Dead Ends

When Dead Ends arrived on my desk with comparisons to Deadloch, Top of the Lake and Too Much Lip, I thought that was rather a lot to live up to. Fortunately, it did not disappoint – I couldn’t put this book down from the moment I started reading. Was I further won over by the initial description of the main character, Nell, as an ‘all-round chaos merchant’? Well, yes – and she is, but arguably with good reason.

Nell has just returned to her hometown in Aotearoa New Zealand after being summoned from Sydney by her mother’s best friend, Jacqui, who also happens to be the aunt of her dead childhood best friend, April. Nell’s mum has had a stroke, and after her brother helped nurse their father through cancer, it’s Nell’s turn to step up and help. Fortunately, Nell has just lodged a complaint with HR against her ex-girlfriend, who is also her ex-boss, and is consequently at something of a loose end – one that is rapidly threatening to become thoroughly unravelled under the influence of her childhood home and small community. The fact that washed-up TV psychic Petronella, who Nell and April were obsessed with as teens, has also just arrived in town is a strange time‑warp coincidence.

When Nell’s mum needs to spend some time in the respite centre at which they and Jacqui used to work, Nell has even more time on her hands and even more guilt on her conscience. So, in a regrettable cheap-wine-influenced moment, she tells Petronella more than she probably should about her mum’s sister, who has been missing for decades, and starts sleeping with April’s married older brother, Mick, and Petronella’s beguiling assistant, Katya. What could possibly go wrong?

Dead Ends is a hilarious, tense and painfully real tale of prejudice and its many consequences, and of how people respond to loss, especially tragedies they feel they should have seen coming.