A gripping murder mystery at it's heart, with a clever, deftly constructed and extremely believable plot, Hyland uses this opportunity to celebrate natural beauty in the experience of his characters, and through the eyes of the artists he's incorporated in his cast of well-constructed people. He has a particular skill when it comes to writing female viewpoints, from Jesse, through to Possum, the teenage friend of Daisy, and Possum's own family (with whom the Redpath's are staying). The observations and asides of these people build a picture of the location, and the characters within it in a very natural, Australian way, and he knows exactly how to convey dialogue, and cadence of speech amongst friends and strangers that just works. Then there's the depiction of fire in a drought ridden landscape that's terrifying and informative. It’s been a decade since I have read Adrian Hyland’s Gunshot Road and Diamond Dove yet both Australian crime novels remain favourites, so I jumped at the opportunity to read Canticle Creek.

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Jesse’s an appealing protagonist, a thoughtful and capable and police officer, with investigative skills learnt from Danny Jakamarra, the Aboriginal Community Police Officer, whom she works with in Kulara. I liked the character of Possum, the teenage friend of the murdered woman, and the surprise of Nadia’s character. There’s an authenticity to Hyland’s characters generally, both in the way they talk and act, that gives them substance. Small town, a seemingly open and shut crime has occurred. A police officer with something to prove, alongside her eccentric father travel to the small town and is determined to get to the bottom of whatever is going on. Jesse Redpath has a new job in a new town, Satellite – the stormy weather that greets her first few days on the new beat seems like a sign for what’s to come. A local has died in what seems like an accident, but Jessie isn’t so sure that ‘accident’ wasn’t planned. All evidence seems to point to Nash, but Jessie’s not sure about that either. The writing is polished and engaging, and the dialogue has a familiar rhythm. The setting is recognisably Australian, Hyland’s prose effortlessly evokes the baking hot weather, and varied landscape of rural Victoria.Australian crime fiction really is at the top of its game as a genre of quality, in my opinion. The bar has been set high and our authors are clearing it with room to spare. Canticle Creek by Adrian Hyland was such a compelling read. With its sophisticated plot and well fleshed out characters, I raced through this one, reluctant to put it down, thinking about it all the while when I wasn’t reading it. The main characters were all realistic and easy to like and the villains were all suitably convincing – particularly the main perpetrator who really had me fooled with his artful misdirection! The writing is breezy, with humour and action throughout. Jesse Redpath is up there with Jane Harper’s Aaron Falk and Chris Hammer’s Martin Scarsden as a sleuth who gets down and dirty with the harshest natural environments of Australia, and with some of the meanest human inhabitants. I look forward to future titles in this series.

Canticle Creek, Adrian Hyland | AustCrimeFiction Canticle Creek, Adrian Hyland | AustCrimeFiction

When Jesse sees an invitation to a National Gallery exhibition in Melbourne, she notices that two of the featured landscapes are one of her father’s and one by the late Kenji Takada. The title of Takada’s is ‘Canticle Creek’, the place Adam’s body was found. Trying to help likeable young tearaway Adam Lawson find a better future, Northern Territory police woman, Jesse Redpath convinced a judge to suspend his sentence provided he took a job at the local roadhouse and a room at her father’s house nearby. With her father being a well-known artist, she also hoped he would encourage Adam to take his obvious artistic talent more seriously. However, a week later Adam had run away, following a woman he met to Victoria and three months after that Jesse heard he had died in a car crash after murdering a woman called Daisy Baker and stealing her car. Knowing this didn’t sound like the Adam she knew, Jesse and her Dad headed to Canticle Creek, the small Victorian town where Adam had been living to find out more about what happened.

Advance Praise

I’ve read all of Adrian’s books, several of which are set in NT. He experienced the Kinglake area Victorian bushfires and has written a book about this (from the perspective of a local policeman I think) so I wasn’t surprised to see the bushfire theme in his latest book. Robert Kenny’s memoir of the same fires still haunts me, for example his boots melting. For mine, the other outstanding crime novel by an Australian in 2021 was Unforgiven by Sarah Barrie whose books are gripping. Jesse's a fabulous, strong, believable character who arrives in Victoria determined to find the truth no matter what. Supported in her determination by her father, they end up staying in the small artistic community that Daisy and Adam had lived in, digging into some dodgy logging practices, unearthing some suspect connections to Melbourne mobsters along the way. There's plenty of threat, personal and community based, and there's a good supporting cast, as well as fabulous sense of a place. Not specifically named, I'd be prepared to take a relatively informed guess is influenced by the area around the Kinglake Ranges.