DOWNUNDER CRIME UPDATE, AUGUST 2025: REVIEWS AND PREVIEWS
Just a short update this time – running out of time!
A couple of short reviews and some quick highlighting of some of the many new releases coming out over the next few months.
REVIEWS
Tanya Scott’s Stillwater, (Allen & Unwin, 29 July 2025), makes for a refreshing change from the myriad of rural mysteries that we have seen lately. Set mainly in Melbourne and its fringes, it is a moving and gripping story that deals with the criminal underbelly of Australian society.
The story revolves around Luke Harris, who after years away from his home town of Melbourne is back with a new name and looking for a fresh start. But Luke is a man with a past from a time when life was anything but peaceful and his skills ran to the dark side. A past not easily forgotten, or forgiven. When he crosses paths with the brutal criminal he worked for as a teenager Luke is dragged reluctantly back to his old life and finds himself forced to find his estranged father and the chunk of money that he has stolen.
This is a very strong debut with well developed characters, vivid descriptions and a strong moral core. It also has good tension and enough action to keep you engaged.
Highly recommended.
Gabriel Bergmoser is incapable of writing a boring novel. His latest, High Rise (Harper Collins, 29 July 2025), is another full throttle story that grabs you by the throat and does not let go until the final word.
A quick description: After a year of searching, rogue ex-cop Jack Carlin has finally found his estranged daughter, Morgan, holed up in the top floor of a rundown, grimy Melbourne high-rise. She is in trouble and Carlin is coming to save her. Unfortunately, Morgan does not want saving and, to make things worse, Jack has a huge bounty on his head. As bounty hunters and gang members converge on the building, father and daughter are thrown into a desperate fight for survival through fifteen storeys of deadly enemies.
This is a very bloody novel with multiple deaths by a variety of weapons, including guns, machetes, clubs and even a flame thrower. The violence is over-the-top, but it is grounded by some poignant reflections on parenting, childhood and the impact of bad decisions. It also features some familiar faces from Bergmoser’s previous novels. Good fun!
Outback Australian crime novels set in blistering heat and drought like conditions are becoming a bit of a cliché, but Michael Brissenden brings some freshness to genre with his politically astute mystery, Dust (Affirm, 26 August 2025).
Lake Herrod, once a thriving outback community in New South Wales is now in great decline as the lake dries up, taking much of the local businesses with it. When barely hanging on local Aaron Love discovers a fresh corpse near the cracked lakebed, he sets in train a violent series of events. The body belongs to a respected journalist who was investigating some dangerous people, including Aaron’s missing, presumed dead, father. Aaron pockets the evidence that he finds and sets off to find his father and a young woman who is somehow connected to it all. Meanwhile, haunted Sydney detective Martyn Kravets is sent to Lake Herrod to investigate the murder, and uncovers a web of conspiracy that reaches far beyond the small community.
DUST is fast paced crime novel with a good cast and some sharp political observations. Brissenden’s portrayal of the groups caught on the fringes of Australian society, whether by misfortune or deliberate choice, is first rate and he cleverly weaves in how these groups are encouraged by politically motivated media outlets, such as Sky/Fox News:
“On the screen a man in a suit with toilet-brush haircut and an orange tie waves his hands in the air: ‘… the climate crisis scam. So vast. All encompassing, and the sums of money so extreme that it’s not just one scam, its hundreds of them intertwined'”.
He also vividly captures the impact of climate change on the Australian outback and the stagnation of local towns along the way to Lake Herrod, and describes them with unerring accuracy:
“has the look of a town that, over the years, has had just enough money. The main street is home to discount dollar stores, cut-price chemists, country solicitors and an IGA supermarket.”
While the social observations are interesting, Brissenden never forgets that he is writing a crime novel and DUST moves along at a quick rate with plenty of surprises and some good suspense. The characters are well crafted, especially the hapless Aaron, and Brissenden really captures the feel of the small local towns. The book builds to a taut climax and there is plenty of excitement in the final chapters, as well as a suitably cynical conclusion.
I really enjoyed DUST and think that it is the best of Brissenden’s novels to date. There are some coincidences towards the end, but they add to the suspense, and the book certainly keeps you turning the pages until the final revelation.
For those in Canberra, Michael will be in conversation with Chris Hammer at the ANU on 2 September: https://www.anu.edu.au/events/meet-the-author-michael-brissenden Always a great event!
PREVIEWS
There is a plethora of good Australian crime novels on the way over the next few months. Included in the forthcoming haul are new books by David Whish-Wilson (O’Keefe – October), Alan Carter (Franz Joseph – November), Benjamin Stevenson (Everyone In This Bank Is A Thief – 30 September), Lisa Ellery (Hot Ground – September), Jack Heath (Kill Your Boss – November), New Zealander Zoë Rankin’s The Vanishing Place (26 August 2025) and Sulari Gentill’s Five Found Dead (28 August), which I am already reading and enjoying. I am also reading Tony Park’s Die By The Sword (now), which is another terrific thriller by Tony, this time featuring a dual timeline of 1880 and the present, and an intriguing plot around the hunt for Napoleon Bonaparte’s lost sword.
I would, however, like to highlight three forthcoming releases:
Garry Disher returns to his outback detective Paul ‘Hirsch’ Hirschhausen with his latest novel Mischance Creek, (Text, 30 September 2025)
Plot: Hirsch is checking firearms. The regular police audit: all weapons secured, ammo stored separately, no unauthorised person with keys to the gun safe. He’s checking people, too. The drought is hitting hard in the mid-north, and Hirsch is responsible for the welfare of his scattered flock of battlers, bluebloods, loners and miscreants.
He isn’t usually called on for emergency roadside assistance. But with all the other services fully stretched, it’s Hirsch who has to grind his way out beyond the Mischance Creek ruins to where some clueless tourist has run into a ditch.
As it turns out, though, Annika Nordrum isn’t exactly a tourist. She’s searching for the body of her mother, who went missing seven years ago. And the only sense in which she’s clueless is the lack of information unearthed by the cops who phoned in the original investigation.
Hirsch owes it to Annika to help, doesn’t he? Not to mention that tackling a cold case beats the hell out of gun audits and admin.
Garry Disher’s novels are always ‘must reads’!
Alex Dook’s Gunpowder Creek, (Echo, 7 September 2025), sounds like being a very good, fast paced debut, and I am taking it with me to read on holidays.
Plot: Friday, one thirty p.m. Emily Barnes is finishing work for the week, ready for a break from her laptop. Then she receives a panicked voicemail from her son Zach, punctuated by a gunshot.
By four p.m., she’s driving a stolen car out of Perth, with explicit instructions from Zach’s captors – in three days, deliver the car to Gunpowder Creek, a ghost town 900 kilometres deep into the West Australian outback. Miss the deadline and Zach dies. And don’t open the boot.
The job should be simple. But there’s someone dangerous roaming those lonely highways. Someone who doesn’t want the car and its cargo to make it to Gunpowder Creek. Someone with cold eyes who has seen death and liked it.
Sounds great!
Coming in October is a new novel by the Queen of Australian Outback Crime, Jane Harper – Last One Out (Macmillan, 14 October 2025).
Plot: In a dying town, Ro Crowley waits for her son on the evening of his 21st birthday.
But Sam never comes home. His footprints in the dust of three abandoned houses offer the only clue to his final movements. One set in. One set out.
Five long years later, Ro returns to Carralon Ridge for the annual memorial of Sam’s disappearance. The skeletal community is now an echo of itself, having fractured under the pressure of the coal mine operating on its outskirts.
But Ro still wants answers. Only a few people remain. If the truth is to be found in that town, does it lie among them?
So, plenty to look forward to. I will be trying to do some reviews while I am away, so watch out for them!