This is a rare fail from the local bookseller! Recommended by the same bookseller who sold me These Hollow Vows, this was described as “My boss who loves Crime Fiction said this was really good.”
It is apparently the second mystery featuring the detective protagonist, but I honestly don’t care enough to go back and catch up on the first book (I don’t even care enough to go back and look up his name). This book was not compelling enough to overcome my Aussie fiction cringe, alas.
We’ve got a murdered guy in the bush, and a missing cop. These two could be connected. We’ve got the son of a criminal, working as a cop, so, so clearly set up as an information leak that anyone who believes he actually IS the leak has never read a novel before. The actual leak is so obvious that they may as well have taken out a full page ad in the Sun.
Pros: female characters not waiting around to be rescued; Nans saving the day
Cons: everything else
I’ve been trying to broaden my Australian fiction horizons, off the back of Jane Harper and Chris Hammer just being so good at what they do, but this one just reminded me why I don’t usually bother. From the first sentence, which felt like a year 8 assignment piece – describe the bush using 4-10 specific examples of flora and fauna unique to Australia – I was mad at it, and I never got around to enjoying myself.
