rural noir

Strange Sally Diamond by Liz Nugent

By Vicki Weisfeld

3 March, 2023

Yes, the eponymous protagonist of Liz Nugent’s new crime mystery, Strange Sally Diamond, is strange. And for good reason. Sally lives a mile outside a small village in Ireland’s sparsely populated County Roscommon. Alone with her father since her mother died several years earlier, Sally…

Features

Wilderness versus civilisation in rural noir

By crimefictionlover

10 January, 2023

Jay A Gertzman, author of Beyond Twisted Sorrow: The Promise of Country Noir, explores some of the archetypes in literature that have helped shape the growing rural noir subgenre… If you care for Westerns, you have read about Shane, the lone rider whose gun frees…

iBook Kindle Print Reviews

Dead Man's Creek by Chris Hammer

By DeathBecomesHer

7 January, 2023

There’s many an Aussie author who has travailed the dusty trails, inhospitable terrain and forgotten towns of the Outback in recent years – Garry Disher, Jane Harper and Chris Hammer, for example. The latter returns to the country’s rural landscape for Dead Man’s Creek, the…

Kindle Print Reviews

Canticle Creek by Adrian Hyland

By Paul Burke

17 November, 2022

Jane Harper really started something with The Dry, now Antipodean crime fiction is so popular in the UK that Australian publisher Ultimo is releasing new titles directly. Following Sulari Gentill’s The Woman in the Library we have Adrian Hyland’s Canticle Creek. It’s a gritty, inventive…

Kindle Print Reviews

Shifty's Boys by Chris Offutt

By RoughJustice

16 June, 2022

Chris Offutt first introduced us to his taciturn, reluctant private detective Mick Hardin in last year’s The Killing Hills. Hardin is an army CID officer who went on leave to fix his marriage. His wife, perhaps sick of his absences abroad, was pregnant with another…

Kindle Print Reviews

The Texas Job by Reavis Z Wortham

By Paul Burke

10 February, 2022

The Gunfight at the OK Corral and High Noon come to mind in this ‘lawman’s gotta do what a lawman’s gotta do’ narrative. A reckoning is brewing, a showdown in the style of a classic western. Only The Texas Job by Reavis Z Wortham takes…

iBook Kindle Print Reviews

Opal Country by Chris Hammer

By Paul Burke

10 January, 2022

Gold standard Outback noir from the rich opal fields of barren northern Queensland, Australia. Chris Hammer’s new stand alone tale may well be his best writing to date and that’s saying something as it follows his engrossing and original Scrublands trilogy. Like those doorstop novels,…

iBook Kindle Print Reviews

Better Off Dead by Lee and Andrew Child

By Paul Burke

26 October, 2021

If ever there was a case of ‘it does what it says on the tin’ in crime fiction it’s the Jack Reacher novels. We really know what to expect and we get it every time. When it comes to ‘what would Reacher do?’ the answer…

Crime Fiction Lover

Strange Sally Diamond by Liz Nugent

Wilderness versus civilisation in rural noir

Dead Man's Creek by Chris Hammer

Canticle Creek by Adrian Hyland

Shifty's Boys by Chris Offutt

The Texas Job by Reavis Z Wortham

Opal Country by Chris Hammer

Better Off Dead by Lee and Andrew Child

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