DeathBecomesHer: Top five books of 2019
Another year over, another top five to be chosen – and as the time passes it certainly doesn’t get any easier! There have been some fantastic debuts in 2019, while well loved characters have shown that there’s life in the old dog yet. Yes, the…
Mal McEwan: Top five books of 2019
I want my crime fiction to take me to different places, often darker ones, that I don’t recognise. So, there’s no domestic noir here but there are two books featuring men called Keller, and a couple of them could prop open a pair of heavy…
Silver
Written by Chris Hammer — We first met this author and his creation the world-weary journalist Martin Scarsden in the excellent debut novel Scrublands. With that novel shortlisted for the 2019 CWA John Creasy New Blood Dagger, Hammer and Scarsden are back and somehow it…
The silver age of crime
On the Radar — Sometimes we’ve got to stay on our toes as we report on the latest crime fiction releases. The press copy of Silver by Chris Hammer went around with an on sale date of 9 January attached, but we ran our routine…
Scrublands
Chris Hammer’s debut is set in a sleepy rural town in Western New South Wales. Riversend is a spot where nothing much ever happens until one day when the local priest opens fire outside his church, killing five men before being killed himself. Journalist Martin…
Scrublands by Chris Hammer
In recent years, Australia has been the setting for some of crime fiction’s best-received novels. Think of The Dry by Jane Harper, Helen FitzGerald’s The Cry and Resurrection Bay by Emma Viskic and you’ll get my drift. Time to add Scrublands to the list. Out…