Kicked out of a low-rent boarding school, Ben ends up working as a nude model in a small town where the violence is rampant, the humidity’s hell and the men don’t appreciate him stripping for their girlfriends. 

Desperately lonely, he falls for Marty, an ambitious and violent young woman who’s rapidly taking over her brother Shane’s drug and gun-running trade. Marty’s the first person to show Ben any affection and so he ignores the warnings of his housemate Dave, who suspects Shane of murdering one of his dealers. Marty doesn’t like Dave, and stashes the murder weapon, a knife, in his kitchen. Ben starts working in the pub that Marty and Shane run as a front, and initially likes the protection his new job gives him: especially as one of the bikies, Thommo, has it in for him and Dave. However, the deeper Ben gets pulled into this dark world of bikies and crime, the more violent his life becomes – especially when Dave then disappears, and he tries to find out what happened. Humidity is an Aussie noir coming of age thriller propelled by the vicious and vulnerable anti-heroine who the young protagonist falls for. 

Laced with dark humour, this crime novel is set in a small Australian country town dominated by the ice trade and the crime that goes with it, from stealing guns and cattle to prostitution. It’s within this violent world that the characters try to find a home for themselves, juggling conflicting forces of family, loyalty, love and self-respect.