New Australian fiction: Afternoons with Harvey Beam, by Carrie Cox

As a young man, Harvey Beam got the hell out of his hometown, confirming his suspicions that you can successfully run away from your problems. But after forging a big-city career in talkback radio, Harvey is now experiencing a 'positional hiatus'. The words aren't coming out right, Harvey's mojo is fading and a celebrity host is eyeing his timeslot.

Back in Shorton, Harvey's father Lionel appears at long last to be dying. It seems it's finally time for Harvey Beam to head home and face a different kind of music.

In wading through a past that seems disturbingly unchanged, the last thing he expects is a chance encounter with a wonderful stranger...

Perth journalist Carrie Cox is the author of Coal, Crisis, Challenge and You Take the High Road and I'll Take the Bus. This is her debut novel but it reads as though she has been writing fiction for years.

The premise sounds rich with the promise of drama and the narrative didn't disappoint, unfolding in a way that kept me guessing right up until a neat tail-twist I never saw coming.

Cox has a gift for evoking places and people with deft, apt descriptions that are never laboured or overdone.

Her characters are filled-out, humanly flawed and likeable.

She gracefully manages the balancing act of focusing on and building the internal life of Harvey Beam, while spinning you through the story.

She invites you to understand the joy and madness, the peculiar intimacy and alchemy of the talkback radio world.

She has unerring insight into people and families, but still respects the mysteries at their centres.

Her creation of an eye-rolling teenager in Harvey's daughter Cate is spot-on. It's no caricature, however, but a sympathetic and sweet portrait of a girl who becomes an unexpected sidekick for Harvey in his family drama.

The topics are deep but Cox's touch is light; all the while she is unfailingly, confidently funny.

She has nailed it and I can't wait for the next book.

*Afternoons with Harvey Beam is at bookshops now. I got mine from Boffins.