The Shark Net

"Robert Drew has written a moving and unpretentious memoir of a precocious youth, a bittersweet tribute to youth's optimism."—Joyce Carol Oates, The New York Review of Books

 A "spiced and savory memoir" (The New York Times) of the dark life hidden in a sunny seaside Australian community.

Written with the same lyrical intensity and spellbinding prose that has won Robert Drewe's fiction international acclaim, The Shark Net is set in a city haunted by the menace of an elusive serial killer. Drewe's middle class youth in the seaside suburbs of Perth, Australia—often described as the most isolated city in the world—takes a sinister turn when a social outcast (who turns out to be an employee of Drewe's father) embarks on a five-year murder spree. This unusual memoir brilliantly evokes the confluence of adolescent innocence and sexual awakening, while a killer who eventually murders eight people—including several of Drewe's friends—lurks in the shadows.Robert Drewe, one of Australia's premier literary novelists, has won many national and international awards for his work. He has written seven novels as well as short stories, plays, and articles.