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y separately published work icon King of the Road single work   novel   crime  
Issue Details: First known date: 2015... 2015 King of the Road
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Units Teaching this Work

Text Unit Name Institution Year
y separately published work icon King of the Road Nigel Bartlett , North Sydney : Random House Australia , 2015 8285411 2015 single work novel crime (taught in 1 units)

'When David's 11-year-old nephew goes missing and he finds the finger pointed at him, he has no choice but to strike out on his own – an unlikely vigilante running away from the police and his own family, and running towards what he hopes desperately is the truth about Andrew's disappearance.

David Kingsgrove is a man on a mission. An ordinary man – and an extraordinary mission. It is a mission that will turn him into someone he never thought he would be: the King of the Road, the loner on the highway, the crusader for a sort of justice he has never before had to seek.

Andrew had been a regular visitor to David's home right up until the day he disappeared, walking out the front door to visit a neighbour. It doesn't take long for the police to decide that David – a single man in his thirties, living alone – is their suspect. Soon Andrew's parents will share that opinion. But David knows that he didn't take Andrew.

Realising that the only way Andrew will be found is if he finds him – the police, after all, are fixated on David as their suspect and are not looking anywhere else – David turns to the one person who he knows will help him: Matty an ex-cop now his personal trainer, whose own son disappeared several years before.

David's crusade to find Andrew will also take him into his own dark heart – to do things he never thought he would have to do, and go places he has never wanted to go. And the choices David makes lead us all to ask: How far would I go to save someone I love?

This is a compelling story that is almost impossible to stop reading – a hero's journey, of sorts, with a momentum that is breathtaking even while the subject matter is confronting.' (Random House Australia)

Writing Through Genre: Crime University of Technology, Sydney 2015 (Semester 2)
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