Canticle Creek

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She becomes involved in a murder investigation in country Victoria after a young man, Adam, she knows from NT is the main suspect. When Adam's wrecked car is found a kilometre from Daisy's body, the whole town assumes it's an open-and-shut case. I was told it was a cross between Jane Harper and Garry Disher, and yet another of the Australian outback noir novels that have been so popular of late.

While it looks like a nice cheery cover, the story is dark and twisted and the author has created a wonderful mystery set in this remote area of Australia.I also struggled to suspend belief at times, especially when a police officer, not just from a different town but a different state/territory, rocks up and is largely welcomed into an ongoing investigation and cheesily thanked for her amazing work - we could never have done it without you rhetoric. Canticle Creek by Australian author Adrian Hyland is a phenomenal read which had me intrigued right from the start to the end.

Supported in her determination by her father, they end up staying in the small artistic community that Daisy and Adam had lived in, digging into some dodgy logging practices, unearthing some suspect connections to Melbourne mobsters along the way. His characterisations are right up there with the best of them, his dry wit and dialogue as good as it gets, and his understanding and observation of the landscape perfect.Looking for an alternative narrative, Jesse puts several of the locals, and a Melbourne mobster, offside as she noses around the small community. She also wasn’t prepared to hear he’d murdered a woman and had crashed a stolen car into a tree while fleeing the town. Jesse Redpath works for NT Police, posted as Leading Senior Constable in the remote, 2-person station at Kulara. Jesse Redpath is up there with Jane Harper’s Aaron Falk and Chris Hammer’s Martin Scarsden as a sleuth who gets down and dirty with the harshest natural environments of Australia, and with some of the meanest human inhabitants.

Overall: I would happily recommend this well-written novel for anyone that enjoys Australian crime fiction. She's a hard hitting woman sheriff in a male dominated environment and I loved the way she stood her own and went out on a limb investigating a crime outside her own jurisdiction (with a grumpy father in tow!The only thing that was hard to swallow was that a police officer from another jurisdiction would be so well tolerated in the middle of a murder investigation. As Jesse made herself known to the local cops, she made some friends – and enemies - while investigating. Canticle Creek was published by Ultimo Press on 8th June 2023 and is available in hardcover, paperback and digital formats.