Two hungry brothers set out over the course of a single night to pursue revenge, closure, and food in Mandurah, the major regional city of the Peel region in Western Australia. It's a simple hook, the kind of plot that could anchor a dozen crime thrillers. But in Alan Fyfe's new novel The Cross Thieves, simplicity becomes a vehicle for something harder to achieve: a genuine portrayal of what it means to survive and grow up on the economic margins of contemporary Australia.
The novel is the second in Fyfe's Peel trilogy, following T, which was shortlisted for the TAG Hungerford Manuscript Award and the International Chaffinch Press Manuscript Award. It is self-contained and does not require prior familiarity with Fyfe's other work to enjoy, though readers of his 2022 debut and his award-winning 2024 poetry collection will find added resonance in the setting and characters. Fyfe is a Mandurah-raised writer working from lived experience, not sociology.
The story moves with rough humour, energy and forward thrust, but Fyfe embeds genuine depth throughout. Multiple narrative threads weave through the central storyline of the two brothers, including letters between sisters Ellie and Moll, their mother and aunt, who navigate their relationship through trauma. The book includes chiastic or ring composition structure, though this remains largely invisible except for chapter labels, giving complex storylines perfect coherence.
What sets this apart from crime fiction with poverty as mere scenery is how Fyfe treats his characters. The novel is bold, mature and compassionate, sprinkled with humour and populated with Fyfe's knowing observation of place, poverty and powerlessness, and his empathy for the underdog, captured in an unforgettable story of profound emotional power. The brothers care for each other not through grand gestures but through small acts of hunger; the love is in survival itself.
Dark humour runs through scenes that might otherwise be intense and gruesome. One secondary character is described as "Philately's last champion" and even offers to buy stamps from the boys as a charitable gesture. This is not mockery. It is dignity preserved where it exists, however fragile.
For Australian readers accustomed to narratives that treat regional poverty as a problem to be solved by better policy or moral uplift, The Cross Thieves offers something more challenging: recognition that some lives refuse the categories we impose on them. The novel is published by Transit Lounge and marks the second part of a trilogy centred on the Peel Region, with a third volume forthcoming. If this volume is any indication, Australian literature has found a writer with something genuine to say about who we are and how we live.