The Opal Diviner

The Outback, Australia's terrible, romantic refuge for lost last-standers and self-searchers, is the setting for this intriguing, if somewhat overwritten, first novel, a psychological thriller. Into this crucible plunges former geology professor Frank Slattery, plagued by reminders of his disappointing life. In the wild ostensibly to find the delicate and elusive opal, but just as much to flee the albatross of his failures, he loses his prospecting partner to the wilderness and stumbles upon a lonely motel at a wide place in the road called Millrallah, an oasis settled by a ragtag assortment of odd souls. There, Slattery picks up a new prospecting partner, Jim Sutton, but only a few days later, Jim dies, and Slattery must deal with his growing feelings for the widow Sutton. When he learns, late in the story, that Sutton was murdered, Slattery must suddenly assume a dangerous role and stay alive long enough to discern friend from foe. Martin makes good use of the Outback as a psycho-physical testing ground, and his portrayal of the volatile relationships among the sparse settlers is likewise effective. But the non-mystery of Sutton's murder seems somehow both contrived and inevitable. And Slattery is too passive to grab the reader's concern. (May)