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Sweet One
The best place to hide an ice pick is in a truckload of icepicks.
When a senior Aboriginal war veteran dies horribly at the hands of state government authorities, Izzy, a journalist and daughter of a war veteran herself, flies to the goldfields of Western Australia to cover his death. But Izzy is about to learn that for every action there is an equal and bloody reaction. On the trail of the vigilantes, she finds herself embedded in a secret war that is finally, irrevocably, going to explode to the surface.
When a senior Aboriginal war veteran dies horribly at the hands of state government authorities, Izzy, a journalist and daughter of a war veteran herself, flies to the goldfields of Western Australia to cover his death. But Izzy is about to learn that for every action there is an equal and bloody reaction. On the trail of the vigilantes, she finds herself embedded in a secret war that is finally, irrevocably, going to explode to the surface.
320 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2014
326 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
May 8, 2014
A ferocious, relentless and often humorous crime novel set in the WA goldfields. The characters are complex and authentic, the setting is brilliantly evoked as the personal and political ramifications of a death-in-custody are played out, by way of a plot that makes overt the idea that the frontier war has never ended.
September 12, 2014
Sweet One is a powerful novel that depicts white Australia's conflict with black Australia as a frontier war that has never ended, at the same time daring to imagine a day when it might.
Set in the Western Australian goldfields, the story opens with the horrendous, entirely preventable death of a elderly Aboriginal war veteran in custody. Directly complicit in his death are the local state police and the private security officers responsible for prisoner transport. But when the army trained 'Sweet One', a man of Wongatha and Afghani descent, starts avenging the Old Man's death, the lines of responsibility are drawn in wider and wider arcs, raising questions about where complicity ends when it comes to maintaining a status quo that subjects Indigenous Australians to violence, poverty and early death.
Investigating the intersecting stories of systemic injustice and frontier justice is journalist Izzy Langford, daughter of a Vietnam veteran turned cop, girlfriend of an Australian solider on active duty in Afghanistan. Izzy has investigated an Aboriginal death in custody once before, only to have her story killed when the accused cop was acquitted. This same cop subsequently becomes first to die in Sweet One's campaign.
Izzy was previously embedded with forces in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the more she learns of black-white relations in outback Australia, the more parallels she sees between the two. 'It feels like a war. To us it even looks like a war,' Sweet One tells her.
The young Aboriginal girls being sold for sex by a hotel owner who acts as loan shark to their families reminds Izzy of the teenage girls she saw trafficked as part of the opium industry in the Middle East:
In the largely corrupt and highly stratified outback towns where Izzy finds herself, no one can be trusted on face value. When she manages to evade the cops -- or are they military? -- who would silence her, Izzy is taken in by Queenie and her Aboriginal mob. But Queenie, too, is not what she seems, sharing an elusive connection with Izzy, Sweet One and, it seems, most of the major players in this engrossing drama.
In Sweet One, Peter Docker looks into the heart of white Australia and finds it conflicted, festering, lacking love for black Australia, and at the same time needing to find that love -- 'to start really looking for our blackness, for our Australian-ness', as he puts it in the excellent book club notes available from Freemantle Press.
The novel contains numerous statements that read like epiphanies, and yet the combination of intimate characterisations and humour, together with the thriller format, help ensure that none of it comes across as didactic. In one scene, for example, Izzy visits Sweet One's brother-in-arms, Smokey, at a Perth prison. In the course of their conversation, Izzy mentions Ned Kelly's famous Jerilderie letter, which sets Smokey off on a story he offers to dictate 'like Ned's letter to Joe'.
Smokey speaks of a people thrown up by an ancient country, a people 'who recognise the country and its indivisibleness from its phenomenal spiritual life', who 'survive everything'.
Sweet One is an audacious novel, a hard-boiled read that is both gripping and provocative. It's the sort of book that should stimulate reflection, discussion, questions and -- dare we hope -- action.
Set in the Western Australian goldfields, the story opens with the horrendous, entirely preventable death of a elderly Aboriginal war veteran in custody. Directly complicit in his death are the local state police and the private security officers responsible for prisoner transport. But when the army trained 'Sweet One', a man of Wongatha and Afghani descent, starts avenging the Old Man's death, the lines of responsibility are drawn in wider and wider arcs, raising questions about where complicity ends when it comes to maintaining a status quo that subjects Indigenous Australians to violence, poverty and early death.
Investigating the intersecting stories of systemic injustice and frontier justice is journalist Izzy Langford, daughter of a Vietnam veteran turned cop, girlfriend of an Australian solider on active duty in Afghanistan. Izzy has investigated an Aboriginal death in custody once before, only to have her story killed when the accused cop was acquitted. This same cop subsequently becomes first to die in Sweet One's campaign.
Izzy was previously embedded with forces in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the more she learns of black-white relations in outback Australia, the more parallels she sees between the two. 'It feels like a war. To us it even looks like a war,' Sweet One tells her.
The young Aboriginal girls being sold for sex by a hotel owner who acts as loan shark to their families reminds Izzy of the teenage girls she saw trafficked as part of the opium industry in the Middle East:
The First World isn't that different to the Third World. Everything looks different, more opulent -- everything except the look in the eye of those who are helpless to resist the power. That look in the eye is the same the world over. A look that Westerners have trained themselves not to see. (p.57)
In the largely corrupt and highly stratified outback towns where Izzy finds herself, no one can be trusted on face value. When she manages to evade the cops -- or are they military? -- who would silence her, Izzy is taken in by Queenie and her Aboriginal mob. But Queenie, too, is not what she seems, sharing an elusive connection with Izzy, Sweet One and, it seems, most of the major players in this engrossing drama.
In Sweet One, Peter Docker looks into the heart of white Australia and finds it conflicted, festering, lacking love for black Australia, and at the same time needing to find that love -- 'to start really looking for our blackness, for our Australian-ness', as he puts it in the excellent book club notes available from Freemantle Press.
The novel contains numerous statements that read like epiphanies, and yet the combination of intimate characterisations and humour, together with the thriller format, help ensure that none of it comes across as didactic. In one scene, for example, Izzy visits Sweet One's brother-in-arms, Smokey, at a Perth prison. In the course of their conversation, Izzy mentions Ned Kelly's famous Jerilderie letter, which sets Smokey off on a story he offers to dictate 'like Ned's letter to Joe'.
Smokey speaks of a people thrown up by an ancient country, a people 'who recognise the country and its indivisibleness from its phenomenal spiritual life', who 'survive everything'.
And then, two hundred years ago -- we show up. No country, no real Law, swamped in grog, full of greed, and armed to the fucking back teeth. We came here looking for something. Something we lost along the way. But when we found what we were looking for, we were so angry with ourselves that we attacked and destroyed the thing that we came seeking. It makes no diff. In two hundred years we have done our best to besmirch them, belittle them, butcher them, and back them into a corner every which way but loose.
Can you still use besmirch? asks Izzy, daring to look up.
Ned would've. (p. 177)
Sweet One is an audacious novel, a hard-boiled read that is both gripping and provocative. It's the sort of book that should stimulate reflection, discussion, questions and -- dare we hope -- action.
February 18, 2015
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
February 26, 2014
i represent the publisher of this book
July 25, 2014
Very powerful, not what I was expecting. Extremely violent and confronting. Had me hooked from just a few pages in.
December 28, 2014
Unexpected. It is confronting when you face a plot that matches quite a bit of the anger and disappointment that you feel about a topic that no one wants to discuss.
February 14, 2020
This was a confronting read as it brings to the fore the horrendous and diabolical was indigenous people were (and) treated...and they even fought in the war ! One wonders why they bothered to 'defend' a country that did not recognise them as citizens. Australia like the US should hang it head in shame. Good writing made this a crime thriller that was a 'page turner'.
May 29, 2021
This is one tough book, exploring a scenario that few Australians want to consider in a style that takes perseverance and concentration. Behind the tough gal swagger, the amoral exploitation of people and resources and the callous racism, there's a story of enduring values and cultural continuity that strikes true, even though it has slipped from sight for many. Worth the effort.
October 29, 2018
Entertaining, difficult to follow, and some interesting information, throughout violent book.
September 16, 2020
Very violent. Learnt a lot about Aboriginal perspective. Non-Indigenous writer.
September 17, 2014
Firstly, I'd like to thank Claire for the opportunity to read and review this book, as I won it through First Reads.
Whilst I thought the storyline of this book was really interesting and the struggle between white and Aboriginal Australians quite fascinating, to me it was presented in a way that I found quite difficult to read.
The lack of quotation marks for any conversation often made it difficult to decipher who was saying what....and indeed if someone was actually speaking, or it was narrative. I also got a bit lost with there being so many characters, most of whom were referred to by surnames. A few scenes completely baffled me and I had no idea what was going on!
Overall though, the book had a very interesting and thought-provoking storyline, which had me considering these issues long after I had put the book down.
Whilst I thought the storyline of this book was really interesting and the struggle between white and Aboriginal Australians quite fascinating, to me it was presented in a way that I found quite difficult to read.
The lack of quotation marks for any conversation often made it difficult to decipher who was saying what....and indeed if someone was actually speaking, or it was narrative. I also got a bit lost with there being so many characters, most of whom were referred to by surnames. A few scenes completely baffled me and I had no idea what was going on!
Overall though, the book had a very interesting and thought-provoking storyline, which had me considering these issues long after I had put the book down.
October 13, 2014
Thank you to Goodreads for the opportunity to read Sweet One. When I started this book, I found the print layout a little distracting but, happily, overcame this within a few pages. This book captured my imagination with its subject matter - a veteran who happened to be aboriginal who died in custody, after being picked up drunk on Anzac Day. The main character is Izzy and she is my hero. By page 80 odd there were any number of people killed and Izzy comes close to being one of them. She is resourceful and clever, makes lots of friends and an equal number of enemies, gets herself into dangerous situations and manages to scrape out of them. By the end I was also in love with Macca and Smokey..... Enjoy!
December 4, 2014
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.
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.
October 10, 2014
Great story. About time there was really engaging stuff about the schism between Aboriginal and White Australia. I was hooked by the action and social issues in this book. The only thing that spoilt my enjoyment was the lack of quotation marks, which made dialogue awkward to read. However, this was a novel way of writing to me, and it actually made me pay more attention, so maybe a good tactic after all. Izzy and Queenie are strong, independent women, so often lacking in the action genre. I am trying to justify the violence, sex and alcohol, because I think there are so many other themes in this book that would make it ideal for our Senior Students. I want my 15 year old son to read this now I have finished. Am now looking for my next Peter Docker book!
December 2, 2014
Very violent and confronting with goodies and baddies sometimes hard to define, but absolutely unforgettable. Set in Western Australia, with mining towns and aboriginal settlements mixed in with soldiers, policemen, journalists and overseas' wars, at times I found it hard to follow and I'm still unsure of some of the connections in the book eg. Izzy's father and what part he played. It would have helped if there were more punctuation also. The ideas, the characters and the action though more than make up for it; this book should be in schools and book clubs the ideas debated thoroughly. Just brilliant.
September 13, 2014
I didn't mind reading this book, it was quite intriguing, although I did find it rather hard to get into at first. One of the main problems I had was the fact that it didn't have talking marks ( " ) so I found it rather hard to understand. I did love though how it showed a lot of prejudice against the aborigines, even some that remains today and also that it was very genuine, all very Australian. Thankyou very much for giving me this book, that I one in the goodreads giveaways and to be honest, I had a bit of a happy dance when I received it in the mail.
August 27, 2016
I'm not really sure why I persevered with this book!
The first thing that irritated me was the lack of inverted commas for direct speech!
The basic premise of the story is a good one - a senior Aboriginal war veteran dies a horrible death in the back of a wagon taking him into custody. Horror at this outcome is warranted.
What follows is a series of violent murders, and I found I was never sure who were the "baddies" and who were the "goodies". I have finished and I'm still not sure!
I can't say I really enjoyed it, which is why I have given only a 1-star rating.
The first thing that irritated me was the lack of inverted commas for direct speech!
The basic premise of the story is a good one - a senior Aboriginal war veteran dies a horrible death in the back of a wagon taking him into custody. Horror at this outcome is warranted.
What follows is a series of violent murders, and I found I was never sure who were the "baddies" and who were the "goodies". I have finished and I'm still not sure!
I can't say I really enjoyed it, which is why I have given only a 1-star rating.
October 15, 2014
Amazing. I loved this book. Am now going back to his previous novel The Waterboys . There is something so special in discovering a writer so good , talking in local language about local geography and culture . This "white fulla" is breaking literary ground .I hope the world is keen to listen to his stories
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September 7, 2014I just heard this novel has sold out at the publisher! Great news for Docker, Fremantle Press & WA fiction but I want to read it so bad!
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews