WAKE IN FRIGHT tells of a young teacher, John Grant, who arrives in a rough outback mining town planning to stay overnight before catching the plane to Sydney. But, on this one hot night in Bundanyabba, Grant decides to go into a smoky, crowded pub... In the company of shadowy strangers, one night stretches to five, in which he discovers gambling, ruins himself financially and plunges headlong toward his own destruction in many other ways. Thus, when the alcohol-induced mist lifts, the educated John Grant is no more. Instead there is a self-loathing man in a desolate park, dirty, red-eyed, sitting against a tree and looking at a rifle with one bullet left...