Set in rural Australia, The Hunted is a tense thriller about a woman with a troubled past stumbling upon a backwater country town where things aren’t just quite right.
Split into ‘then’ and ‘now’ sections (which interweave), the story follows Maggie’s experience in this town (then) and the fallout of this as she and several others are attacked while sheltering at an isolated petrol station roadhouse (now).
Thrillers aren’t normally my thing. However, Gabe is one of my favourite authors (the only one who isn’t a fantasy author, as a matter of fact) and I was dying to read this. In many ways, my relationship with this book was unique. I first encountered it in audio drama form on the now-defunct Movie Maintenance Presents podcast, a few years ago. Back then, it was called Sunburnt Country. While it held the essence of The Hunted, and was hugely tense and engaging at the time, this final novel improves in every aspect, resulting in the most suspenseful, well-plotted novel I’ve read this year.
If you don’t normally read thrillers (like me), I think you’ll still enjoy this novel.
There’s pulse-pounding action, amazing language, and a beautiful sense of place within the rugged Australian outback. (My family and I have done quite a few road trips through country not dissimilar to The Hunted; thanks to this book, I won’t look at a rural roadhouse the same way ever again). Most welcome of all – the books shines with moving, unexpected, and emotional character arcs.
I expected high-octane action from the start. Instead, it spends time with the characters, building your understanding and empathy for them – while still creating this excellent tension that simmers in the background. It doesn’t take long for that tension to explode, but I really liked this patience to build, rather than just jumping straight into the action. It reminds me a little of The Shining, which is 90% build up and 10% frenetic explosion (although here the balance is more 60-40, if I had to put a number on it).
That’s not to say the book is slow. It moves like lightning. More than anything, it’s a great example of how you don’t need physical action to keep readers engaged. Emotional action and inner action within the minds of characters can be just (or sometimes more) interesting than shooty-shooty explody-explodies.
“Fear is like petrol. Bad for you, but fuck it makes you go.”
Again, I don’t read many thrillers. Saying that, this focus on character elevated this book above the few other thrillers I’ve read. I really connected with all the character arcs.
In particular, Simon’s uneasiness with the more ‘macho’ characters encountered in a certain town felt like a (significantly more exaggerated) version of childhood bullying that I suffered.
Luckily, I didn’t have quite the same hardships Simon does. Still, all readers will probably connect so wonderfully with the characters because Gabe does an incredible job of tapping into the shared collective experiences we all have (to varying extents) endured with bullies.
“Look, this isn’t the first bad situation I’ve found myself in. And I’ll do my best to survive. But if I don’t, the least I can do – the absolute least I can do – is not give them the satisfaction of knowing how fucking scared I am.”
In terms of negatives, there were few. Probably my biggest issue was that I found some of the ebook formatting weird (sometimes there wasn’t clear spacing between scene and POV breaks, which was a little confusing), and there were some questionable punctation choices early (although I doubt most people would notice/care). Apart from that, the biggest negative was that I’d listened to Sunburnt Country before, so I knew roughly what to expect. Saying that, Sunburnt Country only translated to a tiny portion of this novel, so there was still so much surprise and excitement on my part.
Plot wise, I loved Gabe’s ability to take simple props and use them to create exhilarating action.
There’s nothing outlandishly complicated in terms of weapons, settings, or character abilities. This isn’t Die Hard, where the story is set in a skyscraper, with bank safes and helicopters. In The Hunted, most of the story happens around a typical roadhouse in the middle of the country and the weatherboard home behind it. Utes, petrol, bricks, rope – that’s as fancy as the tools get. Even within these simple constraints, Gabe wrote innovative and surprising sequences. For example, there’s a night-time scene where a character is hiding behind a car, with another car facing their vehicle. One character (SPOILER) drops a brick onto the car’s accelerator, sending it ploughing forward into the other vehicle (/SPOILER). Simple, surprising, effective.
And lastly – the scene weave! I don’t know how he does it, but Gabe somehow weaves eight or so different POVs and two or three timelines into a cohesive story, that it substantially better for it. We see this done in film a lot (and The Hunted is currently in film development), but it’s rare for an author to execute it as masterfully as Gabe did.
Overall, this is a suspenseful and tense, with some of the best action I’ve ever read – wrapped around a deeply meaningful core of how we can atone for the sins of the past. I was in awe of Gabe before; I don’t know what superlative I should be using to describe him now. This is my favourite Bergmoser novel yet.
5/5 stars.
PS: I can’t believe how lucky I am, but on Monday I’ll be chatting to the author on The Novel Analyst Podcast! If you haven’t already subscribed, use the links below to check it out:
Or you might be interested in my two previous interviews with Gabe:
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