Description: Robert Drewe grew up in Perth, Australia -- known as "the City of Light" after the entire population lit their homes so that John Glenn could (and did) see them as he orbited overhead. Drewe's suburban family seemed to live a stereotypically jolly middle-class life on the "good" side of the Swan River. Appearances were deceiving.

Across the river, on the "bad" side of town, Eric Cooke, who had a hairlip and a couple of handicapped children, lived rather differently. At night he would slip across the river and kill people -- including several friends of Drewe's. This haunting, highly inventive account of the five years Cooke held Perth in dread will set this prowler-turned-multiple murderer against Drewe's father, who was a businessman and employed Cooke as a truckdriver. In that town often described as the most remote city in the world, wedged as it is between the desert and Indian Ocean, 2,700 kilometers from the nearest metropolis, these were the pivotal events of his youth. Drewe is a terrifically gifted writer and he has created a haunting book about the dark life hidden in even the sunniest suburbs -- recognizable anywhere on the earth.

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