For his 20th novel, Michael Robotham has done something he never has before – set a book in Australia. The fictional small town in Tell Me Something True, Yulara, is inspired by Gundagai, where Michael spent his childhood. Scattered through the pages are descriptions of a town so vivid you see the story like a movie in your mind as you read, with anecdotes from Michael’s own childhood lent to the characters. The authenticity shines through, providing a tangible setting over which the mystery unfolds.
But this is no ordinary crime novel. While there is a central mystery, this is also a love story and a coming-of-age story.
We open with a prologue: A young man carries a girl through town, walking kilometres in the pouring rain to deposit her body in the local church. She’s dead. Murdered. “People have told stories about how far Luke carried her … never letting the facts stand in the way of the truth,” Michael writes, and it is a search for the facts which propels our protagonist, Luke’s older brother, Arlo Hackett, through the book.
It’s been 12 years since Luke was found guilty of murdering Saxon, the tenacious 17-year-old who was living with the Hackett family at the time. Arlo is released from prison after serving time as an accessory for the crime he felt guilt over being unable to stop. He returns to his hometown, but small towns like Yulara have long memories, and no-one wants him around.
Deftly switching between present (2001) and the past (1988), reading Tell Me Something True is like being handed pieces of a puzzle, one at a time. In the past, we meet Saxon, who blazes into town in a stolen car, eventually moving in with Arlo, Luke and their mother. She’s a “rock dropped into this still pond”, Michael said of the inspiration for her character. In the present, Arlo fixes up his childhood house, empty since his mother moved into a nursing home. He’s not intending to stay in Yulara long, but after finding a letter from the time of the incident which reveals a disturbing fact of his brother’s incarceration, Arlo is compelled to uncover the truth.
Arlo’s search propels you through Michael’s evocative, sparse prose, filled with his trademark crisp dialogue. There are twists along the way, revelations that have you wanting to flick the pages back to find clues.
But this is also a story of love. Arlo’s love for Luke is what landed him in prison, and it’s why he persists against the wishes of the town to uncover what really happened. The truth will offer Arlo closure, and redemption for the time he wasn’t the brother Luke needed him to be, nor the protector Saxon needed.
As he talks to locals and digs into old evidence, Arlo is woven back into the fabric of lives he left behind, including those of his mother, and his old flame Helen, who wrote him letters in prison which he never read. It is these story threads Michael uses to tug at your heartstrings after the final confrontation is done.
Tell Me Something True is a gentle simmer until we reach the last quarter of the book, where Michael tightens the pacing. Short chapters switch between past and present as we rush towards a confrontation that is both violent and cathartic. But the book doesn’t end there, because the mystery is only part of Arlo’s story. Ultimately, we see him find a new purpose and a new love, one that has him looking forwards, not backwards.
“The truth will shock you, surprise you, and break your heart,” promises the blurb of Tell Me Something True, and Michael delivers on all fronts.
Read the Q&A here.
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