Scrublands (Martin Scarsden, #1) in Around the World

Apr 24, 2020 Andrea rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: personal-challenge-2020, series, challenge, top100longlist, seen-onscreen, australian-author

4.5★

Now I know what all the fuss was about! What a great story! Chris Hammer's journalistic credentials shine through as he delivers a complex tale of crime and investigation in a dying Riverina town.

Former foreign correspondent Martin Scarsden has been sent to the small town of Riversend a week or so shy of the first anniversary of the event that lent the town its notoriety - a mass shooting perpetrated by the local priest. He's not there to rehash the shooting incident so much as to find out h 4.5★

Now I know what all the fuss was about! What a great story! Chris Hammer's journalistic credentials shine through as he delivers a complex tale of crime and investigation in a dying Riverina town.

Former foreign correspondent Martin Scarsden has been sent to the small town of Riversend a week or so shy of the first anniversary of the event that lent the town its notoriety - a mass shooting perpetrated by the local priest. He's not there to rehash the shooting incident so much as to find out how the town is coping, one year on. Martin is also having something of an anniversary himself, and the assignment in western NSW will give him time to reflect on his own trauma and hopefully help him find his journalistic mojo again. Almost from the moment he arrives in Riversend, Martin finds himself in the thick of the biggest story of his career.

This is a book that just keeps giving. Hammer delivers not just one, but a number of interrelated crimes that keep the story chugging along right up until the last page. Martin Scarsden is a terrific main character; smart, self-aware, flawed and sometimes a little bit lucky. Surrounding him is a townful of assorted characters that you will recognise! Some salt-of-the-earth, others evil, and still more just normal, everyday people like our friends and neighbours. Finally, reading a journalist's investigation was also a nice change from the police perspective that I usually read (and enjoy, don't get me wrong).

There were just a couple of things that made me hesitate to give this book 5★. The names! OMG! Mandalay Blonde. Harley Snouch. Codger Harris. Please stop! I listened to an interview with Chris Hammer where he explained - somewhat bashfully I thought - that he recognised this as a problem too. Apparently it happened because he wrote the book as a hobby, over a long period of time, just to see if he could. When it was a hobby the names didn't matter, but then they got swept up in the tumult of publication and got stuck there. The other thing was the level of cooperation between the journalist and the ASIO operative - I didn't really buy that. Neither of these things detracted from the story, just from my rating :-)

Looking forward to reading the sequel before too long. ...more

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Dec 04, 2018 Kim rated it really liked it

Shelves: act-library

I'm not big on reading crime fiction and I think this is the only crime fiction I've read this year but it was such a treat! Compelling and well drawn. Drew in many topical crimes in current day Australia. Some of the characters names were a bit corny, Mandaley Blonde and Byron Swift, but that could be viewed as part of it's charm. Made me think of old hardboiled crime fiction.
Looking forward to seeing more written by Chris Hammer and might have even inspired me to read more in the genre that I ...more

6 likes · Like · see review