All Our Secrets is an award-winning novel with 11-year-old Grace Barrett as the narrator. Grace is intelligent and an accomplished observer.

She has a handsome, popular and loving father whose resistance to the occasional dalliance with ladies in the community is sorely tested and sometimes annihilated. She has a tender, warm-hearted mother whose resistance to the occasional glass of a liquid stronger than water is often tested and sometimes breached.

She has a prayerful grandma who is prone to falling on her knees at the slightest provocation to hail Mary or call on our Father … the One in Heaven. And she has three younger siblings who are so self-absorbed, the antics of family members barely register provided they are fed, bathed and cuddled regularly.

Grace lives in Coongahoola, New South Wales, and wants to be a famous author, move away and live somewhere more exciting. She prays for something to happen that will stimulate her interest. Her prayer is answered.

Martha Mills, walking with her dog along the banks of the Bagooli River stumbles on a vision of the Virgin Mary, pale blue and holy, beckoning from the sky. It is reported on the television news that night and within days, ‘The Believers’ arrive. Five hundred followers of the cult set up camp close to where Martha had seen her vision.

Halloween arrives and ‘trick or treat’ is in full swing. Frankenstein (aka Nigel Holmes) is wandering around knocking on doors. At 11pm, Nigel’s mother calls the police. Weeks later Nigel’s body is found under a large lantana bush.

As the weeks and months pass, other children fail to return home. There’s a serial killer on the loose.

All Our Secrets is an impressive debut novel. A feeling of menace is maintained throughout relieved by touches of humour.

Reviewed by Clive Hodges