Mischance Creek by Garry Disher
Garry Disher is one of my favourite crime writers and I was thrilled to see Mischance Creek, the 5th book in the Hirsch series. I was quickly drawn into the life of Hirsch, a rural policeman travelling long distances to check firearms on isolated farms and performing welfare checks to ensure that lonely people were safe. Another of his jobs is to help tourists when they get into trouble on country roads and he sent to Mischance Creek to help Annika Nordrum whose vehicle has gone into a ditch. But Annika is not your normal tourist; she has come to the outback in search of her mother who disappeared seven years ago. She knows that her mother could not have been involved in her father’s murder and the scant information left by the police does not add up. Hirsch is drawn into the cold case, while keeping an eye on altercations about parking at the school and trying to find the culprit who is illegally abandoning rubbish in the park.
Life in a small country town of outback South Australia is vividly brought to life by Disher. I got to know about the politics surrounding the mayor and the local council, the protection of a sacred site by a strong woman and the impact that merging rural schools can have on a community. The distances between farms, the heat, the desert like conditions as Goyder Line is crossed, the differences between the struggling small landholders and the very rich graziers are subtly explored by Disher and provide a wonderful background to the story.
Hirsch is a calm man, endeavouring to do his job under difficult circumstances. He is trying to keep in touch with his grieving mother in the city, while maintaining a relationship with a local woman and her daughter. His knowledge of his community is invaluable and his intelligence gathering leads to a stunning conclusion.
There are lots of threads and twists in the story, some very unexpected and dark, and these kept me reading avidly. I can’t wait to see what Disher writes next.
Themes: Murder, Police, Rural noir.
Pat Pledger