By S.R. White
Published by Headline https://www.headline.co.uk/ @headlinepg
307 pages ISBN 9781472291158
Publication date 16 February 2023
Red Dirt Road is the third novel featuring Dana Russo. Click on the link for my review of the first novel in the series Hermit.
I was allowed access to a pdf review copy on Net Galley. Thanks to the Author and Publisher for organising this.
The cover
Simple but perfect. The endless blue sky, the sun beaten dusty landscape and the sense of complete isolation.
From the blurb
In Unamurra, a drought-scarred, one-pub town deep in the outback, two men are savagely murdered a month apart – their bodies elaborately arranged like angels.
With no witnesses, no obvious motives and no apparent connections between the killings, how can lone police officer Detective Dana Russo – flown in from hundreds of kilometres away – possibly solve such a baffling, brutal case?
Met with silence and suspicion from locals who live by their own set of rules, Dana must take over a stalled investigation with only a week to make progress.
But with a murderer hiding in plain sight, and the parched days rapidly passing, Dana is determined to uncover the shocking secrets of this forgotten town – a place where anyone could be a killer.
My thoughts
Unamurra is an outback town that is dying. Five years of drought have slowly sucked the life out of it. Whilst never prosperous, when there was rain then the farming, cattle ranching, was possible and from this all the businesses needed by a small-town community could function. The butcher, baker and garage have all closed in desperation, only the pub and attached shop, run by Annie, remain open. In some respects, Annie is the heartbeat of what is left of the community, even delivering cooked meals to the old and housebound.
This death can be seen in small communities around the world, work dries up so the young, ambitious and skilled move away. Those that are left are the old, the less mobile or those who feel tied to the land or the town. Once the decline starts the end seems to be inevitable, property prices decline, it becomes cheap to buy but like The Hotel California you can’t leave, people become trapped. Now there are just 50 souls tied to Unamurra, together with some ranches but these can be many kilometres away. They pray for rain, a rain that is long overdue, that will bring some respite, but that is all it will be, even though some of the inhabitants delude themselves that all will be well.
The State Government’s answer to the re-generation is an art project, Axel DuBois’ angels. Ludicrous of course, but we have all seen these sort of crazy ideas and spending before. Fate is sealed when two men are murdered a month apart and their bodies displayed on frames just like the angel artwork. Two local officers investigate and are clueless in more ways than one. Dana Russo’s boss wants to get rid of her so what better case for her to fail on than a review of this impossible one. A case it seems nobody wants solving.
This is very much a slow burning novel but one to stick with. The murders have happened and there is little by way of traditional thriller action. Instead, it concentrates upon the investigation and a deep examination into life in a dying town. It excels in its descriptive passages where it brings the book cover to life, the oppressive heat, the desolation, the endless barren countryside. The reader also gets the sense of people who have given up but don’t want to acknowledge it, who rely on Annie and a few neighbours.
The investigation itself is an oddity, it doesn’t follow a traditional police procedural form, far from it. The local officer, Able, assigned to assist Dana cannot understand her approach to questioning. Her questioning is somewhat oblique and not the questions he would have expected. Dana’s investigation technique is special, a holistic approach which includes psychology and body language as much as evidence and clues. He doubts her capacity to solve the case whilst Dana is unsure if she can trust Able who was side lined from the original investigation. Their building of a mutual understanding is core to the story, they need each other. It requires the outsider Dana to bring some resolution, but as an insider will Able become collateral damage in the process.
The plot is cleverly constructed. The pool of suspects is small so the reader could well guess the killer, it is the methodology and motivation that matter and that is well described. Dana’s approach is very much that of a free thinker and threequarters through she gets the lightbulb moment as the jigsaw pieces click together in her mind. Some of the clues are there to pick up on and she asks Lucy to do investigations for her which the reader is not party to until the end. Some might see this as a dishonest approach, like some of the Victorian/Edwardian era novels where the detective would make impossible deductions that reader cannot pick up on. Here it is Dana being intuitive and the clues are there and Lucy finding the supporting evidence, thereby cutting out the dull bits.
It is all explained in the reveal, which isn’t really a reveal but a confrontation, where Dana and Able put the case to her suspect. A real sense of tension built up here as Dana’s points are rebuffed but she keeps plugging away until the facade starts to crumble and the person beneath is exposed. This is a masterclass in producing a gripping finale with zero thrills and spills but all the while leaving a question of doubt.
Red Dirt Road is a cerebral crime story set in a dusty barren landscape you can almost touch.
Red Dirt Road can be purchased direct from the publisher here.
The author
S. R. White’s debut novel, HERMIT, was a top ten bestseller in Australia and nominated for the Crime Writers’ Association award for the best crime novel by a first-time author. He now lives in Queensland, having worked for a UK police force for twelve years before taking an MA in Creative Writing at Nottingham Trent University.
Source: Publisher’s website
Peter turns the page 