Only Killers and Thieves

DEBUT In this powerful debut novel, set in 1870s Australia, two teenage brothers ride into the desert interior, along with an unscrupulous neighbor and a cadre of the infamous Native Police Force, to avenge the deaths of the boys' family. Billy is the elder, but Tommy, the central protagonist, is more intuitive and comes to realize the troop's actual intent: a genocidal raid on remaining aboriginal inhabitants. With sweeping descriptions of landscape and the journey's hardships, the novel feels like a modern Western along the lines of Cormac McCarthy's All the Pretty Horses. Howarth's narrative is almost cinematic and, like a modern Western film, includes scenes of graphic violence. Tommy's empathy with the natives he encounters immerses readers in the history of Australia's treatment of its indigenous people. Howarth is British but lived in Australia for several years and here draws on his research of the Queensland Native Police Force. U.S. readers will make the connection with our country's oppression of Native Americans and gain an understanding of the fundamental racism of both former British colonies.