Dirty Fracking Business
Peter Ralph
Melbourne Books  2012
ISBN: 9781877096228
$29.95
272 pp

I need to declare, at the outset, that I edited this book for the author in preparation for publication.  I also need to say that I am, on current evidence, opposed to the uncontrolled exploration for and extraction of coal seam gas, the subject of this novel.  I will therefore aim to limit my review of the book to the merits of the book as a work of art.

Peter Ralph has taken a topic about which there is heated debate in at least Queensland and New South Wales (and parts of the USA) and he has written a barely-disguised fiction: names of individuals and corporations have been changed, although, in some cases, only minimally.  He has turned something that is controversial to many people into a gripping drama.

(more…)