- Garry Disher's new police procedural once again features Constable Paul Hirschhausen, known as Hirsch, who we met in the superb Bitter Wash Road, published in 2013, which I reviewed at the time and said this:
Bitter Wash Road is Australian crime writer Garry Disher's strongest work to date. It comes pretty close to Peter Temple's classic The Broken Shore in achievement. It's not your average crime thriller. It's a social critique of considerable substance. As well, it has a strong coherent plot, beautifully resolved.
Disher invokes a genuine country Australian atmosphere in all its dry unforgiving hardness. The menace is so thick you could cut it with a knife. We're talking territory not far from Snowtown here - a dark, backward place, where deviance thrives.
- Unfortunately, and much to my disappointment, Peace is nowhere near as good. It lacks power and oomph, and any depth of meaning.
- It has the same country small town setting, the same rural noir deadness and meanness, the same ugliness and provincialism. And the same ugly cops, flown in from Adelaide and Sydney, who hate Hirsch because he was a whistleblower on some significant corruption issues he saw when he was a city detective. He was subsequently demoted, shoved back in uniform and shunted to the country.
- But he is a likeable, competent, caring and highly professional policeman, working hard to keep in touch with his community and its concerns. He navigates and resolves the typical arguments and resentments and is popular.
- A random series of minor crimes is everyday business. But Disher knows how to build tension. You know something big will happen. And it does.
- But in the end the main story loses power and the various threads don’t really mesh in a satisfying way. It sort of fizzes out. Goodies become baddies, baddies become goodies and it's very, well, meh.
- But please read Bitter Wash Road. In contrast to Peace, it's immensely powerful.
Bitter Wash Road is Australian crime writer Garry Disher's strongest work to date. It comes pretty close to Peter Temple's classic The Broken Shore in achievement. It's not your average crime thriller. It's a social critique of considerable substance. As well, it has a strong coherent plot, beautifully resolved.
Disher invokes a genuine country Australian atmosphere in all its dry unforgiving hardness. The menace is so thick you could cut it with a knife. We're talking territory not far from Snowtown here - a dark, backward place, where deviance thrives.
- Unfortunately, and much to my disappointment, Peace is nowhere near as good. It lacks power and oomph, and any depth of meaning.
- It has the same country small town setting, the same rural noir deadness and meanness, the same ugliness and provincialism. And the same ugly cops, flown in from Adelaide and Sydney, who hate Hirsch because he was a whistleblower on some significant corruption issues he saw when he was a city detective. He was subsequently demoted, shoved back in uniform and shunted to the country.
- But he is a likeable, competent, caring and highly professional policeman, working hard to keep in touch with his community and its concerns. He navigates and resolves the typical arguments and resentments and is popular.
- But in the end the main story loses power and the various threads don’t really mesh in a satisfying way. It sort of fizzes out. Goodies become baddies, baddies become goodies and it's very, well, meh.
- But please read Bitter Wash Road. In contrast to Peace, it's immensely powerful.
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