Canticle Creek

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Canticle Creek is a brilliantly written police thriller that delivers a real sense of danger but also a powerful polemic on what man is doing to the environment. A novel deserving of a wide audience and certainly one of my favourite reads of the year. As the temperature soars, and the ground bakes, the wilderness surrounding Canticle Creek becomes a powderkeg waiting to explode. All it needs is one spark. 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. There is a lot to like about this novel. The cover (such a stunning cover, I’d have it as a print on my wall), the storyline, the characters – particularly Jesse and Possum, the art, the nature, the respect it shows to the First Nations people of Central Australia; this really is a terrific novel, one that I can highly recommend. 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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More direct than Disher, but really well written and plotted, with more twists and turns than many a country road! Canticle Creek is the first book in 10 years from Aussie author Adrian Hyland and it was well worth waiting for! A tension filled, suspenseful crime novel set in the ravaging heat of the Northern Territory and Victoria, where bushfires kept the locals on edge, and the heat baked everything in its path. I’ve read each of Mr Hyland’s books and loved them all; Canticle Creek, with its captivating cover, is one I recommend highly.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. Putting this at the top of my favourite Aussie thrillers. Beautifully written, and a magnificent MC. It’s not easy to do all of that!

Canticle Creek by Adrian Hyland | Waterstones

With her father, Jesse visits Canticle Creek to understand, and unravels many other mysteries and knots of a typical small community. Whether Jesse survives the hardships she faced and solves the mystery makes the plot of the book. 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. The story focuses on the death of Daisy Baker. Adam, a relative newcomer in town, is also found dead next to her body with Daisy's blood on his hands, and it doesn't take long for the local police to jump to conclusions. Case Study will fascinate anyone with an interest in the radical psychiatry that went hand in glove with ’60s counterculture. It’s a disorienting, darkly funny novel, constructing a tale about the labyrinth of identity within the game-like frame of metafiction. An author becomes obsessed with writing about an enfant terrible of psychiatry, one Collins Braithwaite, and stumbles across notebooks from a peculiar case. A young woman calling herself Rebecca presents for treatment as one of Braithwaite’s clients, but she is really gunning for the charismatic shrink himself. Rebecca is convinced her sister, Veronica, a former patient who committed suicide, was driven over the edge by him. Determined to bring him down, she initiates a game of cat-and-mouse between therapist and client – one that hangs on the monkey bars of literary and psychiatric satire before falling onto sharper philosophical ground.The novel is set in Australia and the author does a fantastic job of transporting you there through vivid descriptions of what is a beautiful country. Canticle Creek is a gripping murder mystery, just a brief examination of the crime scene is enough to convince Jesse that the police, who believe Adam killed his girlfriend, Daisy, and died when his car left the road as he attempted to flee, are wrong. Looking for an alternative narrative, Jesse puts several of the locals, and a Melbourne mobster, offside as she noses around the small community.