'A high-paced, hardboiled regional noir: fresh, gritty, unnerving, with a stark and lonely beauty.
'Do bad people look like good people, like friends and brothers and boyfriends and students, until they have their hands around your throat? All of these men standing around me, drinks in hand, backs to this screen… smiling, laughing, flirting, and they look harmless. But any one of them could be something else now: rapist, murdered, spree shooter, torturer, paedophile. I try to picture them sprayed with blood and gore and it’s easy. I can do it, mentally. All of these guys could be him because all of these guys were just like him, right up until he…
'Gatton, Queensland. 1994. Nate is a student, dealing weed on the side. A girl called Maya Kibby is dead. No one knows who killed her. Nate needs to refresh his supply, but Jesse, his friend and dealer, is missing. Nate is high. He is alone. Being hunted for the suitcase he’s found and haunted by its contents. And as things turn from bad to worse, Nate uncovers far more than he bargained for.' (Publication summary)
'For Emma Viskic, the challenge of her second novel, And Fire Came Down, is to build on the success of her prize-winning 2015 debut, Resurrection Bay. Appearing again is one of the most intriguing recent protagonists of Australian crime fiction: the deaf private investigator Caleb Zelic, a man self-destructively redoubtable and the cause — as he fears — of harm all around him.' (Introduction)
'The Student is set around a university campus in Gatton, Queensland, in 1994. Nat is a student dealing weed supplied by Jesse, another student and friend. Between them they have a very good business going – to the detriment of their studies, which have become incidental to both of them.' (Introduction)
'It’s 1994 and Nate Byrne is a business student in the small university town of Gatton, Queensland. He sells weed on the side, but his friend/dealer Jesse has disappeared, precipitating a drug-drought. When a couple of violent bikies turn up looking for Jesse and a considerable sum of money, Nate’s tasked to find him, and fast. He stumbles upon a homemade porn ring, a missing fortune in pills and cash, the seedy underbelly of a rural community. A girl from the neighbourhood turns up dead. Nate’s too high to handle any of it. Traumas from his past are catching up to him. The plot comes heavy and fast. The sentences are short and sharp. Gritty. Noir. Laconic.' (Introduction)
'The Student is set around a university campus in Gatton, Queensland, in 1994. Nat is a student dealing weed supplied by Jesse, another student and friend. Between them they have a very good business going – to the detriment of their studies, which have become incidental to both of them.' (Introduction)
'For Emma Viskic, the challenge of her second novel, And Fire Came Down, is to build on the success of her prize-winning 2015 debut, Resurrection Bay. Appearing again is one of the most intriguing recent protagonists of Australian crime fiction: the deaf private investigator Caleb Zelic, a man self-destructively redoubtable and the cause — as he fears — of harm all around him.' (Introduction)
'It’s 1994 and Nate Byrne is a business student in the small university town of Gatton, Queensland. He sells weed on the side, but his friend/dealer Jesse has disappeared, precipitating a drug-drought. When a couple of violent bikies turn up looking for Jesse and a considerable sum of money, Nate’s tasked to find him, and fast. He stumbles upon a homemade porn ring, a missing fortune in pills and cash, the seedy underbelly of a rural community. A girl from the neighbourhood turns up dead. Nate’s too high to handle any of it. Traumas from his past are catching up to him. The plot comes heavy and fast. The sentences are short and sharp. Gritty. Noir. Laconic.' (Introduction)
