The Hunted by Gabriel Bergmoser
Melbourne based author and playwright Gabriel Bergmoser has taken his first steps into the horror-thriller world with his latest novel, The Hunted. The films rights have already been solved so you might be seeing this on screen in the future, but for now, let’s take a look at the book.
The Hunted summary
Frank lives a life of deliberate self-isolation in the Australian outback until his son contacts him for the first time in years, desperately asking him to look after his granddaughter. Out of guilt, he says yes, but he had no idea what he’ll do with a teenage girl while he works at the service station.
He still has no plan for what to do with her as she sits in the service station with him and a car screeches to a halt at the pumps. The door opens, and a young woman stumbles out, covered in blood, and before she can get a word out, she falls hard to the ground.
Who is the girl, and what is she running from? Could she be a risk to them, or is she really running from something darker than they dared dream of?
The Hunted review
Coming from a small country like the UK, I’ve always found the idea of the vast sparsely habited areas of the Australian outback quite daunting. I’m guessing from the popularity of thrillers from Jane Harper and films such as Wolf Creek, that I’m not alone.
The Hunted by Gabriel Bergmoser plays on your fears of isolation and the vulnerability of being a stranger in a strange place. The novel itself is a tense, relentless read that is SO hard to put down. The chapters are short and sharp to keep you absorbed and alternate between two timeframes, both set around the bloodsoaked lady.
Not for the squeamish, The Hunted doesn’t pull any punches. It’s incredibly dark, gory, and twist. But I bloody (pun intended) loved it. Not many books have grabbed my attention lately. Between work burn out and the general mental exhaustion that comes with being aware of the worlds current events, I haven’t been able to get immersed in the written word as much as I normally do. However, The Hunted grabbed my attention and wouldn’t let it go. I raced through it in two days and a gory joy they were.
I just hope Gabriel Bergmoser is planning on writing more horror because he’s got a fan in me.
Buy your copy of The Hunted by Gabriel Bergmoser at Bookshop.org