True West

SHORTLISTED FOR NED KELLY AWARD FOR BEST CRIME FICTION

The first book in the Lee Southern series by award-winning author David Whish-Wilson.

Western Australia, 1988. After betraying the Knights bikie gang, seventeen-year-old Lee Southern flees to the city. Working as a rogue tow truck driver in Perth, he is captured by right-wing extremists whose combination of seduction and blackmail keeps him on the wrong side of the law and under their control. As the true nature of what drives his captors unfolds, Lee becomes an unwilling participant in a breathtakingly ambitious plot – and a cold-blooded crime that will show just how much he, and everyone else, still has to lose.

Gritty and unsettling, this noir crime novel is based on Perth’s thriving Neo-Nazi movement of the late 1980s.

‘For all of Whish-Wilson’s skill with impactful action and white-knuckle suspense, True West ultimately reveals itself as a complex morality tale about the tenacious spread of prejudice.’ BOOKS+PUBLISHING

‘Whish-Wilson’s Western Australia is alive, its heart beating, its outback a swirl of dust and history, roads like scars, the scent of its plants as strong as the ocean’s salty brine. Lee is a hell of a character … This is compelling, thrilling, and still feels like it could be played out today in the white nationalist fringes of Australian politics.’ READINGS

‘True West is an intelligent and gutsy historical crime novel, and a thoroughly addictive read.’ WEEKEND WEST

‘David Whish-Wilson’s True West is quality fiction made from materials that in other hands would remain pulp sensationalism.’ WEEKEND AUSTRALIAN

© 2026 Wavesound from W. F. Howes Ltd (Audiobook): 9781004273539

Release date

Audiobook: 3 November 2026