‘WANTED: NURSE (a proper one, not a silly male one) PRETTY (but not too pretty CLEVER (but not too clever) APPLICANTS WITH AN EXCESSIVELY CURIOUS AND INQUISITIVE NATURE ARE DISTINCTLY NOT WELCOME. LIGHT DUTIES. LARGE PAY. (ALL CASH. NO QUESTIONS ASKED OR ANSWERED)’

After several hours of swilling booze with best friend Callum, Freya Miller drunkenly emails her CV in response to an unusual ad passed on to her by her friend, Jane. Just hours later she is summoned to the home of the powerful, wealthy and eccentric Vincetti family and promptly hired to care for their revered comatose son, Elijah. Though forcefully warned that curiosity about her employers, their business, or her patient, will not be tolerated, Freya can’t resist unearthing their secrets, but is wholly unprepared for what she finds.

Killing Adonis is Brisbane writer J.M. Donellan’s debut adult fiction novel. With larger than life characters (including a cameo from Marilyn Munroe), a strange mystery and a surreal plot that teeters between farce and satire, it is a quirky and darkly comic story about corporate greed, obscene privilege, and murder.

Freya is an entertaining character, quick witted and bold, with a prodigious capacity for booze, an irrational fear of pineapple cutters and the ability to see music as colours (a synesthete). She blithely ignores her employers warnings as she begins to poke around the mansion uncovering, amongst other things, two identical baby’s rooms, one entirely pink, and one entirely blue, a room filled with boxes of tiny woollen jumpers (which she later learns are for the penguin victims of an oil spill), three billiard rooms, and Jack.
Jack, Elijah’s older brother, suffers from mild Osteogenesis Imperfecta (Brittle Bone Disease), agoraphobia and writer’s block. He becomes Freya’s unlikely, and sometimes unwilling, ally in the hunt for the truth about his brother’s coma and his parent’s machinations.
As Elijah lies silently, a sculptured Adonis surrounded by ‘beepers’, Freya and Jack begin to investigate the enigma of Elijah’s coma, the mystery of the ‘Danger Room’, the death of a beloved maid and a string of corporate rivals, all to expose Evelyn and Harland Vincetti’s diabolical secrets.

For me, Killing Adonis was a surprising page turner. I was thoroughly entertained by the snappy writing, audacious characters, and gaudy plot. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend readers comfortable with something a little less mainstream give it a chance – no question. ( )