Dark Horse by Honey Brown

Fiction Review: Dark Horse 

by Honey Brown [Published 2013 by Michael Joseph]  

Dark Horse tells the tale of Sarah Bernard, who is recently divorced, and has been forced to put her beloved farm and horse trail-riding business up for sale to cover her debts.

The story begins very early on a stormy Christmas morning as a bloodied and bruised Sarah struggles to her feet after being knocked down by Tansy, her horse, who has baulked at being lead into a horse float. After cleaning herself up and making a fraught phone call to her Dad to say she won’t be coming to Christmas lunch, Sarah saddles her horse, stuffs some food and a bed roll into her saddle bag and grabs her gun, heading up into the mountains to seek solace in the bush as thunder rolls and brooding storm clouds gather.

Stopping at a locked gate, Sarah finds that the chain has been cut and fresh tyre marks head up a dirt track. Tansy is skittish and Sarah is uneasy as they head toward an isolated cattleman’s hut on a plateau high in the Victorian Alps. The torrential rain, swollen creeks and land slips don’t dampen her resolve to reach the hut, but when she finally reaches the plateau she finds the campsite sodden and the hut under repair.

As dense fog begins to descend, the atmosphere becomes oppressive and Sarah soon realises she is not alone…

Dark Horse is a fast-paced and skittish psychological thriller full of torturous twists and turns that has the reader gasping for air and holding on for dear life.

Honey Brown is an Australian novelist. Her first novel, Red Queen, was published by Penguin in 2008 and won the Aurealis Award for best horror novel in 2009. In 2011 she was long listed for the Miles Franklin Award for The Good Daughter, and in 2014 she won the Davitt Award for Dark Horse.