Australia has doesn’t seem to have had the plethora of famous serial killers that America has. As a result, few characters loom larger in the Australian consciousness than Ivan Milat – the so-called ‘Backpacker Murderer’. Milat’s crimes were uncovered when bodies were found in the Belanglo State Forest a few hours south of Sydney. In her latest book, Highway 13, Fiona McFarlane explores these events through a fictional lens, using a range of different perspectives across a range of times.
Highway 13 is a series of short stories, connected by their relationship to a man called Paul Biga, who lived south of Sydney and was imprisoned for the killing of a number of backpackers and travellers in the1980s and 90s. The first story in this collection ‘Tourists’ is set in 2008 and is told from the perspective of a young man who, while taking his older ‘empathetic’ neighbour home, is talked into going into the forest to find where the bodies were buried. The next story, Hunter on the Highway takes readers back to 1996 and a woman who sets out to catch the killer to prove one way or the other whether it is her husband. The stories continue to oscillate through time and include a neighbour of the Biga’s being interviewed as his family home is demolished; a couple who took in a young Swedish backpacker who may well have become one of his victims; a political candidate who is unfortunate enough to share a surname with the killer; an actor who is hired to play Biga in a prestige TV adaptation; and a detective who worked on the case.
Some of the stories are elliptical, taking a while to reveal their connection to the events, none more so than Chaperone about an English class trip to Rome in 1995. And none of them are about Biga himself – McFarlane is much more interested in the impact of Biga and his actions on those around the story. In fact, the focus of many of the stories is not often Biga at all, there is much more going on in them, and the stories themselves stand individually about specific characters and points in time. In this way, it seems that McFarlane is saying that none of these characters should be defined by the crimes that they were associated with. That each has a rich life both before and after those events.
Each of the short stories in Highway 13 is its own world. The fact that they are connected by a series of horrific events adds depth and poignancy to them. Good crime fiction is often not really about the crime, or the investigation or often the criminal. It is about shining a light on character and time and place. McFarlane does all of this and more in this insightful, thought-provoking and elegiac collection.
Robert Goodman
For more of Robert’s reviews, visit his blog Pile By the Bed
Other reviews you might enjoy:
- The Memory Librarian (Janelle Monae) – book review
- Criminals (James O’Loghlin) – book review
- The Candy House (Jennifer Egan) – book review
Robert Goodman is a book reviewer, former Ned Kelly Awards judge and institutionalised public servant based in Sydney. This and over 450 more book reviews can be found on his website Pile By the Bed.
