3 weeks ago
10
Candida Baker
February 4, 2026 — 4:00pm
THRILLER
The Pact
Lisa Walker
Harper Collins, $32.99
All Tess has ever wanted to be is a writer. Fuelled by her mother, whose own literary ambitions didn’t eventuate, Tess grows up protected by her mother from friendships that she feels won’t help her daughter become a literary star.
The result is that by the time Tess is old enough to apply for, and be accepted into, the prestigious and exclusive Ravensthorpe Writing College in the bucolic English countryside, Tess believes two things about herself – she’s an outsider, and in her eyes, already an impostor as she joins the year’s intake of bright young things, who all seem to understand not just the nuances of friendship and social (and sexual) behaviour, but how to tread the path to literary greatness.
Enter Lula Thornton, head of creative writing, whose job, she seems to believe, is to take fragile young students and break them down until they crack under the pressure and reveal their true writing “voice”.
Needless to say, there are casualties along the way, but gradually, to her surprise, Tess finds herself drawn into a tight-knit group of “cool” students. Ethan, one of the stars of the year, and the son of a famous writer, is attracted to her, and Lula seems to believe that Tess might have what it takes to be a writer. Asked to create a group of four, she joins Ethan, another friend Jazz and Theo.
Tess’s group is picked by Lula for her end of year masterclass, which will result in her picking her Chosen One for the year, a much-touted shortcut into the publishing world. As the group undertakes this annual, somewhat bizarre ritual, they’re inducted into a series of Machiavellian strategies designed to pit them against each other.
It all goes horribly wrong when the four decide to take a night out at the top of the old college tower to party together. When Lula turns up, there’s a terrible accident, and somehow she tumbles over the tower’s low wall, falling to her death. The four, drunk and high, don’t realise what’s happened, and it isn’t until the following morning when she doesn’t appear that they go looking for her, finding her body at the bottom of the tower.
Fast-forward three years, and Tess, who left Ravensthorpe after the event, receives a strange email invitation to walk the Camino to Santiago trail, only to find that Ethan, Theo and Jazz have also been invited. Let’s just say for the moment that what happens on the trail stays on the trail, but the group’s adventures are in equal measure haunting and hilarious.
It took me a moment to realise that one of my favourite Walker books, Arkie’s Pilgrimage To the Next Big Thing, is also, as its title suggests, a pilgrimage, undertaken by Arkie, who doesn’t have the money to go an an overseas pilgrimage, and instead, while running from a divorce lawyer who is trying to serve papers on her, embarks on a pilgrimage of some of Australia’s massive “things”. The Big Prawn and the Big Pineapple to name just two. Walker has a finely tuned ear for the absurd, often walking a tightrope between the unbelievable and the believable with rapier-like intensity, as she explores the foibles of the characters she’s created, and The Pact is no exception.
Walker uses a dual timeline of the college story and the pilgrimage trail to segue between these two somewhat calamitous events, throwing in a female detective, doggedly on all their heels, who also has a vested interest in what really happened that night.
On top of that, there’s the unseen puppeteer, pulling the strings of all four walkers, a malevolent force, they all discover, who does not have their best interests at heart, and yet, in the end will shape their lives in ways they can’t imagine as they all, neuroses, catastrophes, broken hearts and aching bodies, inch their way along the trail.
The Pact, with all its twists and turns, is both a literary whodunit and a wonderfully absurd alchemical mix of mystery, murder and magical mayhem.
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