Absolutely no offence intended for anyone who writes or reads crime fic – I love it, and read a bunch of it. However, I already forgot how these ended, and I’ve read them in the last four weeks.
The Valley is the latest in Chris Hammer’s series of books starring Ivan & Nell, two detectives based out of Dubbo, servicing a large swath of rural NSW.
Hammer’s early Martin Scarsden books have recently been turned into direct-to-streaming movies, starting with Scrublands. If you saw that, and thought “man, CH just threw everything he could possibly think of at the wall, here!” well, I have good news. The transition to Ivan & Nell as protagonists, with the backup of the police force behind them, has meant that his novels have backed away a little from all of the twists and turns, as well as the requirement for the protagonist/s to be omniscient in order to solve the murder/s.
In fine Hammer tradition, this novel is told across two timelines. A crime from the past seems to haunt the future awfully often in HammerLand; it’s a wonder any of the characters think they have free will at all. That’s awfully snippy of me. I do actually enjoy these books.
One thing Hammer does incredibly well is create a small, utterly lived-in space that’s set against the incredible, cruel vastness of the Australian landscape. Past novels have been set in opal-mining country, or a dead town in the remote outback. I’ve often pushed back against Australian fiction (I really only enjoy two or three authors, with Jane Harper at the top of the list), but while the plots may follow something of a formula, the settings in a Hammer novel are exquisitely well-drawn.
The Valley of the title is another dead town, on the edge of a national park. Ivan and Nell are called in when an entrepreneur (former local made good) attempting to revitalise the valley with tourism is found murdered. The eventual resolution wraps around both Nell and the town’s history, but as I said, I already forgot the details. What I did walk away with was a deep desire to holiday or move to the Valley, a crystal-clear setting that has stuck with me.
Endgame, book four in Sarah Barrie’s Lexi Winters series, ties up all the loose threads dangled over the course of previous books, at the same time as resolving a crime that utterly infuriated me. I actually have found with this series that while the exact resolution to the crimes hasn’t stuck with me (and god help my goldfish brain, because I’ve read the whole thing twice), some of the crimes themselves have haunted me. They’re super creepy, or deserved vengeance is extracted, or both.
Lexi has come a long way since we met her in book one, having graduated the police academy and started detective training. She’s still way more inclined to ignore protocol if she thinks she can save a life, or accidentally smack a suspect’s head into the car door on the way in, but she’s managed to toe the line well enough that she’s on track for an official spot on the homicide squad.
Chased by a figure from her past who simply cant’ stop playing games with her, trying to solve a series of crimes that are making the team think she’s cracking under the pressure, and bedevilled by the girlfriend of her series long OTP, Lexi is contrived into the sort of lone wolf space in which she thrives. I want to talk about the girlfriend bit.
I think it took me 8 pages in book one to realise that the series was ending with the OTP of Lexi and this guy. Of course, there has to be a credible-threat girlfriend to add some tension to the will they/won’t they bubbling along in the background. However, turning EvilGF into a petty bitch and then demonising her for wanting to choose a career opportunity are two choices that were kind of uncalled for, IMO. Convenient, to have EvilGF there to feed into Lexi’s lone wolf syndrome; contrivance, to devise the job opportunity. Poorly handled, and the thing I’ve liked least in the series as a whole. I don’t want to throw internalised misogyny at a series that’s done so, so well at devising a heroine who saves her bloody self, but that cliched heel turn made me cross.
Regardless, I think the best thing I can tell you about this book, and by extension the series, is that I left it in my friend’s car at approx 4pm one afternoon. We were scheduled to meet up the next morning at around 11am, but I couldn’t wait, and bought the kindle version so I could immediately finish it. Totally compelling, kick arse heroine, and let me tell you, the people in this one who died? Good riddance, seriously.