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Have you ever heard of Frederick Valentich? I hadn’t, before I read The Wreck, a new survivalist thriller that my friends at Allen & Unwin sent me for review. In October 1978, Valentich’s plane vanished over the Bass Strait. James remembers it well, as she was flying home to Tasmania with her family on the same day as Valentich went missing (her flight even helped in the search efforts). Valentich and his plane were never found, but the story always stuck with James, and served as the inspiration for her latest novel.
The Wreck unfolds over three timelines, each spaced 20 years apart.
In 1977, beginner pilot Donovan ‘Van’ Spector vanishes in his Tiger Moth aircraft over the “Bermuda Triangle of the South” in the Bass Strait. Shortly before his disappearance, he made a chilling radio transmission to air traffic control, indicating that his plane wasn’t alone in the sky that night.
In 1997, after reports that plane wreckage has been spotted on a tiny remote island off the coast of Tasmania, a (very) small team sets out in a ramshackle fishing boat to see if they can discover what became of Spector. A collision with the surrounding reef in inclement weather sees them wrecked on the island – and they soon discover it is not uninhabited as they thought.
In 2017, a podcast investigates both mysteries: what became of Spector, and of the search party who went looking for him 20 years later?
The Wreck moves quickly, with a lot of cliffhangers that will keep you just-one-more-chapter-ing. All the way through, I kept thinking this would be the perfect book for fans of the TV show Lost (marooned on an island, no hope of rescue, and a we’re-not-alone style mystery).
And an important P.S. for fellow dog-lovers: there are a couple of fairly gruesome historical dog deaths mentioned in flash-backs, but I didn’t find them too distressing.
Read The Wreck on audiobook via Libro.fm here. (affiliate link)
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