The Hiding Place

Image credit: Simon & Schuster Australia

Thinking back over some of the more modern books that I have read this year, a lot of them being Australian fiction, it’s fascinating to see that there is something about the way that they are written that causes you to visualise the narrative in terms of stage or screen – and this quite often is what makes them compelling. The Empress Murders definitely felt like a fast-paced farcical stage play to me while Unbury the Dead could have absolutely been an ABC miniseries. The next book that had me reading this way was Kate Mildenhall’s The Hiding Place, which I have just closed the cover on and am still reeling from.

When Lou sees an ad for an abandoned mining town up for sale, she is quick to convince her sister and lifelong friends to chip in and make it their own. An idyllic bushland paradise where the four families can come together on camping trips, get back in touch with nature, and escape from the pressures of their lives for a while. As they set off for their first weekend at Willow Creek, excitement and romantic dreams are high, only marred a little bit by a deer running a trailer off the road, a confrontation with the neighbour about incorrectly placed fences, and some squatters camped down by the river. But these problems pale in comparison to the fact that by the end of the first night, someone is dead.

An absolutely rollicking thriller set against the harshness and majesty of the Australian bush, The Hiding Place is a fantastic novel that follows a central cast of delightfully distasteful people who you cannot wait to see get their comeuppance. It reminded me of The Slap a little bit: a bunch of characters, each with their own dirty little secrets that they try desperately to keep and justify to themselves, put in a situation that causes everything to chaotically unravel.

Told in short chapters that follow the various characters, it delightfully depicts these long-lived friendships that have reached a point where the darker side of human nature has gone to seed. Rivalry, judgment of parenting techniques and lifestyle, self-righteousness, misogyny, and victim plays run rampant throughout the pages, bookended by wickedly funny opening and closing scenes of the general store where the locals are discussing those city folk who bought Willow Creek – and painting a wickedly apt picture of the type of people they are.

It’s a delightfully dirty book, one that encourages its readers to let their nastier sides wash over them, make sadistic little judgements about these characters, and then relish in the mentally, socially, and emotionally macabre way their lives spiral into the ground. You know it’s bad, but oh it’s so good. Salty-sweet like peanut butter and chocolate.

Image credit: Simon & Schuster Australia

And the readers are not the only ones enjoying making harsh judgements. Devilish comments on the moral degradation caused by capitalism, the pretentious farce that is glamping, and the difference between knowledge read and knowledge lived bring extra layers of drama, depth, and black comedy to the story.

Filled with drama, tension, and characters you love to hate, The Hiding Place is a wickedly fun thriller that I could not put down.

Author: Kate Mildenhall, 2025

Published: Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster (Australia) Pty Ltd, Sydney, 2025