#Review - The Broken River by Chris Hammer

The Broken River (Ivan Lucic & Nell Buchanan #4) 

Chris Hammer
Headline (Wildfire), 2 January 2025
Available as: HB, 464pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance e-copy
ISBN(HB): 9781035410774

I'm grateful to the publisher for giving me access to an advance e-copy of The Broken River to consider for review.

The "Broken River" of the title gets its because it flows through a valley in New South Wales that was once ruined by uncontrolled gold prospecting. Trees were felled, farmland destroyed, the Indigenous population driven away, and the river itself redirected and channelled to serve human greed..

But the gold went away, as gold will. The Valley remains and is now peaceful - apart from ongoing friction between loggers and environmentalists. But it's not that which draws Ivan and Nell to the remote community, rather a prominent businessman has died under suspicious circumstances and the two are sent to investigate. Exactly why this death merits the attention of their high profile murder team rather than being left to the local police isn't clear, though...

I loved this novel. Hammer has established a winning formula with these books, dissecting the tensions and history of a small community where the shadow of the past is always, always shaping the present. Like previous books, the timeline moves back and forward, giving us glimpses of what set the modern day mystery in motion, but keeping the spotlight mainly on Ivan and Nell as they resolve them. The last book, Cover the Bones, also closely involved Nell whose family turned out to be involved with the mystery (but also, not to be quite the family she had thought). The Broken River builds on that family connection making the two books in some respects, I think, a little duology of their own within the series as Hammer tells us more here about Nell's origins. Given that Ivan's life has calmed down since his father's death, that is perhaps a logical development in the pairing. It's time to find out more about Nell. The past timeline has, perhaps, to strain a little to accommodate this but the drive of the plot, and the passion of the events and characters, easily carries the reader along in a story that's both exciting and baffling.

There is certainly plenty going on. The days of gold mining may, it seems, be coming back to The Valley, but, aside from the death that sets things in motion, there is a series of puzzles to be solved. Accidents, disappearances and coincidences surround the old abandoned mine. An inheritance is in play. There is a crooked lawyer who its suspected of enriching himself. And thugs from out of town seem to be taking an interest - what is their agenda? Will the new owner be the one who finally succeeds in turning this stubborn valley to profit?

The Broken River has a bit of everything - family passions, secrets, gangsters, and corruption in high places. Will Lucic and Nell be up to unravelling things...? Well, what do you think?

Marrying a fascinating setting with a vivid cast of characters, The Broken River is another excellent continuation to this series. And publishing these books in the UK in the dreariest time of the year is a stroke of genius (I write as I look out into the pouring rain) as we can live out all this drama beneath the heat of the Southern Hemisphere.

Again, the setting here is well realised and intriguing, helpfully illustrated by  another of Aleksander Ptočnik's maps (though to call these gorgeous 3D realisations "maps" doesn't really convey their nature very well). 

For more information about The Broken River, see the publisher's website here.

#Review - Cover the Bones by Chris Hammer

Cover the Bones
Chris Hammer
Wildfire, 4 January 2024
Available as: HB, 512pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB): 9781472295712

I'm grateful to Wildfire for allowing me access to an advance e-copy of Cover the Bones to consider for review.

Happy New Year! I hope that you enjoyed the festive season. For my own part, while the rain and wind of a British Christmas lashed this damp island - just how many named storms did we get? - I was caught up in a drama unfolding in the heat of an Australian summer, where detectives Ivan Lucic and Nell Buchanan - Chris Hammer's dream team - were investigating the death off a young man found in an irrigation canal in the rural town of Yuwonderie. Local accountant Athol Hasluck has been tortured, stabbed and his body dumped. There are political sensitivities to the case - can Lucic and Buchanan find the killer before pressure begins to build on then - and before the Press take an interest?

Hammer unfolds his story across three timelines - the modern day investigation, set amidst a neat, prosperous town dominated by its Seven Families, the landowners who control the life-giving irrigation scheme; a 1990s segment focussing on the earlier lives of some of the same protagonists; and the early years of the 20th century, up to and into the First World War, this segment told in letters written by a young woman, Bessie, who's come to work as housekeeper on a local farm in the days before the ambitious irrigation scheme. At first it may seem a bit of a distraction but as you'll know if you're read Hammer's previous novels, the earlier sections are not just background, there is a complex story being explored in which the events of the present are built on the conflicts - and betrayals - of the past. In the course of constructing this narrative, Hammer creates an absorbing tapestry of Australian twentieth century history, dramatising conflicts over land - originally stolen, as one white landowner bluntly puts it, from the indigenous people - and water, the new source of wealth and power, one that's being wielded ruthlessly by those who control it. 

And money, of course - one can almost smell it around Yuwonderie, a pretty, planned town but with its ugly side, as farmers who can't air won't toe the line are denied the basic essentials of their calling. Yuwonderie is the short of place where awkward questions are seldom asked, and those who do ask them soon find themselves on the outside of things - or even disappearing altogether, as Davis, the designated heir of one of the Seven Families, discovers when he begins to look into the town's background. Money talks yes, but it can also command a profound silence.

All in all, a brilliant read, focussing on a complex and difficult investigation with both Ivan and Nell giving it all they've got (for the most part - Ivan has some family troubles which do destract him briefly, but almost catastrophically). Yuwonderie is a well realised and intriguing setting, helpfully illustrated by  another of Aleksander Ptočnik's maps (thought to call these gorgeous 3D realisations "maps" doesn't really convey their nature very well). 

If you're looking for something to distract you from a soggy British January, I'd strongly recommend "Cover the Bones".

For more information about Cover the Bones, see the publisher's website here.