Truth is not only stranger than fiction; it can be infinitely sadder too. The event depicted in this novel’s opening pages – in which an elderly Aboriginal man is cooked to death in the cargo hold of van while being transferred from one Western Australian town to another in police custody – is gruesome enough in the context of a work of fiction. But knowing that it is based on a real life – and death – experience that occurred in the very recent past makes the book a lot more visceral.

In the real world this incident resulted in official enquiries (because one is never enough) and a whole lot of people being shocked for a few moments before getting on with their lives. Helpless to know what to do even if they wanted to do something. Same as it ever was. In Docker’s thinly disguised version of Australia (Kalgoorlie is Baalboorlie for example) the incident results in a kind of civil war. Or what we would call a civil war if it was happening in some conveniently faraway place across an ocean or two. But one of the stories Australians like to tell about ourselves is that we don’t do that kind of thing here. We’re too laid back. We’d rather have a beer together than fight. We do mateship not war. There are entire school syllabuses devoted to this notion.

But in Docker’s Australia an Aboriginal man – an ex soldier just like the man who died in the van – starts taking revenge on the people responsible for the man’s horrendous death. Not just the two who drove the van but all the people who played a role in enabling the death. The one who thought it reasonable to imprison (rather than bail) a man just for being officially drunk. The one who decided not to get the air conditioning of the transport van fixed. And so on. He is joined by another former soldier, engaged in his own crusade, and they are aided by local Aboriginal people.

Trying to make sense of all this as it unfolds is a young female journalist. Izzy-from-the-Star as one of the locals calls her. She has been an embedded journalist in Afghanistan and wrote about another Aboriginal death at the hands of police in Palm Island. But as SWEET ONE unfolds the lines between reporting and participating blur for Izzy as she comes to know the locals and learn of her personal connection to them.

As one of the city-living, latte sipping southerners that various characters take pot-shots at throughout the SWEET ONE, I cannot really comment on this book’s authenticity with respect to the events it describes. Although they are taking place in the state next to mine they could just as easily be on Mars for all I know of the world being depicted. But I can attest to the sense of helplessness that underpins it. We’ve Brought Them Home, and Closed The Gap and said sorry and had more than one Royal Commission into some aspect of Indigenous life – and death. And still we can bake an Aboriginal man to death in the back of a van in the name of law and order. In the 21st century.

Unlike all the official reports that governments have been issuing for decades – earnest and well-meaning though they may be – SWEET ONE grabs the reader’s attention on page one and doesn’t let up until the final word. Not just via the mounting body count (though it is constant and violent) but also in conveying how grim the situation is. For everyone. Black and white. Young and old. Male and Female. Police and civilian.

As well as telling a helluva yarn Docker writes beautifully. It’s almost like poetry at times. But not your grandmother’s poetry. Imagine the poetry that Mel Gibson’s character from the first Mad Max movie might have written between road races. Sharp and quick and brutal. And gorgeous.

It seems odd to say I loved this book but I did. Despite the fact it is confronting as all hell and does nothing to improve my sense of helplessness and guilt. But I have to believe that things can get better if we tell real stories about ourselves.Or at least I know things won’t get better unless we do tell real stories about ourselves. Even if it hurts. Like all great art SWEET ONE entertains, even nourishes in its way. But it also informs and makes you think. And squirm. As it should.

On Anzac Day in 2008 an Aboriginal Elder from Warburton*, Western Australia was arrested for drink driving. Transported around 920 kilometres over two trips, in the back of a private security company van with no air-conditioning, he died in transit. An inquest later found that the guards accompanying him, the private company, and the State Government contributed to this gentleman's death. The State's response and delays in compensation payments were as reprehensible as everyone's behaviour in the first place.

Using similar events as the subject matter of SWEET ONE does not, at any stage, feel exploitative. Rather what Docker seems to be doing in this book is explore the ongoing conflict between right and wrong, black and white, and the way that the tension cannot end when there is such a unfairly balanced power share in the relationship between Aboriginal and Authority Australia.

Set in the Western Australian goldfields, the landscape and weather is as harsh and unwelcoming as those Authority figures. Yet Izzy Langford is drawn to the story, and to the place, in the same way that her Vietnam veteran father was drawn before - although this comes as a surprise to her.

"The feeling of being in another country is suddenly overwhelming to Izzy. Not just because of how different the place looks, and how different the people sound - but knowing how different the reaction of her university-educated friends would be, thousands and thousands of kilometres to the east in inner-city Melbourne."

Through her eyes we see the differences, she provides a voice to articulate reactions - positive and negative in a way that's observational and not judgemental. Langford's a journalist, she has a background in reporting on Aboriginal deaths in custody, although her previous story was dropped when the accused police officer was acquitted (again Docker uses the real-life events of Palm Island as the basis for this plot element).

Building on that idea of connections, Langford is connected to Aboriginal Deaths in Custody investigations, as she is to the place, as she is to returned servicemen from Afghanistan - having been embedded there and in Pakistan in the past. The tendrils of these threads weave together cleverly to give the reader a feeling that connectedness is a complicated, multi-level thing, much like our white understanding of Aboriginal connection to place, and past, might feel.

"Below them there is a man waiting. A soldier. A warrior. He lies there feeling the country. He can taste his country at the corners of his mouth. He can smell his country through the dust in his nose. And his country can smell him. The smell and the taste fill him with a power - a power so subtle that even those who are trained to look would have trouble seeing."

A white man, born in Wiilman Country, who grew up in Wudjari Country, and now lives in the Kimberley, Docker writes about the colliding edges of black and white Australia. He does not shy away from the reckless and vicious elements of outback life - the financial manipulation, enforced sex trade, and the drinking and abuse - black and white. He also draws a strong picture of the strength of family, and the success of many people who sit astride the edge. In particular the strength of many of the women in communities - which feels so real, so right. He also uses the idea of retribution as a core plot element, the evening of scores. This, combined with truths that sneak up and ambush the reader on the way through, delivered in a classic thriller format mean that it's hard not to feel like there are lessons here, delivered in the most real, practical and down to earth manner possible.

All of which is supported by strong characters, a sense of humour so dry you can feel the heat as it whips past you, and some absolutely beautiful and lyrical passages describing the place, feelings, connections, past, present and future.

Whilst there is much to be said for the strength of people writing their own stories and telling things from their own perspective, SWEET ONE reminds that an observer's eye can also be acute. When that eye is combined with sympathy, respect and love, then the stories told are strong, and in a language that's accessible, gripping, moving, emotional, provocative and forceful.

* Name not used in accordance with Aboriginal custom

http://www.austcrimefiction.org/review/review-sweet-one-peter-docker ( )

A crime thriller… and much more. Set in Western Australia, this story pulls the reader into a fascinating culture clash that will leave one haunted. An aged aboriginal dies in police custody: who is responsible? As it turns out, there's a whole lot of irresponsibility going on… and someone's sick and tired of it. As the body count soars, a young journalist scrambles to find answers. But finding the answer demands peeling the onion, going deeper and deeper toward a rotten core.

Some readers may be put off by the writing style, which foregoes quotation marks. My advice: stick with it. You'll soon be drawn into the exquisitely drawn world here. The device is perfectly suited to the tale and the writing is wonderful. ( )