I was lucky to grab a Book Express copy of Treasure and Dirt by Chris Hammer. If you have not yet encountered our Book Express collection, do check it out at our Mill Park, Eltham, Watsonia and Diamond Valley Branches. Curated by our librarians, Book Express contains top-selling fiction, non-fiction and young adult titles alike.
Chris Hammer burst onto the Australian crime fiction scene with his previous bestselling trilogy Scrublands, Silver, and Trust. In the UK, Scrublands was named the Sunday Times Crime Novel of the Year 2019 and won the prestigious UK Crime Writers’ Association John Creasey New Blood Dagger Award. Chris brings more than thirty years of experience as a journalist to his fiction writing. He reported from more than 30 countries on six continents for SBS TV. In Canberra, roles included chief political correspondent for The Bulletin, senior writer for The Age and Online Political Editor for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. Now he's back with his latest standalone thriller, Treasure and Dirt, and if you haven’t read Hammer before, this is the perfect time to experience one of the best crime writers Australia has to offer.
If you love tightly plotted murder mysteries, well-crafted characters that you care about and an outback town brimming with corruption, then Treasure and Dirt is definitely a novel for you.
- Jane Cowell
Treasure and Dirt offers a grisly murder set against the oppressive heat of the outback, in the fictional desolate town of Finnigan’s Gap. Local police struggle to maintain law and order, thieves pillage opal mines, drug trafficking is rife, religious fanatics recruit the vulnerable, and rival billionaires do as they please. What’s not to love about this Australian crime story filled with suspense, memorable characters and a truly Australian setting?
Chris has an understated literary style which makes his writing a pleasure to read. And as one reviewer put it: “his multi-layered exploration of this story’s resonant theme of ‘power dynamics’ is deeply intelligent, thought-provoking and highly compelling”. Sydney homicide detective Ivan Lucic is sent to investigate the death of an opal miner who has been found crucified in his mine, but nothing is straightforward about this death. Ivan is given a newly appointed local detective Nell Buchanan to assist the investigation, but Ivan is also being pressured from events in Sydney which drag the Police Integrity Commission out to Finnigan’s Gap, threatening to kill any trust between the two investigators. Small town secrets never stay buried forever and the more they find out, the stranger the mysteries become.
Both Nell and Ivan are well-crafted characters with nuance, distinct voices, and readers respond to both as they investigate separately and slowly begin to trust each other. If you love tightly plotted murder mysteries, well-crafted characters that you care about and an outback town brimming with corruption then Treasure and Dirt is definitely a novel for you.