the characters perfectly written, the dialogue is typically Australian and exactly what you would expect from the type of characters portrayed, the Sydney locales are vividly brought to life and the abject despair forces you to feel for Coates as the ultimate lost soul.

There isn't a lot of it around but I think this is Australian noir at it's best. Not surprisingly Junkie Pilgrim earned Wayne Grogan the 2004 Ned Kelly Award for Best First Novel.

The story of Wayne Grogan is an interesting one too and provides an insight into where the book's realism comes from. Wayne has already lived through his own nightmare of drug addiction and prison stretches before coming out the other side with a university degree and now a novel.

Junkie Pilgrim will challenge you. It's compelling as it trawls the darkest of human nature and weakness.