Sandy Creek, a derelict mining settlement in Queensland, is the setting, harsh and compelling, for The Ballad of Benny Perhaps. Benny has dropped out of university and headed back to the shacks and shafts of his boyhood, where he is confronted with an old antagonist, Rozzer Bizley, just out of prison and looking for revenge for Benny's intervention in his trickery…. Raucous humour, rough sincerity and sentiment, characterise the noisy idiom and violent scenes of the book; worlds away from the deployment of young people in Beat of the City, this story has a harsh note in it that matches the setting. (p. 3364)