Title: CONSOLATION
Author: Gary Disher
Publisher: Serpent’s Tail
Read: June 2021
Expected publication: out now
My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟
Book Description:
Winter in Tiverton.
Constable Paul Hirschhausen has a snowdropper on his patch. Someone is stealing
women’s underwear, and Hirsch knows enough about that kind of crime—how it can
escalate—not to take it lightly.
But the more immediate concerns are a call from the high school, a teacher
worried about a student who may be in danger at home. Another call, a different
school: a man enraged about the principal’s treatment of his daughter.
A little girl in harm’s way and an elderly woman in danger. An absent father
who isn’t where he’s supposed to be; another who flees to the back country
armed with a rifle. Families under pressure. And the cold, seeping feeling that
something is very, very wrong.
My musings:
Three things made me fall instantly in love with
the Paul Hirschhausen series: 1) it’s set in rural Australia; 2) Hirsch is just
such a decent, likeable cop who really cares about his community; 3) the events
happening in the series are not far-fetched, twisty stories but reflect the
darker side of a real-life small community (it’s all very relatable). Plus,
Garry Disher is a seasoned author who knows how to spin a good yarn!
In the midst of a cold, South
Australian winter, Constable Paul Hirschhausen (“Hirsch”) has a few problems on
his hands. Someone in the community has been stealing old ladies’ knickers off
their clotheslines, leaving the senior citizens of Tiverton and Redruth up in
arms. On top of that, Hirsch is sent on a welfare check to a remote farmhouse
to address a teacher’s concerns about one of her home-schooled pupils. And, just
as he is trying to sort these issues out, a parent goes berserk at the local
school, prompting pupils and teachers to barricade themselves inside the
classrooms until the fracas has died down. It’s all in a day’s work for Hisch,
who spends his days driving around the area to check on the vulnerable members
of his community and making sure that law and order is being upheld by the
rowdier ones.
There are many different storylines
and multiple characters that drive the many threads Disher weaves together in
CONSOLATION, which made for an intriguing and fast-paced read with the hallmark
atmospheric setting that makes this series so compelling. Disher isn’t out to
trick his readers with sleighs of hand, killer twists or red herrings galore, and
yet it takes a clever armchair detective to follow all the clues and solve the
mysteries in the same time as Hirsch does. I love Disher’s innate understanding
of the obstacles a lone copper in a small rural town faces on a daily basis:
the isolation, the weather, the fact that everyone knows everyone else’s
business, just to name a few. I also appreciated the undertone of menace as
evil crawls out of the cracks and makes the town an unsafe place.
CONSOLATION, just like its prequels,
is a novel that reads like a good yarn at the local pub, catching up on all the
town gossip, the speculation and the scandals. It’s both a comfort read as well
as one you will be loathe to put down because of the many different mysteries
Hirsch is juggling, and you really want to find out the answers.
Summary:
CONSOLATION has a little bit for everyone: crimes
to solve, lots of intriguing backstories, true to life characters and the bleak,
vast landscape that typifies Australian noir. I highly recommend this series to
readers who love an atmospheric read told by a master of the genre and led by
one of the most likeable small town cops you will ever encounter in a crime
novel. I look forward to my next Hirsch-fix!
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.
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