The Unbelieved is the first novel by best-selling, award-winning Australian journalist, podcaster and author, Vikki Petraitis. Two months after Senior Detective Antigone Pollard returns to Deception Bay, the coastal Victorian town where she spent some of her childhood, she effectively fends off an assault in a pub car park by the man who tried to spike her drink. While her partner, Senior Detective Warren Harvey believes her story, not everyone is convinced that a nice guy like Jack Barratt would ever do what she has alleged.

Already aware of similar attacks in nearby towns, when Antigone and Wozza pick up a disoriented eighteen-year-old schoolgirl on the highway, and she describes a ruse similar to what was used on Antigone, they begin to wonder if they have a serial rapist on their hands. Except that the girl mentions the presence of more than one man in the car from which she was thrown.

Then Antigone and her dog, Waffles disarm a knife-wielding intruder in her yard, and not only is her boss, Senior Sergeant Bill Wheeler unsupportive, he actually criticises her actions. She and Wozza wonder if it is related to the pub attacks, but could it be connected to the tragic case she left behind in Melbourne?

Meanwhile, the women in the local CWA invite her to speak to them about personal safety, and ask her to run some self-defence classes, another thing of which Bill Wheeler disapproves. Talking to these women, she describes silence: the victim’s, and that of others who are aware, as the biggest obstacle in combatting domestic violence.

All the while, niggling in the back of her brain is the case she has recently heard about: a decade earlier it was ruled a murder-suicide, but she finds it hard to believe that cheeky scallywag Brett Millard grew up to be a murderer. Antigone shares her doubts with someone with access to the full details of the case.

As Wozza and Antigone make it their mission to discover just who is spiking drinks and assaulting the young women of Deception Bay, Antigone finds she also has to battle the toxic masculinity that runs rampant throughout the town, and the associated victim-blaming mindset that not just the men display. Calling out privilege, arrogance, entitlement and gaslighting is still necessary, even in this supposedly enlightened metoo age.

Petraitis conveys her era and setting with consummate ease. Her depiction of a country town is particularly well drawn: “Nothing better than a country town to bury a truth” Wozza tells Antigone, and later, “Scratch the surface and everyone is linked”. This cast of characters will feel familiar to anyone who has lived or vacationed in a small Australian coastal town.

One subplot will feel to some readers like a repeat of another recent Australian novel, and a factual error concerning the spiking drug points to insufficient research, but otherwise this is a gripping, highly relevant and topical page-turner.
This unbiased review is from a copy provided by Allen & Unwin.