‘Six Degrees’ by Honey Brown

Received from the Publisher

From the BLURB:

Emotion, seduction and passion wind through six intricately connected short stories, where strong Australian women embrace their most intimate desires, and men are more than just their suit and tie.

Apparent strangers are bound together by one tragic event, the effect of which is felt from the urban streets of Sydney to the dusty bars of Western Australia.

Six Degrees uses the allure, the action or the absence of physical connection to explore these everyday character’s flaws, quirks and strengths. For the first time, critically-acclaimed author Honey Brown has made sexual attraction the intriguing hero of each story.

‘Six Degrees’ is the new book from Australian author, Honey Brown. A departure from her usual horror/thriller/suspense writing, ‘Six Degrees’ is a collection of erotic-romantic short stories.

Honey Brown is one of my favourite authors writing today – I’ve loved all of her books so far, particularly for their scare-factor and an often disturbingly subversive underpinning. But I wasn’t actually all that shocked to realise that Brown had strayed from the genre that has made her one of Australia’s greatest new talents since 2009.

One of the reasons I love Honey Brown’s books is that she writes relationships and romance so very well and trickily … all of her crime-thriller book have a focus on relationships. ‘Red Queen’ may have been about a plague-outbreak, but the anchor of that story was a love-triangle between two brothers and a mysterious female survivor who comes to their isolated cabin one night. ‘After the Darkness’ was a crime-suspense novel about a couple who are captured by a killed and then escape, but have to live with their trauma in secret – that story had a big concentration on the changed dynamics of a marriage, after the husband is sexually assaulted in the ordeal. And ‘Dark Horse’ was about two strangers stuck by wild weather on a mountainside, whose attraction leads to revelations about what one of them was really doing in the mountains … so I was pleasantly surprised that in this short-story foray, Honey Brown would be concentrated entirely on the romance genre.

But make no mistake; ‘Six Degrees’ is no less complex for being romance-focused. Honey Brown isn’t “dumbing down” any of her writing for which she has been so celebrated by genre-lovers and critics alike. This short story collection may actually be a fine introduction for anyone who is under the mistaken impression that romance is a ‘lightweight’, fluffy genre of little importance. Au contraire!

In these six stories – loosely connected by the theme of a major/minor crises in all – Brown presents the many complications of the human heart. A man and woman who have never had the right timing in ‘Threesome’ may be about to get their act together, and a girl who witnessed a man’s death in ‘First Time’ finds herself connecting with his distraught son;

‘You didn’t talk too much.’ 

'I think I might have.’ 

‘And I would like to go out with you sometime.’ 

For a kiss that had sadness in it, it was good. It was perhaps the first honest kiss Emma had ever experienced. His lips were soft. No other body part touched her. Maybe it was Keegan’s first honest kiss too, because he pulled back and looked surprised by it.

There’s mostly an emphasis on female sexuality in these stories, and the book feels emboldened for that. Particularly for how Honey Brown explores the facets of attraction and sexual proclivities – her writing embodies honesty and non-judgmental celebration of sex and sexuality;

Sonya spent the rest of her adolescence on the hunt for that, with each new boyfriend (there hadn’t been that many) she had looked into their eyes to see if they might have it in them – the right sort of want, the maturity of wanting. Mostly, though, they wanted sex, no more than that. Or they wanted a girlfriend. It was almost as though they did not see the beauty in sex, the beauty of it. At that first party, against the rendered wall, she’d been given a preview of something better. Adult sex. But, thinking now, she wondered if anything had really recaptured that feeling.

I loved this collection; just as much as I have loved all of Honey Brown’s other books. This is a wonderful introduction to the romance genre for anyone who has never been brave enough to read. Brown’s exquisite prose and complicated stories will surely encourage others to further explore what this genre has to offer. I do so hope that Brown writes more of the like – either way, I will follow her wherever she goes.

5/5

Interview with Honey Brown, author of 'Dark Horse'

I have a few authors whose upcoming releases I anticipate like Christmas. I mark release-dates in my calendar, and the approach of their new book is met with unmitigated glee. I look forward to these authors because I’ve come to trust in their books and their writing – they’re my guaranteed great reads, and I just know their new books will only build upon their favorite author status on my shelf. 

Honey Brown is one such author and her new book, 'Dark Horse', has become another favourite. So, of course, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to ask questions of the author whose books I crack open with Christmas-morning enthusiasm. 

•

Q: How were you first published – agent or slush pile? 

I’d entered Red Queen into the ABC Unpublished Manuscript Competition, and come runner-up. At the awards ceremony I asked an agent for her card. I sent the Red Queen manuscript to her, and she sent it on to Penguin.     

 

Q: Are you a ‘plotter’ or a ‘pantser’ - that is, do you meticulously plot your novel before writing, or do you ‘fly by the seat of your pants’ and let the story evolve naturally?

I’m a pantser. For me, plotting leads to writer’s block. Characters drive my stories, and their personalities evolve as I write. Characters are like people – they don’t like being told how to act. It’s hard for me to shoehorn them into predetermined plot points. If I do that, it’s like they’re all of a sudden cardboard cutouts. A part of the fun of writing is being surprised by the unexpected things a character can do, and how the story can unfold in a way more fascinating than I first imagined. I do start each book with an ending in mind though, and I try my best to steer that way.

 

Q: How long did it take you to write ‘Dark Horse’, from first idea to final manuscript?

Because I’m writing constantly, staring times and ending times are a bit of a blur. It probably took around ten months to complete.

 

Q: Where do story ideas generally start for you? Do you first think of the character, theme, ending? Or is it just a free-fall?

 

It’s always a question relating to human nature that sparks my interest. I think of a tough situation, and then wonder what a good person would do if dropped into it, how they would react, how it might change them, the bad things they might be pushed to do. It’s through writing that I get to explore these questions and try and answer them. 

Q: You write such complex, thrilling books that delve into the darkest depths of the human psyche. Do you enjoy reading books in the same genre that you write in? And what is it about the darkness that draws you to write about it?

I’m not a big reader of novels. When I do read a book, I don’t read in the conventional way – I open a book anywhere, I look for the writer’s style and use of language, I’m interested in technique. I’m rarely swept-up in the story. I think I’m drawn to writing about darker themes because I like rawness and honesty and stripping back modern convention and moral codes to see what’s underneath. 

 

Q: All of your books feature strong, female characters. And, more importantly, they’re strong, ordinary female characters – there are no superpowers involved, and they’re incredibly relatable. Do you think there’s a lack of such characters in Australian fiction at the moment? And are your female heroines inspired by women in your life?

There seems to me to be a lot of strong female characters in storytelling at the moment. I don’t write to push any sort of an agenda or to address any kind of an imbalance though. Weak characters are never very likable, I wouldn’t like to spend a lot of time with them, and don’t think the reader would either, so I make my main characters strong. I make them everyday people so I that when I drop them in an extreme situation, the sudden change and test of spirit are there to explore.  

My female characters (like my male characters) have lots of different people in them, and a little bit of me too. I draw from family members, friends, and even people I’ve only briefly met. Personality traits can cross from sex to sex. If anything, I see parts of myself in my male characters more so than in my female characters.     

 

Q: I feel like a big theme you keep exploring in all your books is the edge of male violence against women. It feels like in all of your books, there comes a moment when you write your female heroines into a corner – and put a chokehold on the reader. I can say, personally, it’s always a moment that I dread/can’t stop reading. It’s when your female characters enter into a situation with men – and as a female reader you dread the worst for them – I’m thinking of Rebecca finding herself in a house full of drunk men in ‘The Good Daughter’, or Denny making herself known and vulnerable to two isolated brothers in ‘Red Queen’. I dread the anticipation and potentially reading a quite brutal scene in which women are at men’s mercy – but personally, I think you say everything that needs to be said in these scenes without writing excessive violence against the female characters. Why is this something you keep coming back to? Have you ever thought that other writers have gone too far in writing violence against women, without more thoughtful examination?

My interest lies more with power play than what it does with violence against women. In my stories the characters use what they’ve been equipped with to coerce others and gain control. I believe that men often use their physicality, because they have that in their arsenal, whereas women often use emotional manipulation, because we’ve evolved that skill to compensate for our smaller frames. All types of controlling behaviors can be cruel and soul destroying. Both sexes can inflict pain and be hurtful. I don’t like going too far in my description of brutality; it feels disrespectful to people who have suffered real-life violence, or been emotionally or physically abused, and disrespectful to use my characters in such a way. I’m not at all comfortable around true evil. Good people doing bad things, is where my fascination lies. 

In writing violence and brutality, authors cross the line all the time, but the creative process is about pushing boundaries and thinking outside the box, so it’s understandable that it happens, and I don’t doubt that a writer, or any type of artist, on reflection, regrets it when they’ve gone too far.      

 

Q: Your books alternately explore isolation and pack mentality – ‘Red Queen’ had a main cast of two brothers and one stranger, ‘The Good Daughter’ was centred on an entire town, ‘After the Darkness’ was sort of about two characters against the world, and in ‘Dark Horse’ we’re back to a quite pared-back character list and a focus on two souls – Sarah and Heath. What influences whether you want to have a tight, small cast of characters or examine society on a larger scale?

It’s whatever best suits the original question I put to myself when starting the book. In Red Queen it went without saying that there’d be very few characters, because the question I posed myself was – what would happen if two brothers and one women were isolated in a cabin in the wilderness? Whereas with After The Darkness the question was – what if couple happily married couple were attacked and abused and then had to return to their children and go about their normal life? The background cast of characters is like the setting – it’s about framing and enhancing the story.   

 

Q: You’ve been (thankfully!) releasing a book every year since your ‘Red Queen’ debut. Do you get ideas/inspiration for your next book while writing your current – or do you have a cooling-off period when you think about ideas for your next manuscript? And, speaking of, what are you working on right now, and when can we expect it to hit shelves?

I don’t cool down between books. Sometimes I wish I did. At any given time I have a couple of stories turning in my mind. I file them to the back of my head and draw out one at a time. When I’m writing, I’m aware of the other stories waiting there, not liking being shelved. Towards the end of each story, I tend to get more excited about the next one, and it takes some effort to stay focused on the one I’m actually writing. 

I’m at the halfway point of book five at the moment. It’ll be released next year. I’m very secretive about my raw drafts. If I talk too much about an unwritten story it leeches the energy from it, and the drive to write it disappears. I use the keyboard as my only outlet, and that way I always push through to the end so that at I can at last talk about my story.  

Q: Favourite author(s) of all time?

These authors I envy because of their amazing minds and their craftsmanship when writing – J.M.Coetzee, Graham Greene, Joyce Carol Oates, Norman Mailer, Philip Roth, Robert Harris, Alice Munro, the list could go on and on… 

Q: Favourite book(s)? 

My favourite books aren’t always the most perfectly written ones; I don’t mind seeing flaws in a novel, it often endears me to it. These are the books I will never lend out, or pack away in any box, or ever be without – Deliverance, Dirt Music, All Quiet on the Western Front, The Great Gatsby, Lord of The Flies, The Quiet American, Disgrace, The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson.

Q: What advice do you have for budding young writers?

Respect your reader. Write a story that will entertain them. 

'Dark Horse' by Honey Brown

 Received from the Publisher

From the BLURB:

It's Christmas morning on the edge of the rugged Mortimer Ranges. Sarah Barnard saddles Tansy, her black mare. She is heading for the bush, escaping the reality of her broken marriage and her bankrupted trail-riding business.

Sarah seeks solace in the ranges. When a flash flood traps her on Devil Mountain, she heads to higher ground, taking shelter in Hangman's Hut.

She settles in to wait out Christmas.

A man, a lone bushwalker, arrives. Heath is charming, capable, handsome. But his story doesn't ring true. Why is he deep in the wilderness without any gear? Where is his vehicle? What's driving his resistance towards rescue? The closer they become the more her suspicions grow.

But to get off Devil Mountain alive, Sarah must engage in this secretive stranger's dangerous game of intimacy.

Sarah can’t spend Christmas at her mum and dad’s house, she just can’t. Still navigating the wreckage of her marriage, and the discovery that her husband of ten years had been having numerous affairs throughout their relationship, Sarah opts out of any festivities and instead decides to spend the day in the mountains. She saddles her prized black mare, Tansy, packs a picnic and a shotgun and sets out for the ranges that were once her office . . . this is one of the last times Sarah will be able to enjoy a Devil Mountain ride, since she’s also losing her horse trail business along with her house and husband. 

Being out in nature is just what Sarah needed. To get away from the hurt and pitying looks of town residents who know her sad story. Sarah and Tansy enjoy one of their last days in the ranges together . . .  until the heavens open up.

A flash flood decimates the mountain, and Sarah barely escapes with her life and her horse – but the one way off the mountain is flooded. Sarah and Tansy are forced to take shelter at Hangman’s Hut, a property belonging to the long-dead bushranger Sid, which is currently under heritage restoration. 

The rain pours, but Sarah is content – she has shelter, some provisions, a shotgun for safety and she spoke to her father before coming up the mountain. Help will come, when the rain stops. 

But before help can arrive, a stranger does. Sarah hears a noise in the middle of the night, and finds a young man stuck in the mud and unable to help himself – he claims to have a busted knee, a dead phone and his car is stranded somewhere higher up on the mountain. His name is Heath, and he needs Sarah’s help – she’s his only hope.

‘Dark Horse’ is the new suspense-thriller from Australian author, Honey Brown.

Bloody brilliant – those are the only two words that come to mind in trying to summarize this book. 

Bloody.

Brilliant.

Brown sets the dreary, isolated scene – introducing readers to Sarah and Tansy, and pieces of the sad story that finds them alone on Devil Mountain on Christmas day. Sarah is still reeling from the disagreeable disintegration of her marriage, after discovering that her husband of ten years had been cheating on her for all of them. Sarah refuses to spend Christmas nursing a broken heart at her parent’s house and, knowing her property has been sold and horse trail business dissolved, she decides on one last trek to the ranges to say goodbye. 

This Australian story is set somewhere in Tasmania – Devil Mountain being a dense rainforest similar to Gippsland or the Dandenong Ranges. It’s a primal, isolated setting, and for a long time Sarah and Tansy are our only characters – a woman and her horse battling the elements as they become increasingly deadly. It’s a wonderful introduction for Sarah; a clearly broken woman whose confidence has been rocked by her husband’s infidelities and her very foundations shaken by all she has lost in the divorce. And yet, readers are privy to Sarah’s sudden burst of strength and determination –battling against the elements to save herself, and her beloved mare. It immediately introduces us to a fascinating dichotomy in the character; that even if Sarah doesn’t believe in herself, readers know that deep down she still has an unbreakable spirit.  

After Sarah survives the flash flood and takes shelter in Hangman’s Hut, Honey Brown introduces her (now trademark) “what if?” quandary – by throwing a stranded, injured young man into the mix. Sarah, already vulnerable in so many ways, is now stranded atop this mountain with a strange man. Their first meeting hardly assuages her worries;

Rain had slowed. The wind had died down. With the light gone from his forehead and shining from a different angle, the shadows on his face changed and his age was more apparent. He was in his late twenties. He had a youthful gleam in his eyes, liveliness even though he was cold and battered. From all accounts, you’d think he was revelling in the intensity, exactly like a young man would, everything an adventure. The smile he gave her emerged white from within the mud mask. ‘I promise I’m not Ted Bundy.’ 

‘Sorry?’ 

‘The killer.’ 

‘Huh?’ 

‘The murderer who pretended to have a broken leg to lure women.’ 

Sarah frowned. 

‘Bad joke,’ he said.

From here the book takes its twisting turns and spirals into a primal thriller. And this is where Brown always succeeds in her books – she breaks her characters down to their animal natures; she leaves them vulnerable and backed into corners and then sees how they react. 

I loved that ‘Dark Horse’ is a very tight, almost claustrophobic book with minimal cast – the spotlight being firmly on Sarah, Heath and the horse, Tansy (who is most definitely a character in herself!). ‘Dark Horse’ actually reads a bit like a play for its character-driven schematic, in which conversations between Sarah and Heath become intense double-talk and laden in secrets and silences and then switch in increments to something sensual but equally dangerous. Add mother-nature raging just beyond the hut’s doors and this becomes a very intense, masterful suspense story that does a whole lot with very little – two characters in an abandoned hut on the side of a mountain, and yet Brown’s book is a heart-palpitating page-turner. 

What always works for me in Honey Brown’s books is that her characters and scenarios always feel very instinctual. I never read her books feeling like she, as the author, is pushing the story or manipulating the characters – their actions always feel very natural and there are so many times when a character’s response is in keeping with what I believe I would do in such a situation. And that’s the mark of a truly masterful storyteller – when you can’t even see who’s pulling the strings because you’re so engrossed by the play unfolding before you.

I refuse to spoil this book for anyone; because there are moments that are gaspable and all the more fun for Honey Brown’s sideswipes. I will only say that she well and truly got me – perfect sucker punch right to the gut, and I loved every twisting moment of it. 

I became a Honey Brown devotee back with ‘The Good Daughter’ and ‘Red Queen’ – and of course she suckered me into last year’s release, ‘After the Darkness’ – so I really shouldn’t be surprised that ‘Dark Horse’ is another killer thriller from the new (red) queen of Aussie suspense . . .  but I am. This is another book that had my heart racing and palms sweating – Honey Brown even managed to elicit audible gasps from me. And, as always happens when I get to the end of a Honey Brown book, the second I read the last page I wanted another of her novels to consume. I’ll just have to be content to wait, and know that whatever she writes next will no doubt be another wholly satisfying affair.

5/5 

'Red Queen' by Honey Brown

 From the BLURB:

DEEP IN THE Australian bush, Shannon Scott is holed up in a cabin with his brother, Rohan, waiting out the catastrophic effects of worldwide disease and a breakdown of global economies.  After months of isolation, Shannon imagines there's nothing he doesn't know about his older brother, or himself – until a mysterious woman slips under their late-night watch and past their loaded guns.

Denny Cassidy is beautiful and a survivor.  Her inclusion into cabin life brings about the need for a new set of rules.  Soon the brothers begin to look to her as a source of comfort, hope and intimacy . . . Or is her warmth just a trap?  Could she actually be a cold tactician, a woman with a deadly agenda?

Shannon Scott is sick of looking at his brother’s face. He and Rohan have been living in the remote Australian bush since the plague broke, and Shannon is growing more and more irritated with Rohan’s quirks and dominance – from his nicknaming him ‘pup’ to the way he resignedly wins at poker.

But since their parents died of the Red Queen Virus months ago, Rohan is all Shannon has. And, thanks in large part to their paranoid father, they have a well-stocked, veritable fortress to live in and wait out the mayhem of the outside world as country’s scramble for a cure or, in the meantime, attempt to regain control of the populace.

So Rohan and Shannon wait. They tend to the sheep and chooks, fish in the nearby river and take turns standing guard with loaded rifles; watching the quiet bush that surrounds them for any signs of intruders.

And then Denny Cassidy comes along.

She leaves a note, explaining that she has been watching them for weeks from her perch atop the hill. She says she is not infected. She says she wants to stay with them. She has already been in their house, taken some of their food without them knowing . . .  she is not dangerous, she says.

Rohan is adamant that this is a bad idea. The Red Queen Virus can take up to two weeks to show symptoms, and he doesn’t trust Denny’s sudden appearance or her humble motives. But Shannon wants her to stay – he is intrigued by a new face, a young woman no less, and thinks that if they turn her away, they will have lost all vestiges of their humanity.

So Denny stays with them.

At first she is a real asset to their home life; helping with chores and willing to comply with Rohan’s stringent rules. But when her hand starts lingering on Shannon’s knee, when she starts offering him back rubs and sings along with his guitar-playing . . . the dynamic in the house shifts. Denny chooses Rohan’s bed, but continues to coax Shannon, until everything becomes messier and more complex than either of the brothers could have ever expected; especially when they both fall in love with her.

But is Denny playing a game? Is her love a survival technique, or genuine feelings for two men?

‘Red Queen’ was the 2009 Aurealis Award-winning debut by H.M. Brown (Honey Brown).

My first Honey Brown book was ‘The Good Daughter’; a tightly-woven, small-town mystery that had me in the palm of her hand from page one. My second Brown reading, ‘After the Darkness’ was just as enjoyable – a ticking psychological thriller that had me on the edge of my seat. So I always knew that I would eventually go back and read Brown’s critically-acclaimed debut novel – I’m only sore at the fact it took me this long to get around to it because, as I suspected, ‘Red Queen’ was wonderful.

The dystopian genre has exploded in recent years. Everything has pretty much been covered – from a world ravaged by global warming, to structured society’s ruled by government theory. I have read dystopian wastelands, and worlds plagued by disease that turns people into zombies. I've pretty much read all that dystopia has to offer, but I've never read anything quite like Honey Brown’s ‘Red Queen’.

The book is told from Shannon’s first-person narrative. At one point he offers a theory of the Red Queen Virus origin. He says that it came from an “arms race principle” – that when humans stopped treating the symptoms of diseases, and started fighting the causes of them, they effectively issued war against biology. The theory being that humanity had gotten so good at curing itself, lowering death-rates and overpopulating the world with surgeries, vaccines, medicines etc, that disease was forced to evolve – into the Red Queen Virus (of which, it is rumoured, there is now ten strands – RQV1 through to RQV10 – as the virus keeps adapting). The virus is, essentially, righting the wrongs of science by culling the population. The virus starts as a common cold, but progresses to fluid in the lungs and a slow, bloody death. Transmission is easy, and can be found in the touch of one’s hand;

What was without question was the sovereignty of touch. We did not touch. It had become automatic the minute the virus landed on Australian soil. It wasn’t a spoken rule; arms could brush, shoulders could bump, and incidental skin contact was repellent but forgiven, but conscientious touch – fingertips, a warm hand, a face too close – it just went without saying. Personal space had shrivelled to a hard nut so far inside each body even your own hand on your skin could seem unwanted. So the sight of Denny’s hand, the long curve of her thumb, the dirty curl of her fingers, held out and inviting the chance of Rohan’s touch, became the centre of the room, and everything converged in on it.  

Throughout the book all three characters drop hints and speculations about how the outside world is coping and trying to cure the RQV. Denny, Shannon and Rohan can only muse on the word-of-mouth they heard before going into hiding – but the consensus is that China has a cure (because of their low rate of infection) but they don’t intend to hand it over. Metropolitan areas are deserted, and people have scattered all over. Denny claims that the army are providing rations to the groups who have banded together – but lone travellers or ‘unknowns’, are set upon by those groups and shunned by the army. As long as the Red Queen Virus keeps adapting and killing, humanity will continue to crumble. Denny says that Rohan and Shannon have done well to stay hidden in the outback, and she is glad to be banded with them.

What I love about Brown’s dystopia is that while chaos reigns in the outside world, ‘Red Queen’ is focused entirely on three characters and their evolving dynamic in a small, secluded cabin in the bush. So often in dystopian’s these days, our protagonists just so happen to be in the thick of the action – apart of the uprising rebellion against the totalitarian regime, or a member of the group tasked with searching for ‘the cure’. Sometimes in those books, the world-building is so grand, the plot so epic and in the thick of it, that human connections get lost amidst the dystopian theatrics and themes. Not so in ‘Red Queen’. Brown never lets us lose sight of why the brothers and Denny are out in the middle of the bush – a virus is raging and the world as they once knew it is forever changed. But the really, truly fascinating crux of the book is in Brown’s explorations of human interaction.

Rohan is older than Shannon – 38 to his 23. This age discrepancy has informed their entire relationship in the cabin, with Rohan the self-appointed alpha (who calls Shannon ‘pup’, as a reminder). Their past sibling interaction also informs how they are with each other now – their parents had Rohan when they were in their teens, so the boy’s father treated Rohan more like a friend than a son and so taught him different life skills than Shannon (who consequently took after their mother). Shannon and Rohan also never lived together growing up – they saw one another for family dinners and outings, but their time together in the wake of the virus outbreak is their first prolonged period of time together.

Enter Denny. She is 30 years old and more than willing to adhere to Rohan’s rules in his presence, but quick to side with Shannon in private. Denny’s presence is the match-strike to the tense kindling relationship between the brothers. She starts flirting with Shannon, but goes to Rohan’s bed. When she shows an open attraction to both brothers, old rules of civility and boundaries are blurred and skewed.

Reading the knife-edge relationship between the brothers is a fascinating dip into the human psyche unto itself. Throw a beautiful woman into the mix, and ‘Red Queen’ becomes a terse psychological thriller . . . especially when Honey Brown starts readers questioning Denny’s intentions. Does she have genuine affection for both brothers? Or is she playing them off one another – and if so, to what end? This is where ‘Red Queen’ becomes a stand-out from all other dystopian’s. I feel like in other ‘disaster’ books, the triggering plague/earthquake/zombie-horde sometimes overshadows the characters. Not so in ‘Red Queen’. The virus provided the necessity for the setting, and adds a certain permeating paranoia; but ultimately ‘Red Queen’ is about human foibles and trickery. Brown has readers questioning how far human-beings will go to save themselves; what boundaries they’ll cross, and who they will betray.

Something I find fascinating in all of Brown’s books is her portrayal of women, in particular their interactions with men. She touches a lot on violence against women, particularly rape, without writing explicit scenes. Sometimes there’s more power in Brown putting the idea out there than actually reading a gut-churning rape scene. She did it in ‘The Good Daughter’, when the main character was almost gang-raped but escaped with the help of a stranger – and I honestly felt sicker in the build-up and possibility of that violence, more so than with some books in which the writer lays it all on the page. Brown does it again in ‘Red Queen’ – poking and prodding the idea of men and their dominance over women, without writing graphic scenes. As a woman, it was one of the first things I thought of when I read Denny approaching Shannon and Rohan – she does so early on in the book, when as a reader I was still trying to establish how they’d treat her – and, I admit, my mind went to rape. I think it’s a very unfortunate, but natural reaction that female readers will have in the book – that inherent “what would I do in her shoes?” and the thought of being raped by these two men is an obvious one to flit across your mind. Brown acknowledges that – she expands on it and questions it in such a way that will have you thinking on societal norms and human interactions. And that’s partly why I love reading Honey Brown’s portrayals of women – she writes our fears and thoughts without horrifying us with unnecessary graphic detail. And, as I said, Honey Brown writes better brutal build-up than some authors do violent scenes.

I was utterly and completely enthralled by ‘Red Queen’. I was guessing at Denny’s intentions right up until the very last page – and the ending was one of the trickiest and most satisfying I have ever had the pleasure of reading. I now, officially, love all of Honey Brown’s books – but, by a small margin, I would perhaps recommend ‘Red Queen’ above all others. A very different look at dystopia – this is a tense, human psychological drama that doesn’t lose sight of the triggering disaster, but rather writes a brilliant guessing game around its fallout. Incredible.

5/5

'After the Darkness' by Honey Brown

 Received from the Publisher

From the BLURB:

Trudy and Bruce Harrison have a happy marriage, a successful business, and three teenage children. One fateful day they take the winding coastal route home, and visit the Ocean View Gallery, perched on the cliff edge. It's not listed in any tourist pamphlet. The artist runs the gallery alone. There are no other visitors. Within the maze of rooms the lone couple begin to feel uneasy – and with good reason.

Trudy and Bruce will be ripped from the safe, secure fabric of their life and will have their world turned upside down and shaken. Attacked, trapped and brutalised, they barely escape the gallery with their lives – only to find there's no real getting away.

A weeklong getaway; no kids, no work just each other. Bruce and Trudy Harrison are the envy of their friends; they haven’t had infidelity or financial struggles like other long-term married couples. They have three lovely teenage children and a booming property development business in affluent Delaney. And they are still very much in love – so much so, that they take a week every year to just be together.

On the last day of their getaway, Bruce and Trudy spot a sign for the Ocean View Gallery, and decide to go off the beaten path. What they discover is a breathtaking cliff-side architectural wonder – a house of pure artistry. They also meet Reuben, the weathered old architect who is more than happy for them to take a look around his artistic wonderland.

The house is a maze without windows, decorated with finely carved statues and wood that’s smooth as petals. But the Harrisons become uneasy. All alone in this cliff edge house, not another soul in sight… their worry turns to fear when Reuben’s true nature shines through.

What happens next is unthinkable, unimaginable - the prelude to a horror story.

But Bruce and Trudy survive. Barely. They manage to kill their would-be murderer, and escape the house … and that’s when things go wrong.

They return home, and Bruce refuses to call the police. Trudy burns their clothes; out of sight, out of mind. But the truth cannot remain buried. Strange coincidences have Trudy questioning if Reuben wasn’t the only psychopath in that house … does somebody else know what happened? Who was Reuben, and who would take revenge for his death?

When reality blurs and terror reigns, what lengths will people go to forget?

‘After the Darkness’ is the new psychological suspense novel from Australian author Honey Brown.

I had my first taste of Honey Brown last year, with her crime/suspense novel ‘The Good Daughter’… and I was blown away, and knew I wanted to read anything and everything by this author.

The novel starts sedately enough. We meet Trudy and Bruce Harrison on holiday and enjoying post-coital bliss on the last day of their trip. Married for a little over a decade with three beautiful teenage children, Bruce and Trudy are an unassuming, quiet couple. When they make a spur-of-the-moment decision to visit Ocean View Gallery their tour starts out perfectly normal, just another enjoyable weekend jaunt. The house is an architectural delight, and Reuben, artist and guide, is more than happy for them to snoop around his cliff edge home… Then things take a horrific turn when Reuben’s mask is lifted.
Bruce is drugged and tied up, Trudy sprayed in the eyes with a chemical. They are going to die, and it’s only good luck and quick thinking that saves them.

Brown’s opening may sound like a scene out of ‘Saw’ or ‘The Hills Have Eyes’, but it doesn’t read that way initially. Brown instead lulls readers into the picturesque cliff edge house; she takes her time introducing us to this married couple… readers are as tricked by these scenes as Bruce and Trudy are by Reuben’s kindly demeanour. The quiet beforehand makes the violence all the more shattering. And what’s terrifying and terrific about her opener is that it starts out so perfectly normal, as a reader you could picture yourself in Bruce and Trudy’s shoes … so when that normality turns into everybody’s worst nightmare, it’s all the more explosive.

From that initially horrifying beginning, Brown then flips the book on its axis yet again. Because Bruce and Trudy don’t just survive … they kill their murderer, and seemingly get away with it. In the aftermath of escape, with shock settling in and Bruce particularly traumatised by the abuse he suffered, the couple do not call the police. They don’t report their kidnapping, or Reuben’s murder. They burn their clothes, and make up a mugging story to explain their various cuts and bruises. They try to forget. And just as the opening was made all the more terrifying for the normality before the violence, so too is the rest of the book all the more chilling for Bruce and Trudy’s slow burning descent into trauma and madness…

Honey Brown, I am finding, excels in writing suspense from ‘what if?’ You can’t help but read her books and put yourself in the protagonist’s complicated shoes. Bruce and Trudy are an ordinary couple who escape tragedy, barely – and reading their ordeal you do ask the question “what would I do?” “how would I react in that situation?”.

The crux of the story comes from the many tangled and terrible decisions that Bruce and Trudy make following that very question; “what would I do?”. We all like to think that we’re law-abiding. We watch enough crime shows from ‘Law & Order’ to ‘CSI’, and courtroom dramas like ‘The Good Wife’ to know that you can’t hide a murder; criminals always get caught, evidence is always left behind. But what happens when you are the victim, but circumstance turns against you and your moral code is no longer so black and white.

'Does it feel real to you?' I said. 'Sometimes it's like my body knows but my mind isn't sure it happened.'
Bruce went through each photo again, quicker this time, looking at the shot in its entirety, trying to get an outsider's perspective.
'It's the things I did that remind me the most. I should have stopped before killing him.' He looked sideways at me in the dark. 'I got it for a second, you know? I wanted him dead, I wanted him destroyed, and I wanted to feel it happen, and do it, and to...' He breathed out. Even in the gloom I could see he'd turned pale. 'It was like I'd been given permission to act like that, but not by God or anything good.'
'By nature?'
'Then why does it feel so wrong?'
'Nature isn't necessarily good.'

‘After the Darkness’ is also a deep and dark journey into post-trauma. In the days, weeks and months after their ordeal, Trudy and Bruce experience very different reactions to the violence. They go through warped stages of grief and guilt – all misplaced and not-quite-right for them being both the victims, and murderers. But the aftermath is made all the worse because it is a choking secret – they can’t tell their children, though they can sense something is wrong in their parent’s marriage. Trudy’s friends suspect an extramarital affair, while Bruce’s parents openly snicker at them hitting the first real bump in their relationship. And their marriage does suffer under the burden and strain of their shared secret trauma;

His body tensed and I felt his breath, warm with grief, against my skin. That day was so real then. I'd been right - our bodies did know, the memory lived inside our bones; using our bodies had released it into our bloodstream. That house surged in our brains. We could taste, smell, feel Reuben's house. Reuben was in bed with us, he was vivid. His thoughts in our heads and his will to hurt us were tangible. He was in the light sheen of sweat covering our bodies. We would have to get up and wash him off.

Paranoia creeps in as Trudy and Bruce’s memories of that frightening day begin to blur around the edges. Trudy starts wondering if she heard another man’s voice in the house with Reuben, and if a string of coincidences since are linked to someone taking vengeance for Reuben’s death. Their fear starts to feed off one another and takes them down an even darker path… leading them to learn how easy it can be to turn from victim to abuser, innocent to monster.

‘After the Darkness’ is chilling and riveting. It’s a psychological/suspense story, made all the more frightening for the normality that precedes the horror. It’s a story about victims and killers, and how easily that line can blur as Bruce and Trudy Harrison start to realize that you can survive, but never escape. Honey Brown is an exquisite storyteller who will make your heart race and spine tingle. You must, must, must read her books for a good dose of thoughtful fear.

5/5

'The Good Daughter' by Honey Brown

From the BLURB:

Rebecca Toyer and Zach Kincaid each live on the outskirts of town, but come from very different sides of the tracks. When Zach's wealthy mother goes missing, Rebecca – the truckie's daughter – is implicated in her disappearance.

In the weeks that follow, Rebecca and Zach are drawn into a treacherous, adult world. Eager to please, Rebecca finds herself in danger of living up to the schoolyard taunts she so hates, while Zach channels his feelings through the sights of his gun.

In the fading summer light, grudges are nursed and tempers fray, and as old lies unravel it seems nobody can be relied on. But beyond the fallout, the hard lessons in love and betrayal have not been wasted. Rebecca and Zach realise that judgements can be flawed – and that trust is better earnt than given.

It begins in the backseats of a bus. Rebecca Toyer is the old cliché, girl from the wrong side of the tracks pining after her town’s prince, Zach Kincaid. Most of this little outback town is settled on Kincaid land, even the house where Rebecca and her stepfather, the truckie, live.

Rebecca’s mother started the Toyer women on bad reputations – town bicycle, easy pickings – and the slander has stuck to Rebecca even after her mother’s death. Try as he might, Zach Kincaid can’t get Rebecca out of his head – and their secret fumbling in the bus keep him thinking about her over the school holidays…

But pretty soon Zach has other things on his mind. He overhears a conversation between his mother and father, angry accusations and bitter words are exchanged as it comes to light that Ben Kincaid has been giving weekly payments to local restaurant owner, Kara Claas, and her son Aden. Her son, who is Ben’s illegitimate child and Zach’s older half-brother.

Joanne Kincaid is distraught by her husband’s admittance. Even if the child came before she and him started dating. Joanne is known about town as being a little bit flighty; prone to crying fits and quick to blame her manic mood swings on a creative mind.

When Rebecca comes across Joanne Kincaid, puffy-eyed and thick-tongued from crying, she offers her a lift into town, to the Claas restaurant. She watches Mrs Kincaid walk around the back, and then she waits… but Joanne doesn’t come back, and no one inside the restaurant claims to have seen her.

Suddenly Rebecca is the last person to have seen Zach’s mother alive. Aden Class, the gorgeous twenty-two-year-old bike-riding, pot-selling town bad boy is quick to comfort a shaken Rebecca as she sits with the police and recounts Joanne’s movements the day she went missing.

But something isn’t adding up. Zach’s father is adamant that Joanne is just off on one of her flighty fits. Zach starts wandering around the expansive Kincaid property with a rifle, looking for baby graves and sneaking along Rebecca’s property line, spying on her and Aden Claas as they grow closer and more intimate.

‘The Good Daughter’ was the 2010 contemporary mystery novel from Australian author, Honey Brown. The book was longlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award 2011, and shortlisted for the 2011 Barbara Jefferis Award.

This novel absolutely sucker-punched me. Brown’s writing is claustrophobic and disquieting, as she explores a small town mystery that is exacerbated by town politics, secrets and family fall-outs.

The story is told in third person, but focused on Rebecca and Zach. Through Rebecca we read about a misjudged sixteen-year-old who has already lived her fair share of tragedy. Her young half-sister died at the age of five, and her mother had a long, slow death from cancer not too long ago. Rebecca is the product of her mother’s reputation – she doesn’t know who her biological father is, and everyone assumes she’s as loose as her mother once was.

Rebecca becomes unwittingly caught up in Joanne Kincaid’s disappearance when she is the last person to see or speak to her, alive. But Rebecca is slowly let in on the town secret – that the restaurant where she dropped Mrs Kincaid off is owned by the woman who her husband has been paying child-support to, and Joanne is not a stable woman at the best of times. Rebecca is snared in this small town secret when twenty-two-year-old local Lothario, Aden Claas, explains the faux-pas she has unwittingly let loose by calling the police about Joanne’s disappearance.

What comes next is a rapid slide into adulthood as Aden turns his amorous intentions on Rebecca. Caught up in the drama of the police investigations, Rebecca succumbs to Aden’s well-worn charms, hardly dissuaded by the age gap between them, or the fact that a day ago she was harbouring similar feelings for his younger half-brother, Zach.

As Rebecca’s story unfolds, we read about it through Zach’s eyes as he trains his rifle on Aden from the bushes surrounding the Toyer property. Zach watches with envy and jealousy as his bastard brother steals Rebecca off her feet. But Zach is also watching the other people in town, people seemingly disinterested in his mother’s disappearance. There’s Nigel, Aden’s best friend whose alibi for the night Joanne went missing is that he was ‘with’ Rebecca and Aden. Luke Redman, a local boy turned cop, who is still somewhat plagued by his reckless youth that doesn’t exactly translate well into a position of authority now. And Zach’s father, who is hell-bent on not searching for Joanne and keeping her away from Zach when, or if, she does resurface.

Honey Brown weaves a tangled web indeed. Her characters become mired in suspicions and guilt by the connections they establish. Within the first few chapters Rebecca has swung from Zach to Aden, and her interest in both boys look suspect. Even more eyebrow-raising is Aden’s sudden intense (and illegal) interest in Rebecca, the girl who is also conveniently the only witness to have last seen Mrs Kincaid

There is certainly a lot going on in this novel, and no one is as they seem. Brown writes Aden in shades of grey – so charming and sexy in one scene, so that you almost forget his twenty-two to Rebecca’s naïve sixteen is both wrong, and possibly calculating. Brown writes about small town corruption with a Raymond Chandler eye, particularly in her explorations of crooked cops (borne more from them being local boys who already knew the lay of the land, than an inclination to dishonesty in the general police force). She definitely writes outback noir;

Police do nothing to build a person’s confidence in them. They seem so civilian. What from a distance looks good, someone she might trust and confide in, up close looks too much like men with food crumbs on their chests, nicks from shaving, ugly mouths and bad breath. Taking her statement seems a chore they have to get done so as to get back to bitching in corridors.

Honey Brown is also exploring quite a few devious themes in ‘The Good Daughter’. One recurring and disturbing examination is that of pack behaviour, particularly men and their pack-like antics. Rebecca keeps a litter of six dogs on her property; these mutts and mongrels yap and snarl, turn on one another and enjoy pack hierarchy … just like the men in town. One particular scene involves Rebecca being cornered in a house full of young male tenants, drunk and showing off for one another and when Rebecca (the town ‘slut’) is thrown into the mix, their one-upmanship takes a harrowing turn. This scene is every girl’s worst nightmare, and reading it was like having someone fisting my heart for an entire chapter.

The small town is so remote, like a country unto itself, that it wasn’t until halfway through the novel when a character’s birth date is mentioned, that Brown even reveals that the book is set in 1986. Small towns just seem to be a step out of time, so much so that I thought it was a given the backwards nature of the policing and technological advances. And Brown really plays that up in ‘The Good Daughter’ – that everything is dictated by the history of this town. People have long memories in small towns, they rarely let people break out of the boxes they were originally put in, and town gossip can have a vicious backlash;

His gaze tightens. His tone grows firm. ‘You might be surprised, Rebecca, at how cops in a small town aren’t always about throwing the book at people. We do try and help.’
‘Sure.’
His eyebrows pinch in. ‘Sure?’ He glances up at the two dining on the veranda. He returns his gaze to her. ‘If we don’t charge somebody for something, or if we let something go, it’s because we know what’s really going on.’ He continues quietly, ‘You should have a little more respect for the system.’ His voice drops to a whisper. ‘I could help you, but you make it hard on yourself. I could tell you what’s going on, but it’s like you don’t want to know. Everyone’s got the backing of someone else in this town, but you’ve got the backing of no-one – you’ve got no-one behind you.’

‘The Good Daughter’ is an incredible and frenetic novel. Following the lives of two sixteen-year-olds from opposites sides of the track as one event inextricably links them, and forces them into adulthood. This is a disquieting novel, beautifully told. Zach and Rebecca are two innocent’s in a town of old memories, and reading about their near-misses and awful discoveries made me want to bundle them in blankets and keep them safe, just for a little bit longer. Fantastic. I can’t wait to get my hands on more of Honey Brown’s books!

5/5