The Tall Man - Chloe Hooper
Hamish Hamilton $32.95
By Luke Benedictus
According to the Guinness Book of Records, the most dangerous non-combat zone on earth is 45 kilometres from Townsville. Palm Island is an Aboriginal community ravaged by violence, alcoholism and unemployment.
"What do you do for sport?" a visiting lawyer asks some kids in Chloe Hooper's extraordinary The Tall Man.
"Throw rocks at coppers," comes the reply.
Relations with police sunk to a new low on November 19 2004 when Cameron Doomadgee was arrested for swearing at an officer. Within an hour he was dead in his cell. His injuries included a black eye and a liver almost cleaved in two. The interrogating officer, Snr Sgt Chris Hurley, was forced into hiding.
Hooper, a Melbourne writer shortlisted for the Orange Prize, abandoned her second novel to follow the inquest. "It's a true crime story that concertinas out because it's also about the violence of the Australian frontier," she explains. "Cameron's death is a continuation of that."
Hooper's initial reports from Palm Island won her a Walkley Award, but a book allows her the scope to wrestle with the complexities of the case. The Tall Man follows in the tradition of classic non-fiction novels like Truman Capote's In Cold Blood as Hooper brings lyrical power to actual events. The result is a real-life Heart of Darkness in the Australian badlands. Hooper, 34, develops confrontational material into a genuine page-turner: "The words ‘death in custody' make people's eyes glaze over," she admits. "The challenge for me was to write about these things in a way that people would want to read."
Hooper engages properly with the character of Sgt Hurley, a police officer who had spent years seeking posts in dysfunctional Aboriginal communities and earned considerable respect in the process. "Here is man who started his career almost being a poster-boy for reconciliation," Hooper explains. "Now he's one of the most polarising men in Australia when it comes to race. How did that happen?"
Her visits to Palm Island throw Hooper into a community on the brink of social breakdown. Dozens of horror stories later - this is a narrative with a stark body-count - the author is moved to question whether liberal values can still apply in such drastic conditions. "In a community of extreme violence, are you too forced to be violent?" she asks.
"There really isn't moral certainty... but of course a man shouldn't be arrested for swearing at a police officer and then be dead within 40 minutes."