Book Review: PEACE by Garry Disher

 

Title: PEACE

Author:  Garry Disher

Publisher:  Serpent’s Tail

Read: September 2020

Expected publication: 6 October 2020

My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟

 

Book Description:

 

Constable Paul Hirschhausen runs a one-cop station in the dry farming country south of the Flinders Ranges. He's still new in town but the community work-welfare checks and working bees-is starting to pay off. Now Christmas is here and, apart from a grass fire, two boys stealing a ute and Brenda Flann entering the front bar of the pub without exiting her car, Hirsch's life has been peaceful.

Until he's called to a strange, vicious incident in Kitchener Street. And Sydney police ask him to look in on a family living outside town on a forgotten back road.

Suddenly, it doesn't look like a season of goodwill at all.

What attracted me to this book:

 

I love nothing better than a compelling, gritty Australian thriller with an atmospheric setting, and I am happy to report that – TA DA! – this fitted that description to a T. An average rating of above 4 on Goodreads of the Paul Hirschhausen series should give you a good indication that this was a great read, and I am even more excited that there are already two more books out in this series!

My musings:

 

Set in a remote, rural South Australian town, it doesn’t get more atmospheric than this. Farms affected by drought and its many repercussions, small town politics and a cop who has been posted there as a punishment all set the stage perfectly. Hirsch was an enigmatic character I liked immediately, and I don’t think that anything could really ruffle his feathers too much as he always keeps a calm and composed demeanour even in circumstances that made my blood boil just reading about them. Starting off slowly with descriptions of the one-cop town Hirsch has been stationed in, and brimming with interesting hardy Aussie characters like you only find in the bush, the book inexorably wove its spell over me. By the time the book released its true grittiness, I was well and truly hooked and could not put it down!

 

Seeing how much I love rural Aussie crime, I cannot believe that I have never read any other books by Garry Disher before! It is obvious that he has an innate understanding of the bush and what makes people in rural areas of this vast land tick, because each and every character literally leapt off the pages. Some were so authentic that I was sure I had met them at some point during our own stints of living in remote Australia, which made it even more intriguing. But even if you have never set foot on Australian soil, Disher’s vivid descriptions of his setting and his cleverly constructed plot will soon catch you in their intricately woven web. For fans of more hyped up books, such as THE DRY or SCRUBLANDS, this is a must read!  Am willing to bet that you will enjoy this gritty tale equally as much.

 

 

Summary:

 

All in all, PEACE should be on every bookshelf of readers who love rural noir or who appreciate a great atmospheric small town setting. Don’t be fooled by the book’s innocuous start, because the gritty bits will soon be washed in by the tide and you will be swept up by the story and dumped back to shore, emotionally wrung out and probably tired from reading all night! I thoroughly enjoyed it and can’t wait to read the other books in the series.

 

 

 

Thank you to Netgalley and Serpent’s Tail for the free electronic copy of this novel and for giving me the opportunity to provide an honest review.