Great Reads for Great Readers

 

The Tilt, by Chris Hammer.

         

  

          Master exponent of Aussie Noir Chris Hammer has forsaken his usual protagonist Martin Scarsden, burnt-out Sydney journalist, for a couple of Scarsden’s police acquaintances who have been sent to a small town on the border of New South Wales and Victoria to investigate a cold case, the discovery of skeletal remains at the bottom of a dam recently blown up by activists unknown.  The police are involved because the skeleton’s skull has a bullet hole in it, clearly not an accident, and Detective Constable Nell Buchanan, originally a local girl whose adoptive family has lived in the area for four generations, is raring to solve the mystery, if only to prove to her parents, strongly disapproving of her career choice, that she has the skills to bring criminals to justice.

            The great Murray river courses through the Millewa/Barmah forest where the crime scene is;  it is a breathtaking natural wonder, home to flora and fauna found nowhere else in the country – and home too, to drop-outs, conspiracy theorists and small-time racketeers:  the wildlife involves more than the four-legged kind, once one knows where to look, and Nell and her boss Ivan Lucic are astonished at the variety of busy criminal activity in the area – and shocked again at the discovery of a second body as the dam, called The Regulator, gives up its secrets. 

            And what secrets they are!  Especially as Nell eventually discovers that the second body is her natural grandfather, coldly murdered because he was a reporter and was investigating lucrative rackets controlled by a man who was supposed to be everyone’s friend.  But the worst discovery for her is the fact that her own family – her mother and father, uncles, even her grandparents! – were all involved to a lesser or greater degree in the criminal ‘family  business’ (obviously why they disapproved of her choice of job!) but, most shocking of all in Nell’s eyes is that they kept up the veneer of respectability to such a degree that her retired dentist dad, her agoraphobic mother (hasn’t left the house in years!), and her newspaper editor uncle could have taken their secrets to the grave if those two bodies hadn’t been found. 

            The Regulator isn’t the only yielder of secrets:  the forest with all its secret waterways has much to hide as well, and Chris Hammer doesn’t let the mystery or the suspense flag for a minute.  His characters are all true-blue, Dinky-Dye Aussies without being caricatures and his colourful prose effortlessly evokes a provincial Australia that is changing all the time, as he proves in his World War Two flashbacks.  Aussie noir at its best.  FIVE STARS