Nullin's newest residents, masseuse Heidi Go and her screenwriter husband Beckett, have traded Sydney's fast lane for a fresh start in a picturesque little coastal town. Knowing what to expect from a sea change, they look forward to making the acquaintance of the odd local character. Or even the frankly weird ones, like the wild Blackpeters, the wealthy Bankston family, sexy handyman Damian Hill and an elderly anthropologist with an exotic past.

But soon the corpses of native animals start turning up, cruelly tortured and mutilated. And when Heidi makes her own horrifying discovery in the eerie Nullin Void, she starts to wonder if the rural eccentricities of the locals are a mask for something far more sinister.

Heidi crouched on her heels a few metres from the teenager, hugging her knees to her chest. It was damp down in the quarry, still except for the circling of birds overhead, magpies and crows attracted by the smell of blood. She picked up a rock and threw it at them, but they continued to circle. She could do nothing, either, about the flies that had gathered at the corners of the girl's eyelids, in her nostrils, inside the awful wound at her throat.

All around her, she sensed that smaller creatures were waiting their turn, the worms squirming under the soil, the beetles scratching among the rocks, waiting for the skin to fall off the bones, stripped of connecting tissue, to bleach and crumble, what was human to turn to soup for a putrid autumn feast. The earth seemed to be buzzing in anticipation. But Heidi was determined to deny them their meal. She sat on her haunches in a puddle, throwing sticks and gravel at predators, alert for the sounds of larger animals come to feast. Like a Roman guard at the Crucifixion, she thought.

Author

Lee Tulloch

Lee Tulloch was born in Melbourne, Australia, a Capricorn with Sagittarius rising and an Aries moon, if you believe in these things. (She's ambivalent.) Perhaps, however, her stars do explain a restless life lived on three continents. A graduate in English Literature from Melbourne University, she made an unexpected foray into federal politics as a researcher before she began writing about fashion and popular culture for Vogue Australia. Since then, she has written extensively on the subject for international publications such as Vogue, Elle, Jalouse, Harper's Bazaar and New York magazine. While still a child, she became the founding editor of Harper's Bazaar Australia but was dismissed after nine issues for being a little too creative.

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Review FABULOUS NOBODIES - Lee Tulloch
Karen Chisholm
Monday, October 1, 2007
ISBN
1920885196
Year of Publication
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