OUTBACK NOIR MAY 2025: VANISH By SHELLEY BURR and BURNING MOUNTAIN By DARCY TINDALE
Small rural towns continue to be the crime centres of Australia, at least in terms of locally produced crime fiction. The enthusiasm of writers and publishers for outback Aussie noir seems to show no sign of waning, as two recent examples show.
Shelley Burr really hits the mark with Vanish, (Hachette, 30 April 2025), the third novel in her series about crime solver and soon to be released prisoner, Lane Holland.
Lane’s crime-solving career ended the day he went to prison. Yet one unsolved case continues to haunt him: the disappearance of Matilda Carver two decades ago. Matilda is the long lost daughter of the head of the prison where Lane is being held. With Carver’s lowkey assistance, and his own secret endeavours, Lane finally finds a lead: a mysterious farm community where Matilda lived briefly. The farm is near Albury in southern New South Wales and is led by the enigmatic Samuel Karpathy. To Lane it seems more like a cult than a working farm. It is a place that attracts lost souls. People looking for answers. People hiding from their pasts. People who have nowhere else to go.
On the day that Lane arrives at the farm on a prison education scheme, along with a prison guard, an accident claims the life of a member of the community. It also seems that there has been at least one other recent mysterious disappearance. With his typical singlemindedness, Lane dives in to find out what really happened to those who seemingly vanished from the farm without a trace.
Shelley is a very good writer, and she can really capture scenes and moods. Her characters are just a little different from the usual outback noir casts, and she mainly avoids the stereotypes we so often see. Lane is an interesting, offbeat central character, infuriating at times, but with an admirable inner determination that drives the story along. The plot flows well and there is a good sense of unease from the first moments that Lane arrives at the commune, and the tension continues to mount as the book progresses. The story builds to a strong climax involving the almost obligatory outback noir bushfire, and there are the usual surprising revelations. My only reservation is that some of the elements seem a little unlikely, but not enough to diminish the pleasure of what is a very good crime novel.
Vanish was released in Australia and in the United States on 30 April 2025. It only seems to be available as an Audible Book in the United Kingdom.
Darcy Tindale’s Burning Mountain (Penguin, 29 April 2025) is also set in New South Wales, but a long way from Shelley’s Vanish, in the picturesque Upper Hunter Valley.
Eighteen years ago, five teenagers went for a hike up Burning Mountain, but only four came back. Despite an intensive police search, fifteen-year-old Oliver was never seen again. Now a skull has been unearthed on the mountain and the old mystery is re-ignited. Detective Rebecca Giles’ father had been in charge of the original investigation into the disappearance of Oliver, now it is up to her to finally find out what really happened.
Burning Mountain makes good use of familiar bush noir tropes to produce an engaging and enjoyable outback mystery. The small rural town and its inhabitants are nicely evoked and interesting, and Darcy really makes you feel the heat and hear the flies. The story proceeds at a decent pace and a couple of interesting sub-plots add drama and tension. Rebecca is a pretty standard central character, of the female detective in a small country town variety, but she has a couple of quirks and is quite engaging. Some of the other characters are very well done, especially a young boy caught up in a terrible situation.
The main plot is well constructed with some perfectly timed twists and turns. At first it seems quite straight forward, but Darcy skilfully manoeuvres the story into unexpected directions and pulls out some very good surprises, including one on the last page. Perhaps there are too many coincidences around timing, but overall Burning Mountain is a good, entertaining example of bush noir.
Burning Mountain was released in Australia and the United States on 29 April 2025.
So two enjoyable journeys into bush noir, with plenty more on the horizon by Chris Hammer, Matthew Spencer and Joan Sauer to name three.