For years, Reagan Carsen has kept her life offline. No socials. No internet presence. No photos. Safe.
Until the day she stumbles on a shocking murder in a Sydney laneway. The victim looks just like her. Coincidence?
As more murders shake the city and she’s increasingly drawn out from hiding, Reagan is forced to confront her greatest fear.
She’s been found.
A riveting psychological thriller drawn from true events, Dark Mode delves into the terrifying reality of the dark web, and the price we pay for surrendering our privacy one click at a time.
Firstly, huge thanks to James at Ultimo Press Uk for sending me a proof copy of Dark Mode.
I happened to see a post on Instagram from someone saying how brilliant Dark Mode was, so off i went to read the blurb…well as soon as i read it and saw that stunning cover i just knew this would be a bookbanger, and i was SO right!
The opening chapter sees us meet Reagan Carsen having a morning jog thru Sydney only to stumble across a dismembered body, left in full view in a lane…and strangely the body looks a lot like her!
And then Dark Mode just picks up a gear and runs! This is an absolutely exceptional novel, the writing is clear and flows like a silk scarf over your shoulders, it is sublime.
We travel thru the story with Reagan, who has kept her life offline for a pretty valid reason, up until now. She meets a nice chap called Bryce when she drives into the back of his car, and they start a freindship. With him, she becomes more trusting and gets a mobile phone, and in an effort to help kickstart her ailing Garden Centre, Voodo Lily Garden centre, Bryce helps her to post online photos of the plants and start an Instagram account, as she needs to start paying back the banks loan things start to pick up. BUT, and it is a big but, so do weird things, unsettling, chilling things start happening to Raegan and bodies start to appear and things get very very dark and heart-stoppingly bad for Raegan.
I am not going to give any more away about Dark Mode, but this will be one of THE books of 2023, it is a stunner! The attention to detail that Ms Bunt has written about the plants in the fictional Voodo Lilly Garden Centre is just marvelous (even for someone who is not Greenfingers like me!) … it had me googling to see what they actually looked like, although descriptions were precise and it was easy to visualise them. Add in the story of the Black Dahlia Murders from the 1930s and you have a near-perfect crime thriller. If like me you a lover of true crime as wellas the fictional type, then Dark Mode is going to tick all your boxes!
I cannot say enough about how brilliant a novel Dark Mode is, I was gripped, I was riveted, and I had my heart in my mouth! I bloody loved it! This is one of the best books I’ve read in a while! And I must also say that the cover art is absolutely spot on and gorgeous!
A 5-star read and if I could give more I would! Jude says its a BOOKBANGER!!
Ashley Kalagian Blunt is the author of How to Be Australian and My Name Is Revenge, which was shortlisted for the 2019 Woollahra Digital Literary Awards and was a finalist in the 2018 Carmel Bird Digital Literary Award. Her writing appears in the Sydney Morning Herald, Overland, Griffith Review, Sydney Review of Books, Australian Book Review, Kill Your Darlings and more. Ashley teaches creative writing and co-hosts James and Ashley Stay at Home, a podcast about writing, creativity and health. Originally from Canada, she has lived and worked in South Korea, Peru and Mexico.
A mother disappears from a busy festival on a warm spring night.
Her baby lies alone in the pram, her mother’s possessions surrounding her, waiting for a return which never comes.
A year later, Kim Gillespie’s absence still casts a long shadow as her friends and loved ones gather to welcome a new addition to the family.
Joining the celebrations on a rare break from work is federal investigator Aaron Falk, who begins to suspect that all is not as it seems.
As he looks into Kim’s case, long-held secrets and resentments begin to come to the fore, secrets that show that her community is not as close as it appears.
Falk will have to tread carefully if he is to expose the dark fractures at its heart, but sometimes it takes an outsider to get to the truth. . .
An outstanding novel, a brilliant mystery and a heart-pounding read from the author of The Dry, Force of Nature, The Lost Man and The Survivors.
As a huge fan of Jane Harper’s work, I couldn’t wait to get into the latest Aaron Falk novel, Exiles.
This one is slightly different to all the others, it is a slower burn but that’s because we are following the events of Aaron Falk’s life much more closely. There are also running in the background two monumental events that rock the community that Aaron finds himself drawn to. The skill that Jane Harper writes about small-town life in the outback of Australia is so sublime, it makes you feel like you are really there, with the huge views and sights and smells of the bushland.
The story is really very good and I must say it’s actually quite nice to find a book concentrating on the effects of mysterious deaths on the relatives that are left behind. Jane Harper has managed to convey this extremely well in Exiles. The plot is medium paced but all along you can feel that something is bubbling along and when we do get the climactic ending, it’s a mindblower and I did not guess until the very last minute what the outcome would be!
So my rating overall for Exiles will be a 5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ read, I am a committed Jane Harper fan, and I adore these outback novels. If you want a gripping read that is deep with emotion and with an undercurrent of an edgy thriller then Exiles will be the novel for you.
Jane Harper is the author of The Dry, winner of various awards including the 2015 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript, the 2017 Indie Award Book of the Year, the 2017 Australian Book Industry Awards Book of the Year Award and the CWA Gold Dagger Award for the best crime novel of 2017. Rights have been sold in 27 territories worldwide, and film rights optioned to Reese Witherspoon and Bruna Papandrea. Jane worked as a print journalist for thirteen years both in Australia and the UK and lives in Melbourne.
JW; I’d like to start by asking, have you always wanted to be a writer? And where did the idea for No Country For Girls come from?
ES; I’ve always loved writing and reading. At age twelve I would raid my parents’ bookcases for my dad’s Robert Ludlum and Dick Francis thrillers, and I remember thinking, one day at high school, ‘When I’m old I’ll be a writer.’ I didn’t start writing my first novel until I was forty, which twelve-year-old me would definitely have thought was old!
The idea for No Country for Girls came from the two protagonists Charlie and Nao, who appeared almost fully formed during a writing exercise. They had great chemistry and a lot of stuff to work out and I knew I wanted to send them on a road trip together. I’d been considering writing a Thelma & Louise-style road trip thriller and these two were the perfect characters for that story.
JW; How much research did you have to do for No Country For Girls, did you get to visit any of the places mentioned in the book?
ES; I did a fair bit of research online, as well as speaking to locals about particular aspects of the plot, setting, and characters. I’d been to almost all the locations in the book before and driven the road trip as far as Broome a few times growing up, so the setting was very alive in my imagination. I’d have loved to visit again while writing, but the pandemic got in the way of that. Instead, I traversed hundreds of kilometers in Google Street View and asked my West Australian family and friends to send me pictures, videos, and sensory impressions of the road trips they were doing in 2020. I did miss some things though! Termite mounds are one feature I realized I’d forgotten once we’d finished all the edits.
JW; How important to you was it to raise awareness of women’s issues in rural Australia, particularly First Nations Australians?
ES; I didn’t think about these aspects consciously but I can see why they emerged. I was in my early twenties working as a newly qualified veterinarian in rural Australia when Thelma & Louise was released, coming up against sexism and misogyny every day in my life and work. When I started writing and thought back to how much I loved that movie, I began to question how much the world had changed in thirty years.
There’s a line in the film when Louise says, ‘We don’t live in that world, Thelma.’ She’s talking about a world where victim blaming of women and girls doesn’t exist, and we still don’t live in that world. I wanted to write about two young women who are not powerful in their lives and give them the opportunity to fight back and find their freedom. This, along with the Cormac McCarthy novel No Country for Old Men, informed the title No Country for Girls.
In terms of the First Nations characters in the story, especially Nao, it was second nature to me to include this perspective. It doesn’t feel possible to write authentically about modern Australia and intimately about the Australian landscape, without writing from this point of view, even though it’s not my background. It also became increasingly important to me that I was writing two characters trying to connect across their difference. The world needs that so badly, for us to genuinely listen and communicate with one another whatever our different perspectives might be.
JW; Who would you like to see playing the parts of Charlie and Nao, and Warren when No Country For Girls is turned into a Movie!
ES; I so hope they make the movie. I’ll be beside myself with excitement if that happens. I can see Eliza Scanlen playing Charlie, Rarriwuy Hick playing Nao and David Wenham has always been Warren for me, right through from writing the earliest drafts.
Eliza ScanlenRarriwuy HickDavid Wenham
JW; As a child growing up, were you an avid reader, or was television your thing? Do you have a favorite childhood book or television program?
ES; I did watch TV but books were what I escaped into the most. I loved pretty well anything with wilderness in it, both in the characters and the landscapes. I’ve talked about them before (notably in front of a sold-out crowd at the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate) but the Silver Brumby books by Elyne Mitchell were beloved books for me growing up, as well as Mary O’Hara’s My Friend Flicka and Green Grass of Wyoming. I loved losing myself in the big landscapes and heart-in-mouth drama of those stories.
JW; If you could go back in time, to one historical event, to witness it, what would it be and why?
ES; This is extreme but honestly the first thing that came to mind was the Big Bang. I mean, it’s the biggest thing that’s happened in the universe and none of this would exist without it. If I could have a front-row seat to that and survive it, like maybe from the Tardis, I’d do it in a heartbeat.
JW; What is your favorite book or books that you have read so far in 2022, and why?
ES; Three brilliant crime fiction debuts I’ve read this year are Wake by Shelley Burr, Better the Blood by Michael Bennett, and Breathless by Amy McCulloch, in each case because of an exceptional sense of place and the strength of the connection between the setting and characters, which is always what makes a book for me. In YA fiction I’ve recently finished The Eternal Return of Clara Hart by Louise Finch, a debut time-loop novel with an incredible voice that unpicks toxic masculinity. These books are all amazing reads.
JW; What is something you are passionate about aside from writing?
ES; Wildlife and wilderness. Spending time in nature, whether in the UK or Australia, is the one thing that never fails to remind me how rich and amazing life on this planet is. The wildness of one kind or another will always find its way into what I write. I’d probably be planting trees somewhere if I wasn’t writing.
JW; Do you have a favorite author or favorite book of all time?
ES; Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro has been my book of all time for years for its emotional devastation, and my crime novel of all time is Truth by Peter Temple. Both these books are filled with longing, which is always what fuels what I write.
JW; If you could invite four people to dinner, living or dead, who would you invite and why?
ES; This was a fun question. I’ve settled on four characters from crime fiction who I’d love to throw together and see what happens. Villanelle, Vera, V.I. Warshawski and Allie Burns. They’re all great female characters and between them, they have the perpetrator, detective, PI, and journalist covered so I think it’d be an interesting evening.
JW; If you were to be marooned on a desert island what 3 items would you take?
ES; Some high-factor sunscreen, a really good knife (no crime writer marooned on a desert island should be without one), and a huge box containing each of the debut novels I’ve been published alongside this year. That’s probably cheating, but there’s so much of life covered in these books. Reading them reminds me how different we all are, and what an achievement it is to get your first book out into the world.
JW; Do you have a hidden talent?
ES; I learned to fly when I was in my twenties and got my private pilot’s license. I’m not sure that’s a talent but I loved learning to navigate and read the weather as well as the technical aspects of flying. I didn’t have the money to keep it up, and neither did that feel like a sustainable thing to do in terms of the climate and environment, but it was a formative experience I’ll always be grateful for.
JW; Are you currently writing another book, and when will it be released?
ES; I am! I’ve had a few runs at two different books and I’ve now settled on one of them, a serial killer thriller set in Western Australia, again with two young women protagonists. A story that couldn’t be set anywhere else, it’s strongly influenced by the Claremont serial killer case in the mid-90s that haunted the neighborhood where I grew up. There’s still a lot of work to do and I’m way off having a release date yet, but I’m excited about the story and I love the two main characters.
JW; I’d like to start by asking, have you always wanted to be a writer? And where did the idea for Dead Man’s Creek come from?
CH: I thought I wanted to be a writer when I was at university, but quickly shelved the idea as preposterous. And it was: I simply wasn’t very good at it. And I had the attention span of a gnat. It was only much later, after decades of journalism and a couple of non-fiction books, that I finally felt I had the ability to write credible fiction.
The idea for Dead Man’s Creek came from its setting in the forest – the Barmah-Millewa forest – which is a real place in Australia. It’s highly changeable – some years it’s drought-stricken and fire-prone, other years it’s flooded, massive wetlands. It’s a great place to set a crime novel.
JW: How much research did you have to do for Dead Man’s Creek, did you visit any of the settings in the novel? Play with explosives?!
CH: I visited the forest in the summer of 2008-09 at the height of the worst drought since European settlement, when it was feared the forest was dying. (I was researching a non-fiction book, The River). Then I revisited it in late 2021 when the forest was flooding.
On that first trip, I met an old man named Tim Mannion, who was a local amateur historian. Tim told me about being a kid in the forest during the second world war. His story provided the seed for Jimmy in the book.
Researching the seventies was really fun – what music was current in 1973, what people smoked and drank, what the fashions were, etc.
I didn’t play with explosives.
JW; Who would you like to see playing the parts of Nell Buchana and Ivan Lucic when Dead Man’s creek is turned into a Movie!
CH; Not sure. Possibly some unknown Australian actors who could make the parts their own.
JW; As a child growing up, were you an avid reader, or was television your thing? Do you have a favorite childhood book or television program?
CH; I was definitely more of a reader than a television watcher, although I was also sporty and spent a lot of time out of doors, so I wouldn’t describe myself as being overly bookish.
JW; If you could go back in time, to one historical event, to witness it, what would it be and why?
CH; At the end of the last ice age, when the land bridge between Australia and Papua New Guinea was breached and the Indian and Pacific Oceans joined. It must have been truly spectacular. The thing is, it was only about 8,000 years ago, and there were people there watching it – we know that from the oral histories of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders.
JW; What is your favorite book or books that you have read so far in 2022, and why?
CH; There were some really impressive Australian crime debuts: Wake by Shelley Burr and Dirt Town by Hayley Scrivenor come to mind – both ‘outback noir’. I also enjoyed the playfulness and meta-fun in Sullari Gentill’s Woman in the Library and Benjamin Stevenson’s Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone. All four are published in the UK
JW; What is something you are passionate about aside from writing?
CH; Coffee. Food. Bushwalking. Writing music (badly).
JW; If you were to be marooned on a desert island what 3 items would you take?
CH; A guitar. A telescope. A still.
JW; Do you have a hidden talent?
CH; If I do, it’s very well hidden.
JW; Are you currently writing another book, and when will it be released?
CH; Yes, trying, to be released in Australia in October 2023 and in the UK in January 2024. At least that’s the plan.
Chris Hammer was a journalist for more than thirty years, dividing his career between covering Australian federal politics and international affairs. For many years he was a roving foreign correspondent for SBS TV’s flagship current affairs program Dateline. He has reported from more than thirty countries on six continents. Chris’s non-fiction book, The River, published in 2010 to critical acclaim, was the recipient of the ACT Book of the Year Award and was shortlisted for the Walkley Book Award. Scrublands, his first novel, was published in 2018 and was shortlisted for the CWA John Creasey Debut Dagger Award, Best Debut Fiction at the Indie Book Awards, and Best General Fiction at the ABIA Awards. It has also been longlisted for the Ned Kelly Best Crime Novel of the Year. Scrublands was optioned for television by Easy Tiger (a FremantleMedia company). Chris has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Charles Sturt University and a master’s degree in international relations from the Australian National University. He lives in Canberra with his wife, Dr Tomoko Akami. The couple has two children.
Newly-minted homicide detective Nell Buchanan returns to her hometown, annoyed at being assigned a decades-old murder – a “file and forget”.
But this is no ordinary cold case, her arrival provoking an unwelcome and threatening response from the small-town community. As more bodies are discovered, and she begins to question how well she truly knows those closest to her, Nell realises that finding the truth could prove more difficult – and dangerous – than she’d ever expected.
The nearer Nell comes to uncovering the secrets of the past, the more treacherous her path becomes. Can she survive to root out the truth, and what price will she have to pay for it?
First, thank you so much to Zoe at Headline for sending me the lush Proof of Dead Mans Creek.
Dead Mans Creek is the second book in Detective Nell Buchanan and Detective Sergeant Ivan Lucic series, so if you want to read them in order, The first book is Opal Country.
Upon opening the book I find a map, this always makes me excited, I’m a real sucker for maps in books, and I did indeed come back to it many times whilst reading Dead Mans Creek.
I have to say having read all of Chris Hammer’s novels I think this might just be his most accomplished and perfect crime novel. The storyline is brilliant involving present-day investigations into a skeleton being found in a reservoir where an eco-terrorist has blown up a dam, and also moving back in time throughout Dead Mans Creek to slowly give us the events that have led up to the body being found. The story is complicated and gripping, Chris Hammer has such a great way of describing his characters and making them so realistic they just jump off the page.
The setting for Dead Mans Creek is the fictional Tulong and the Millewa – Barmah Forest, and the way Chris writes the description of the Forest and its wildlife, creeks, and grassy plains is so magical, it really bought the pages to life, and you can see what a beautiful place it is in your imagination. It is a real place that Chris has visited and this tells by his writing.
The plot is intricate and involves 50 years of family history, and again this is written so so well, it’s easy to follow again to my surprise at the end of Dead Mans Creek is a family tree, which I found really helpful.
I was totally immersed in the story of Dead Mans Creek, I love Nell Buchanan’s character and Ivan Lucic, in Dead Mans Creek, we see newly promoted homicide Detective, Nell Buchanan lead the investigations in her hometown, and it gets pretty risky, in the end, she uncovers old truths that have been kept secret for so many years, and have a rippling effect on several families.
I loved Dead Mans Creek, and I loved that there are references to Martin Scarsden, and Chris Hammer’s other series of novels. I was gripped from the first page and as with every book I read by Chris Hammer, I didn’t want it to end! The ending was brilliant and I really think that this is the most perfectly written crime novel.
I will be giving Dead Mans Creek 5 stars, it’s a must-read when it’s released in January 2023.
Chris Hammer was a journalist for more than thirty years, dividing his career between covering Australian federal politics and international affairs. For many years he was a roving foreign correspondent for SBS TV’s flagship current affairs program Dateline. He has reported from more than thirty countries on six continents. Chris’s non-fiction book, The River, published in 2010 to critical acclaim, was the recipient of the ACT Book of the Year Award and was shortlisted for the Walkley Book Award. Scrublands, his first novel, was published in 2018 and was shortlisted for the CWA John Creasey Debut Dagger Award, Best Debut Fiction at the Indie Book Awards, and Best General Fiction at the ABIA Awards. It has also been longlisted for the Ned Kelly Best Crime Novel of the Year. Scrublands was optioned for television by Easy Tiger (a FremantleMedia company). Chris has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Charles Sturt University and a master’s degree in international relations from the Australian National University. He lives in Canberra with his wife, Dr Tomoko Akami. The couple have two children.
A small town in outback Australia wakes to an appalling crime.
A local schoolteacher is found taped to a tree and stoned to death. Suspicion instantly falls on the refugees at the new detention center on Cobb’s northern outskirts. Tensions are high, between whites and the local indigenous community, and between immigrants and the townies.
Still mourning the recent death of his father, Detective Sergeant George Manolis returns to his childhood hometown to investigate. Within minutes of his arrival, it’s clear that Cobb is not the same place he left. Once it thrived, but now it’s a poor and derelict dusthole, with the local police chief it deserves. And as Manolis negotiates his new colleagues’ antagonism, and the simmering anger of a community destroyed by alcohol and drugs, the ghosts of his past begin to flicker to life.
Vivid, pacy and almost dangerously atmospheric, The Stoning is the first in a new series of outback noir featuring DS Manolis, himself an outsider, and a good man in a world gone to hell.
The Stoning by Peter Papathanasiou had been on my bookshelf for quite a while, but I finally managed to pick it up last week and make a start.
As a huge lover of Australian Crime Fiction Noir (think Chris Hammer or Jane Harper), I was eager to see what Mr. Papathanaious could bring to the table.
Well, he really hits it out of the park with The Stoning, it’s a sumptuously described novel set in the tiny hamlet of Cobb, in the outback of Australia, once a fine thriving town, now a dead-end place full of dustballs, kangaroos and drunks, and druggies plus The Immigration Centre, a stark square building plonked in the middle of nowhere. that’s a political time bomb within the community.
And this is what our novel revolves around, a woman is found apparently Stoned to death, and this has a huge impact on the fractured society of Cobb. We follow Detective George Manolis, and his quest to find the truth amongst rumors, racism, hate, bigotry, and the simmering anger of the inhabitants of Cobb.
The story was bloody gripping and I instantly loved several of the characters including George Manolis and Andrew Sparrow a local Gay Aboriginal Copper. The language is authentic, the descriptions of the setting are utterly engaging and on fire, and you can feel the heat and the flies. The dialogue between the characters is just stunning, it reads like a movie it is so vivid and gritty.
It’s a tense, medium-paced thriller that is dark and littered with Political references that make it an outstanding debut.
I look forward to the follow-up once it arrives, suffice to say this is a 5-star read, and Peter Papathanaious is on my favorite author’s list!
Peter Papathanasiou was born in northern Greece in 1974 and adopted as a baby to an Australian family. His debut book, a memoir, was published in 2019 as “Son of Mine” by Salt Publishing (UK) and “Little One” by Allen & Unwin (Australia). His debut novel, a work of crime fiction, was published in 2021 as “The Stoning” by MacLehose Press (UK) and Transit Lounge (Australia), and in 2022 by Polar Verlag (Germany). Peter’s writing has otherwise been published by The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, The Seattle Times, The Guardian UK, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, Good Weekend, ABC and SBS. He holds a Master of Arts in Creative Writing from City, University of London; a Doctor of Philosophy in Biomedical Sciences from The Australian National University (ANU); and a Bachelor of Laws from ANU specializing in criminal law.
The waves are to die for. It’s a paradise they’d kill to keep.
There’s a darkness inside all of us and The Bay has a way of bringing it out. Everyone here has their secrets but we don’t go looking for them. Because sometimes it’s better not to know.
Kenna arrives in Sydney to surprise her best friend, shocked to hear she’s going to marry a guy she’s only just met. But Mikki and her fiancé Jack are about to head away on a trip, so Kenna finds herself tagging along for the ride.
Sorrow Bay is beautiful, wild and dangerous. A remote surfing spot with waves to die for, cut off from the rest of the world. Here Kenna meets the mysterious group of people who will do anything to keep their paradise a secret. Sky, Ryan, Clemente and Victor have come to ride the waves and disappear from life. How will they feel about Kenna turning up unannounced?
As Kenna gets drawn into their world, she sees the extremes they are prepared to go to for the next thrill. And everyone seems to be hiding something. What has her best friend got involved in and how can she get her away? But one thing is rapidly becoming clear about The Bay: nobody ever leaves.
I absolutely loved Allie Reynolds first novel , Shiver so I have been impatiently waiting for The Bay to arrive and when it did (thank you Headline Books) I let out a little scream!
The Bay is an exciting, tense, claustrophobic and gripping novel. Set in Australia the descriptions of the surroundings really made me feel like I was there ( I’ve never been), and I loved the claustrophobic feel to this novel. It is a rare talent that a writer can make you feel penned in within the words of a novel, Allie Reynolds does this perfectly dare I say it her talent for this is is almost Agatha Christiesque! ( I made that word up!)
The novel is set amongst a group of people and revolves around surfing, now I have no knowledge of surfing but in The Bay, the language is easy to understand and indeed the spectacular way Allie Reynolds describes the feelings when surfing a wave or being under water were so vivid I can still see them in my minds eye now days after reading The Bay.
The cast of characters are all well written and easy to believe in, as is the storyline and plot…. There are many red herrings until we get to the final climax at the end, and I didn’t see that ending coming!
If you like your crime fiction to be vivid in its depictions and you like a locked room mystery, then you will love The Bay… I’m sure this will be a Summer Bestseller when it comes out on June 23rd.
An all round exciting and brilliant read, 5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️,s from me!
About Allie Reynolds Allie Reynolds’ debut thriller SHIVER is about a small group of former snowboarder friends at an isolated mountaintop reunion, high in the French Alps. SHIVER has sold in 24 territories to date and will be translated into 23 languages. The TV option has sold to Firebird Pictures. Her second thriller THE BAY (UK, ANZ) / THE SWELL (USA) is set on a remote Australian beach and will be published in June 2022. Born and raised in Lincoln, England, Allie moved to Gold Coast, Australia in 2004. She lives near the beach with her two young boys. Many years ago she competed at snowboard halfpipe. She spent five winters in the mountains of France, Switzerland, Austria and Canada. These days she sticks to surfing – water doesn’t hurt as much as ice when you fall on it. Her first ever job was a Saturday job in a bookstore, at age 14. She taught English for many years and became a full-time writer in 2018.
Opals… In the desolate outback town of Finnigans gap, police struggle to maintain law and order. Thieves pillage opal mines, religious fanatics recruit vulnerable youngsters and billionaires do as they please. Bodies… Then an opal miner is found crucified and left to rot down his mine. Nothing about the miner’s death is straight-forward, not even who found the body. Homicide detective Ivan Lucic is sent to investigate, assisted by inexperienced young investigator Nell Buchanan.
But Finnigans Gap has already ended one police career and damaged others, and soon both officers face damning allegations and internal investigations. Have Ivan and Nell been set up, and if so, by whom?
Secrets… As time runs out, their only chance at redemption is to find the killer. But the more they uncover, the more harrowing the mystery becomes, and a past long forgotten is thrown into scorching sunlight.
Because in Finnigans Gap, nothing stays buried for ever.
I’ve loved every book so far by Chris Hammer, and am so thrilled to have been given the opportunity to review Opal Country by the publishers Wildfire Books. Thank you so much. 🙏
We start the story in the outback of Australia, at night, with a team of ratters entering a mine in the dead of night, what they find is a hideously crucified, Christ-like, corpse instead of Opals and makes them retreat pretty sharpish!
We then follow Detective Sergeant Ivan Lucic, who as a homicide, detective has travelled from Sydney to investigate the horrible murder.
Chris Hammer manages to weave a really complex storyline involving Opal mining, family, murder, corporate espionage, revenge and the ending of Police Careers, into a phenomenal story, that had me guessing right up to the end as to whom the culprit was, and more importantly why?
The way Chris writes about Australia, the shimmering heat, the oppressiveness of a small town, the community divided by gossip, fears and history is without a doubt brilliant. I could feel myself getting sweaty and anxious in some parts with the relentless sun beating own onto Finnegans Creek.
There are some players from the previous novels in here, even though it’s a standalone, but that just makes it all the better!
And the inclusion of a Map always means it will be a great book in my experience!
Another fantastic 5 ⭐️ start slice of Aussie Noir from the master or Australian Crime Writing, in my opinion.
Finnegans Gap
CHRIS HAMMER – is a leading Australian crime fiction novelist, author of international bestsellers Scrublands, Silver and Trust.
His new standalone novel, Treasure & Dirt, will be published in Australia and New Zealand in September 2021 and internationally, as Opal Country, from early 2022.
Scrublands was an instant bestseller upon publication in 2018, topping the Australian fiction charts.
It was shortlisted for major writing awards in Australia, the UK and the United States. In the UK it was named the Sunday Times Crime Novel of the Year 2019 and won the prestigious UK Crime Writers’ Association John Creasey New Blood Dagger Award.
Scrublands, Silver and Trust all feature troubled journalist Martin Scarsden and his partner Mandalay Blonde, while Treasure & Dirt follows Homicide detectives Ivan Lucic and Nell Buchanan.
All four books are notable for their atmospheric Australian settings, range of colourful characters, intricate plots, descriptive language and emotional depth.
Before turning to fiction, Chris was a journalist for more than thirty years. He reported from more than 30 countries on six continents for SBS TV. In Canberra, roles included chief political correspondent for The Bulletin, senior writer for The Age and Online Political Editor for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.
Chris has written two non-fiction books The River (2010) – winner of the ACT Book of the Year – and The Coast (2012), published by Melbourne University Press.
He has a bachelor’s degree in Journalism from Charles Sturt University and a master’s degree in International Relations from the Australian National University. He lives in Canberra, Australia.
OUT ON 4TH NOVEMBER 2021 The Inheritance locks the reader in the trunk and puts the pedal to the metal for twenty-two blistering chapters.’ Jack Heath The author of the bestselling The Hunted returns… A young woman is hiding out in a sleepy North Queensland tourist town, trying to stay under the radar, when she stumbles across a dangerous drug cartel. Anyone else might back away, pretend they haven’t seen anything, keep quiet, but Maggie is no ordinary girl. She has to get out of town – fast. She heads towards Melbourne, where she just might find the answers she needs: about her mother, her past and the sins of her father. With a dubious cop as her ally, the police tracking her and a dangerous biker gang on their trail, Maggie’s troubles are doubling down fast. ‘A heroine you can’t look away from, pure thrills and wallop, wilder and gamier than your average Aussie noir, this is fierce storytelling.’ Kyle Perry Publisher: Faber & Faber ISBN: 9780571372362 Number of pages: 288 Weight: 240 g Dimensions: 198 x 129 x 17 mm Edition: Main
Thank you so much to Faber Books for my early copy of Gabriel Bergmoser’s new Thriller ‘The Inheritance’
A new author to me, and I wasn’t sure what to expect but Holy Moley this book is amazingly gripping and what a bloody thrill ride! ( when I say bloody I mean bloody!)
The main character, Maggie, is a fantastically written woman, she’s damaged and on the run with no one to trust but herself and I loved her! She is the woman I would be if I was in the same situation,kick arse, downright mad, bad and dangerous! A true loveable anti-heroine!
The plot is twisty and keeps you thinking, what can happen next, it doesn’t let you go, it beats you over the head with theories and surprises, and twists, that I never saw coming! And in all that action some wonderful writing, on damaged human beings, and the impact of abuse, trauma and a loveless childhood, which I didn’t expect, very very cleverly written I’m my humble opinion!
For those of you with a weak disposition, I will warn you there are some chunder moments 🤮, BUT they fit in the story perfectly and it runs like a movie, and although I did gag a couple of times, I love that writers can give us such real feelings!
Overall a brilliant, explosive, thriller set in Australia, bent cops, bikies, double crossing people, chasing the same thing and then the final twists, I really loved The Inheritance, so much so that I NEED to read The Hunted immediately!
10 out of 10 stars from me! ⭐️🤩
Gabriel Bergmoser is a Melbourne based author and playwright. After starting out in the youth theatre scene with his early plays Windmills, Life Without Me and Hometown, Gabriel completed his Masters of Screenwriting at the Victorian College of the Arts. He co-founded the independent production company Bitten By Productions, entering the Melbourne theatre scene with the one-act comedy Reunion and the futuristic Babylon Trilogy of noir thrillers. Gabriel’s 2015 Beatles comedy We Can Work It Out opened to sell out shows and rave reviews – it has also been performed in Queensland and returned to Melbourne stages for the 2018 Fringe Festival.
His 2016 plays The Lucas Conundrum, Regression and The Criticopened to excellent reviews while his early 2017 play Springsteen sold out its entire season. His playHeroes was nominated for the 2017 Kenneth Branagh Award for New Drama Writing and went on to win several awards, including five for Best Production and three for best script, on the 2017 VDL One Act Play Festival circuit. His first musical, Moonlite (featuring original songs by Dan Nixon) was performed as part of the 2018 Midsumma Festival; it received rave reviews, sold out its entire season, and was later selected for the highly sought after Home Grown Grassroots development initiative. His 2019 play, The Trial of Dorian Gray, sold out its entire season, was extended, then sold out again. Several of his plays have been published by Australian Plays.
Gabriel has worked in writer’s rooms for Beyond Entertainment, Werner Film Productions, Pirate Size Productions and Balloon Tree Productions. In 2020 he wrote an episode of the pre-school ABC TV series Pencil Pals and created the web-series The Pact, which was produced entirely remotely during the COVID-19 lockdown.
