Her name is Julia, it's Gloria, it's Emma and it's Jane. In fact, it's whatever name she can think of - it doesn't really matter because she can't really remember her real name anyway. She is searching for the killer of her daughter who was murdered while hitch-hiking from Melbourne to Sydney. Now, she herself has hit the highway, hitching her way back and forth in the hope that she will cross paths with the murderer. But the kind of person she is after is a deviant and the only way she knows how to find him is to hop into as many deviant's cars as she can until she hops into the right one.

It's a plan fraught with peril and it's a tale that is horrific in the physical and mental change that a woman obsessed with seeking revenge is prepared to undergo. There is a question of whether the reason she is prepared to put herself at such great risk is as a form of punishment for allowing her daughter to leave, or perhaps she truly believes that she is capable of bringing a murderer to justice.

Bearing more than a passing resemblance to the desolate and dangerous road in the movie Mad Max (Road Warrior), the Hume Highway is transformed into a hunter's playground with a procession of ruthless psychopaths patrolling its length looking for easy prey in the form of unwary hitch-hikers.

As we know, in Mad Max, Max Rockatansky hunted the roads for the killers of his wife and child and, in much the same way this woman is planning on doing the same thing for her daughter. The difference is, though, Max was a cop and had the means and wherewithal to be completely aggressive in his hunt. The Mother has nothing but the pain of losing her daughter as her weapon and while it's effective as motivation, when it comes to confronting the monsters she meets, will provide little resistance to their sick plans.

In terms of style, the book is laid out in an episodic format as the inter-connected chapters chronicle her existence on the Hume Highway. Each new chapter describes a separate encounter with a fellow traveller. Some of these people are benign motorists who are simply driving from Melbourne to Sydney others are predators who use the highway as their playground. You never really know which category each new person will fall under, and neither does she. Ensuring that we understand a little about how she has come to be prowling the highway is important and McBean satisfies this need by interspersing some back story throughout the book in the form diary chapters. Through these chapters her feelings, hopes and deeper emotions are effectively revealed.

This is a dark thriller that doesn't hold back when things get rough, using the full powers of descriptive prose to graphically illustrate some of the horrific ordeals that our proponent is forced to go through. To that end, it's not a book for the squeamish but rather, caters for fans of gut-wrenching horror.

The Mother is a powerfully compelling drama that turns Australia's busiest highway into a nightmare world. It's a story that tracks the gradual disintegration of human spirit and is both moving and horrific. It's one of those books whose contents will stay with you long after the final word is read.