OUTBACK NOIR 2025: MISCHANCE CREEK BY GARRY DISHER and LAST ONE OUT BY JANE HARPER

October brings new books by two of the doyens of Australian outback crime.

Few, if any, do outback noir consistently as well as Garry Disher.

The first book in his series about struggling South Australian rural policeman Constable Paul (Hirsch) Hirschhausen, Bitter Wash Road (2013), set the standard for top shelf rural Australian crime writing and he readily maintained that quality across the following three books in the series.

Mischance Creek, (Text, 30 September 2025), is the fifth book and opens with Hirsch doing a routine firearms audit across his dusty community, making sure that all weapons are secured, ammo stored separately and that no unauthorised person has keys to the gun safe. He is also also checking in on people. 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.

An emergency call for assistance distracts him from one suspicious gun owner, and takes him out to the ruins at Mischance Creek. There he finds Annika Nordrum, who has driven into a ditch while looking for the body of her mother who went missing seven years. Annika is of the view that the police botched the original investigation into her mother’s disappearance and Hirsch tends to agree with her. Gradually he is drawn into the search for the body, which takes him down some unexpected and dangerous paths.

This is a finely crafted crime novel that excels in its characterisations and the subtlety of its plotting.  Disher takes a little while to put the various strands of his story in place, but once underway the various sub-plots move along at a good pace, often heading in surprising directions, including one genuine shock. Throughout Disher keeps a good grip on the assorted storylines, and skillfully builds the tension as the various elements come together in a typically exciting and violent conclusion.

As usual, his depiction of Hirsch’s patch of rural South Australia rings true and he creates vivid word pictures of the scenery and the battered buildings on his beat. There is also a good contemporary feel to the plot with Hirsch having to deal with the usual modern day problems, including rising political extremism and racism on the far right and the growth of the sovereign citizen movement:

McRae was like other sovereign citizens: “usually young, poorly educated and not doing so well in the fishpond of life. They blamed their setbacks on mainstream society, of which the police were a part, and looked to internet crazies for answers. From there it was a short step into a rabbit hole of conspiracies that explained everything.”

There is a semi-dark feel to much of the book, although Disher does enliven it with some heart warming scenes with his partner and step daughter, and flashes of tongue-in-cheek humour: “he opened the crime novel Kate Street had given him. ‘Outback noir’ – just another small-town-with-a-dark-secret story. He resisted hurling it across the room.”

In all, Mischance Creek is Disher at the top of his game with a subtle mix of social commentary, good detective work and a blood pounding final shoot-out. Excellent stuff.

Mischance Creek was released on 30 September in Australia. It will be released in the United Kingdom in February 2026.

Jane Harper may have followed Garry Disher and others down the dusty outback crime path, but she was certainly instrumental in establishing it as one of the most popular forms of crime writing in the world today. Jane’s The Dry was an outstanding success that helped to cement many of the elements of the genre, and its popularity was aided by the movie starring Eric Bana. Her subsequent books also did well, as did the second Eric Bana movie and the recent television production of The Survivors.

Her last book, The Exiles, was set in the picturesque Adelaide wine region, but with the forthcoming Last One Out, (Macmillan, 14 October 2025), she returns to harsh interior of Australia.

Carralon Ridge, a once vibrant village in rural New South Wales, has become a shell of itself, its houses and buildings bought up and left to rot by the mining company operating at its borders. A decade into its slow death, surrounded by industrial noise and swathed in thick layers of dust, the skeletal town is all but abandoned, with just a handful of residents clinging onto what remains.

After years of scorning those who left the Ridge behind as it fell into ruin, Ro never imagined she’d become one of them. But everything changed when she lost her son. Five years ago, Sam vanished while visiting during a break from college, leaving behind a rental car with his belongings inside. Sam had loved Carralon Ridge, and had been working on a thesis about the town’s response to the intrusion of the mine.

But when Ro returns to Carralon Ridge to be with her husband and daughter on the anniversary of Sam’s disappearance, she begins to suspect that something important was overlooked in his case. Because while nothing can stop Carralon Ridge from dying, someone seems to want to make sure that its secrets die with it.

Last One Out is a slow burn of a crime novel, with much of its initial focus on how the town had decayed over the years and the widening split in the community caused by the mine’s acquisition of the bordering farms:

“The divide between those who had left and those who had stayed was real. Between the ones who had taken the mine’s money in any way and the ones who had held out.”

Jane’s descriptions of the town and its inhabitants are hauntingly rich and vivid, and she makes you feel the desperation of the few remaining community members. The characters are nicely nuanced and interesting, and themes around rural policy, the unseen effects of mining, and community disruption are adroitly handled, and give the book real substance.

The crime elements are probably less well developed. The plot moves slowly and it is only at around the half way mark that you start to get a sense of mystery and intrigue. The pace picks up from that point and the tension steadily builds over the final third, becoming quite suspenseful at times. The final revelations are surprising and quite emotional in their impact.

More mystery early on would have helped, but overall Last One Out is an impressive novel about the challenges of living in rural Australia, and its themes are well worth reflecting on in the current debate around the benefits of mining and alternative energy sources.

Last One Out will be released in Australia on 14 October 2025. It will be released in the United Kingdom and the United States in April 2026.