A white-knuckle ride into a nightmarish outback setting, where a man searching for mercy encounters a town baying for violent vengeance. A pulse-pounding literary thriller with a stunning final twist.
`Think three-fifths of the way to fuck-all-nowhere-ville. Pioneering grazing family. Once hallowed farming country gone to shit. Rabbit plagues and feral pigs. Never-ending drought. Full of Flat Earth Party-voting, climate-change-denying, God-bothering, gun-nut, ground-zero, wife-beating, racist, fundamentalist f*ckers. Pardon my French. Apart from that it’s just a great place.’
Welcome to The Leap, an outback town fuelled by fear, churning with corruption, prejudice and misogyny – and blighted by its inescapable history of frontier violence. Into this nightmarish morass falters traumatised British diplomat, Benedict Fotheringham-Gaskill. He’s on his first Australian mission, one seemingly straightforward enough – until he arrives in The Leap to battle a town conspiring against him.
The Leap is baying for violent vengeance over the alleged murder of the celebrated daughter of a powerful local grazier. But Benedict is on an impossible quest for the opposite: mercy for the young woman’s two alleged female killers. The townspeople will challenge and threaten Benedict at every turn as he fights for justice, his future, his sanity – and ultimately his life.
From the acclaimed author of Jesustown comes a pulse-pounding throat-punch of a literary thriller, filled with humour, horror, blistering historical truths, indelible characters and a final twist that will take your breath away.
About the Author
Paul Daley is an author, journalist, essayist and short story writer. His books have been shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s History Prize and ACT Book of the Year. He has won two Walkley Awards and the National Press Club Award for Excellence in Press Gallery Journalism. His essays have appeared in Meanjin and Griffith Review, and he writes ‘Postcolonial’, a column for The Guardian about Australian national identity, history and Indigenous culture. His literary novel Jesustown was published to great acclaim in 2022.
Industry Reviews
‘Propulsive, confronting, compelling. A masterpiece.’
– Chris Hammer, author of The Valley
'The Leap is a modern Wake in Fright. Confronting, tragic, brutal, compassionate and funny. A brilliant examination of the prejudice and violence that lies at the heart of this country. A novel that speaks truth about crimes past and present.'
– Michael Brissenden, author of Smoke
‘This novel is an explosion of truth-telling about Australia’s bloody past, taking us on a tumultuous outback crime adventure, sometimes hilarious and often outrageous.’
– Julie Janson, author of Benevolence
‘Paul Daley's vivid rendering of an outback town ruled by fear, alcohol and barely suppressed violence, damned by a malevolent and unspoken past, is unforgettable. It will disturb your nights.’
– Tony Wright, journalist
‘Paul Daley shatters the great Australian silence with a penetrating story that reveals the truth and trauma of Country. From his elegant and excavating pen comes another important and revelatory work.’
– Nick Bryant, journalist and author of The Forever War
A Wake in Fright for the 21st century. Savage, hilarious and ultimately profound, The Leap hurtles into Australia’s heart of darkness with exhilarating results.’
– James Bradley, author of Landfall
‘Unflinching, razor-edged and raw. Another tour de force by Paul Daley.’
– Joanna Jenkins, author of The Bluff
‘Paul Daley continues his ongoing examination of the frontier's lasting effects, repainting Wake in Fright's Bundanyabba hellmouth with a twenty-first century understanding of dispossession and racial division. Here are the drinking culture, the unconcealed bloodlust and the deluded squattocracy, all seen through the baffled eyes of a post-empire Briton. Only a writer of Daley's quality could bring empathy and nuance to the canon of Australian bush noir.’
– Jock Serong, author of Cherrywood
