Canticle Creek, by Adrian Hyland

 When artist and environmentalist Daisy Baker is found dead near Canticle Creek, a young hoodlum from the Northern Territory is blamed.

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Jess Redpath is the top cop in the small town of Kulara, Northern Territory. When restless young lad Adam Lawson gets himself repeatedly in trouble, she vouches for his character to keep him out of jail. He's basically a good kid, she thinks, and hopes this lucky escape from prison time will set him on the straight and narrow. Adam bolts south to country Victoria, gets involved with a girl named Daisy Baker and is suspected of her murder. After Daisy's body is found in a ditch, he tries to escape, but crashes his car and kills himself. All the evidence points to Adam's guilt, but Jess's gut instinct tells her something different. Adam was a bit of a lad, and talented artist too, but no murderer. None of it makes sense.

To find out more, Jess travels to Canticle Creek, rural Victoria, where the crime took place. There she meets an unsettling cast of characters: disgruntled loggers, violent drug dealers and ambitious property developers. A small-scale war is going on between greenie conservationists and those who'd like to exploit the pristine wilderness for financial gain. As Jess gets to know the locals, including a few dangerous run-ins with a thuggish crime ring, she learns that Daisy was a keen amateur botanist. She'd discovered a rare orchid in the Canticle Creek area, signalling land that might be worthy of preservation. Could Daisy's activities have rubbed some people up the wrong way? And could Adam be innocent after all?

Canticle Creek is the third novel from Ned Kelly award winning author Adrian Hyland. It's a cracking tale that holds the reader's interest from first page to last. The protagonist, tough cop Jess Redland, is entirely likeable and real. She's seen it all in her time in the Northern Territory and has a no nonsense approach. The plot is multifaceted and complex, with a lot of different strands to tie up, but a sheer delight to read.  The descriptions of the natural environment are a joy. First Nations knowledge of Country is also carefully woven into the plot, in a way that doesn't feel forced or tokenistic.

Australian crime that ticks all the boxes, addressing issues of corruption, power, money and environment. A winner.

Canticle Creek, by Adrian Hyland. Published by Ultimo. $32.99

NOV 21

The Judge and His Hangman, by Friedrich Durrenmatt

It's 1948. A local policeman, Aphons Clenin, finds a man murdered in his blue Mercedes on a Swiss country road in the town of Twann. The man is a fellow policeman, Ulrich Schmied. It turns out the murdered policeman was on his way to a private party at the house of a rather shady character named Gastmann, a self-described adventurer, with important connections in the worlds of finance, politics and art. Schmied, the murdered man, had actually been sent to the party under a false name in order to spy on Gastmann.

Enter inspector Barlach. He's elderly, world weary and may only have a year left to live. With his assistant Tschanz, the two men explore different avenues and methods in their pursuit of the killer. The most obvious suspect is Gastmann. Barlach and Gastmann go back a long way. In fact, Barlach knows of Gastmann's criminal history – how he has killed for the sheer thrill of it – and has long tried to prove his guilt. To no avail. Gastmann, a truly menacing character, continually taunts. Has he, the most likely killer, actually comitted the crime? Not all is as it seems in this kaleidoscopic, hall-of-mirrors type crime classic.

The Judge and his Hangman by Swiss crime master Friedrich Durrenmatt is taut and gripping. The plot is perfectly designed, revealing itself with consummate skill. The story features a cast of well drawn, compelling characters, especially the duelling Barlach and Gastmann, the latter positively Iago-like in his thoroughgoing evil.

A must for connoseiurs of the genre.

The Rúin, by Dervla McTiernan

Staff review by Chris Saliba

Dervla McTiernan's debut tackles dark aspects of Ireland's recent history in a page-turning crime thriller.

Ireland, 1993. Young cop Cormac Reilly has been called out to a house in Kilmore, a “blink-and-you-miss it kind of village”. A young mother has died of a heroin overdose and her two children, Maude, a fifteen-year-old and Jack, a five-year-old, are waiting. The older sister, Maude, is quite self-assured considering all that has happened. Her younger brother, Jack, has been hurt and requires medical attention. She directs Reilly to take them to the hospital. That night, as Jack is being attended to, Maude disappears. She is labelled and runaway and Reilly soon forgets about this sad but not unusual case.

Twenty years later Jack is living with his girlfriend, Aisling, a professional woman who is training to be a surgeon. After the couple have a heated discussion Jack goes for a walk, but doesn't return. The police are soon involved, but Jack's sister, Maude, think they aren't doing a proper job. She has suddenly reappeared in Ireland after spending the best part of twenty years living in Australia. Confident and forthright, she practically takes over the investigation herself.

Into this drama enters Cormac Reilly. He have given up his high profile detective job in Dublin for personal reasons and has returned to a lesser role in Galway. At the Mill Street Garda Station where Reilly has been assigned (garda is Irish for police, or guard) there is a thicket of workplace politics. Reilly's new colleagues seem to be pushing their own agendas and not everyone can be trusted. As incompetent and corrupt officers deal with the disappearance of Jack Blake, Reilly hovers on the periphery of the investigation, slowly being drawn further and further in, until he finds himself at the centre of an explosive murder plot.

It's hard to believe that this is Dervla McTiernan's first novel, it's so accomplished (McTiernan moved from Ireland to Western Australia after the global financial crisis.) The characters, dialogue and settings are all compellingly believable. The plot has a wonderful richness and complexity that is backed up by nuanced psychological portraits of its key characters. This is a gripping page-turner that is greatly enchanced by its authentic sense of place and people. McTiernan creates a gloomy, moody atmosphere of moral decay as she tackles dark aspects of Ireland's recent history, most notably the consequences of its dire poverty and the sins of the church. This heady mixture of Irish social history and noir thriller makes The Rúin a winner in every sense. Sure to please crime afficionados, and even those (like this reader) who aren't.

The Rúin, by Dervla McTiernan. Published by HarperCollins. ISBN: 9781460754214 RRP: $32.99

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The Pledge, by Friedrich Durrenmatt

Staff review by Chris Saliba

Friedrich Durrenmatt's gripping 1958 thriller, The Pledge, will have you in its thrall, from first page to last.

In the opening pages of The Pledge the author describes meeting an old chief of police from Zurich, a Dr. H. The two sit in a bar having coffee and cream. The chief relates an old murder case:

It was in the Swiss mountain village of Magendorf that a terrible crime occurred. A little girl named Gritli Moser was  gruesomely murdered in the nearby woods, slashed with a razor. It was the third murder of a little girl in so many years, all executed in a similar manner and obviously the work of a serial killer. The prime suspect of the murder was a peddler named von Gunten who discovered the body. He was seen as guilty due to his history: he had a conviction for child molestation, of a 14-year-old girl. Von Gunten was taken in for questioning, but staunchly denied the charge. Under intense interrogation, the peddler finally admitted to the murder and then committed suicide.

It seemed a clear-cut case, but as inspector Matthai took over the investigation, he was not so sure. In fact, he became convinced that von Gunten did not commit the crime and that the real killer was still at large. He felt it his moral duty to find the real killer. His timing was bad, however, as he was due to take on an important overseas post. He turned his back on this new assignment, remained in the town of Magendorf and started a steady descent into madness and alcoholism. He never found the killer.

First published in 1958, Friedrich Durrenmatt's gripping crime novel reads like it was written only yesterday. It has a cleverly constructed design, that of a narrative within a narrative, that ticks like clockwork. It marries breathtaking suspense with realistic psychological portraits. The novel is also rich in atmospherics; it's air of suffocating menace and perversity haunts the reader throughout.

The novel has one big theme: it criticises the neat and contrived plots of regular crime novels. Durrenmatt says that life if often absurd and ridiculous. Our need for neat answers and tidy endings is not realistic. The author weaves this philosophical outlook into the plot by having Matthai become irrationally consumed by the case of Gritli Rosen, yet unable to solve her murder.

Intellectually fascinating, aesthetically satisfying, gripping from the first page to the last, The Pledge is a crime novel that you can't put down.

The Pledge, by Friedrich Durrenmatt. Translated by Joel Agee. Published by Pushkin. ISBN:  9781782273394  RRP: $19.99

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