THE RUSH, by Michelle Prak (Simon & Schuster, 37.99)
Thrillers aren’t often truly terrifying, but Michelle Prak’s The Rush is. Four young people go on a road trip through the Australian outback. Scott and Hayley are boyfriend and girlfriend. Scott is horrible. Hayley is annoyingly needy and relentlessly Miss Sunshiney. The other two are not a couple. Hayley hooked up with them through an online forum for backpackers. The mysterious Livia wears army-surplus pants and sturdy black boots and her hairdo is a buzzcut. Joost is from the Netherlands and is on his gap year. He looks like a spider, and he might turn out to be even more of a creep than Scott.
A storm is coming. The first proper rains for a decade are forecast, as are flash floods. It is not a good time to be in a car on those bare roads in the remote emptiness that is South Australia. Quin, who works and boards at the only pub for miles and dusty miles, is in her car. The kids are in their van. At the pub, Matt and Andrea are lugging sandbags. Matt has to leave the pub to help out a flooded neighbour. Andrea is left alone with the kids. The power goes out. The mobile phone dies. A sinister biker turns up. It’s nasty out there in the storm and it is about to get even nastier inside the pub.
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