Rebecca Jessen won the Emerging Queensland Author prize at the 2013 Queensland Literary Awards for Gap, a novel-in-verse set in inner-city Brisbane that opens with the murder of a man in the shadows of the Gabba. Dorothy Porter pioneered the form, lesbian-detective-epic-noir, in her stunning verse novel The Monkey’s Mask. Is it simply testament to Porter’s swagger and genius that this highly specific style continues to resonate?

Unlike its predecessor, Gap is an outlaw narrative, displacing the detective’s point of view with that of the crime’s prime suspect. Ana tells the story of being on the run, not only from the murder itself, but also from a past of neglect, dysfunction and deprivation. It’s a narrative that often connects with Australian readers. A battler in the vernacular tradition, Ana is a cocky loser at once crippled with class doubt and emboldened by outsider irreverence. Having escaped the clutches of a rotten mother, the speaker takes on the responsibility of looking after her younger sister. Driven by a protective instinct, Ana’s best intentions are crosscut by a passion of the most dangerous sort – nostalgic desire for a lover who has suddenly returned.

The narrative is spare and unaffected, a tough distillation of noir convention. The free verse snakes across the pages, capturing the depletion and intensity that often marry well in the Australian suburbs. The clipped, downbeat tone sees the writing diverge from the temperamental range of Porter, tapping into a laconicism that creates immediacy and instant rapport. Jessen’s setting is highly recognisable, breathing the warm stink of game-day swill (‘people flocking/to the footy/or/the cricket/all the same to me’), as menace gathers around an unlikely survivor. In Gap, sprezzatura poetics, lesbian desire and the thriller genre come together in a visceral expression of the Australian psyche. It’s a gutsy homage to Porter, but Gap is additionally great as Jessen’s own study of rough love and resilience.

Lucy Van is a freelance reviewer.