In his début novel, Sam Carmody sheathes this pointy question (why do people stay in hopeless places?) inside a more conventional mystery: a man has gone missing, and his younger brother, Paul, arrives in Stark to retrace his steps. At first, Paul is more of a daydreamer than a clue-hunter, and his introduction to the fisherman’s life is amusingly inept and spew-splattered. As he gets tougher, however, his probing of the town’s druggy underbelly begins to put him in danger.

Those expecting a slice of taut, rural noir – Winter’s Bone with yabbies, perhaps – may be disappointed. This is a slow burner, a novel unafraid to wallow in the daily grind, and it is powered by Carmody’s subtle portrayal of how lives fizzle out, suffocated by memories and regrets and what one character calls ‘rear-mirror syndrome’. Ultimately, the story is about Paul, and about that anti-climactic moment in a young person’s life when they crest adolescence, only to find that adulthood is just an endless cycle of boat, pub, boat, pub, boat, pub ...