JESS JUST READS

A BOOK REVIEW BLOG

Treasure and Dirt by Chris Hammer

In the desolate outback town of Finnigans Gap, police struggle to maintain law and order. Thieves pillage opal mines, religious fanatics recruit vulnerable young people and billionaires do as they please.

Then an opal miner is found crucified and left to rot down his mine. Nothing about the miner’s death is straightforward, not even who found the body. Sydney homicide detective Ivan Lucic is sent to investigate, assisted by inexperienced young investigator Nell Buchanan.

But Finnigans Gap has already ended one police career and damaged others, and soon both officers face damning allegations and internal investigations. Have Ivan and Nell been set up and, if so, by whom?

As time runs out, their only chance at redemption is to find the killer. But the more secrets they uncover, the more harrowing the mystery becomes, as events from years ago take on a startling new significance.

For in Finnigans Gap, opals, bodies and secrets don’t stay buried forever.

Master of crime fiction, Chris Hammer returns with his latest novel – Treasure and Dirt. Once again set in a rural, desolate Australian town, the novel centres around an unexplained murder and a town full of people desperate to keep their secrets hidden.

Because I read – and loved – Chris’ first novel Scrublands, I was of course eager to read his latest. Despite his novels being quite long and complex, it’s so easy to bury yourself in the book from cover to cover. Usually, the stories are never just about one murder, or one mystery. There’s a long history of mysterious activity in Chris’ books, and so you know you’re in for a great read.

“The motel is called The Golden View, except there is no view. Ivan is happy to ignore the lack of a vista: it’s modern and well-maintained, somehow incongruous in the jumble-sale aesthetic of the town, sitting on The Way, east from the crossroads, where the road is still sealed.”

Chris’ characters are complex, well-rounded and they always lead his novels well. You don’t want a character to be too eccentric, because crime fiction feels like it should be as much about the plot and the secondary characters as it is about the protagonists. Together, Ivan and Nell create quite an interesting dynamic as they work to solve the murder of a local opal miner found crucified deep within his mine.

Ivan is guarded but trusting, and Nell feels like she has to prove herself amongst the other police officers. She’s accelerated quite quickly in her career, but she still has a lot to learn.

As with Chris’ other novels, setting is a strong element in Treasure and Dirt. You can feel the humidity and the dry, scorched landscape – you can almost feel the taste of thirst on your tongue, and the desire for air conditioner in hot cars.

“The police station is deserted when they pull up outside. No other cars, just them. Beside him, Nell leaves the engine running, not even asking: the air conditioner is essential. It’s past five, but there’s no sign of the day cooling. Here, in the hollow of the town, the sun will soon dip behind the West Ridge, promising some relief.”

I’ll admit, the intimate discussions towards the end of the novel around the stock market and fraud went over my head. And I wouldn’t say mining is a huge interest of mine. But regardless, Chris pulls together an incredibly compelling set of events to engage even the most reluctant of readers.

Some might argue there’s too much going on in the novel, but I think that’s a trademark for Chris Hammer because it’s something I recognised in Scrublands. The heightened complexity of his stories allows for a high-pressure, high stakes suite of novels. The multi-layered nature of his work means you’ll always feel unprepared for what’s next, which is a gift in crime fiction.

“Nell looks at Ivan’s face, sees the concentration there, stark in the torchlight. She wonders what he might be thinking, what significance he’s reading into the link between the mines. But she finds herself unable to ask, to break his train of thought. There is something solitary about him, something that forbids intrusion.”

Atmospheric, gritty and criminally gripping, Treasure and Dirt will please fans of crime, thriller and mystery. Readership skews male, 20+

Thank you to the publisher for mailing me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

Treasure and Dirt
Chris Hammer
October 2021
Allen & Unwin Book Publishers

The One Impossible Labyrinth by Matthew Reilly

THE END IS HERE

Jack West Jr has made it to the Supreme Labyrinth.

Now he faces one last race – against multiple rivals, against time, against the collapse of the universe itself – a headlong race that will end at a throne inside the fabled labyrinth.

AN IMPOSSIBLE MAZE

But the road will be hard.

For this is a maze like no other: a maze of mazes. Uncompromising and complex. Demanding and deadly.

A CATACLYSMIC CONCLUSION

It all comes down to this.

For it ends here – now – in the most lethal and dangerous place Jack has encountered in all of his many adventures. And in the face of this indescribable peril, with everything on the line, there is only one thing he can do.

Attempt the impossible.

After seven books, Matthew Reilly’s The One Impossible Labyrinth is the final tale in the Jack West Jr series. After a 17-year long journey, this final book offers a satisfying conclusion to the series and will please fans who have been following along with each novel.

As usual with this series, The One Impossible Labyrinth picks up where the last book — The Two Lost Mountains — left off, with Jack and his team arriving at the last puzzle in an attempt to stop the collapse of the universe. We’re immediately thrust back into the action of the story.

This final novel speeds through obstacles and puzzles, weaving in historical storylines and the potential for alternate scenarios. Jack West Jr must once again think outside the box to save the day.

“Down in the shaft, Jack snapped up at the shout. And saw a silverman falling right at him! Suddenly, a strong metal hand — Smiley’s — pulled Jack aside and the falling silverman whistled past, missing Jack by inches — before plummeting further down the shaft.”

The One Impossible Labyrinth is a classic Matthew Reilly novel — quick, compelling storylines with imaginative and engaging puzzles. The book is filled with fast-paced action and authentic, realistic dialogue. Additionally, like all other novels in this series, the pacing is break-neck and consistent. Readers won’t feel like there are any lags in this latest one.

The villains in the novel have carried across from previous reads, so it allows for three-dimensional characters that truly feel like antagonists. Jack and his team must utilise the skills and knowledge they’ve acquired over the previous six books in order to defeat the enemy.

“Each of the obelisks was huge, easily forty feet tall, and they ran in pairs down the length of the bridge, creating a striking avenue. Lily and Eaton came to the jagged void in the bridge’s middle. Two obelisks stood at its edge like posts for a missing gate.”

Admittedly, the ending was slightly predictable — whilst some of our favourite characters were killed dramatically throughout the novel, the ‘bad guys’ all got their comeuppance in the end (although, admittedly, that does suit this genre).

Apart from the that, I felt there was definitely scope for a longer, more developed novel. Each stage of Jack’s journey felt a bit thinly described to keep the pace quick, but it meant I was left feeling like the action could’ve been fleshed out a bit more. Perhaps I just feel like this because I’ve been following the series for 17 years and was sad to see it ending.

“Even though it had a parachute, the seat landed hard, and as it hit the side of the mountain, the impact sent the three men on it scattering: Aloysius and Alby tumbled down the rocky hill, while Rufus was thrown onto a nearby ledge. Alby was knocked out cold. He slumped to the dusty ground.”

Since this is the final book in a 7-book series, it’s pretty clear that the intended audience are readers who are up-to-date with Jack West Jr. If you love action and thriller, and something easy to read perhaps on holiday, I’d definitely recommended picking up the first book — Seven Deadly Wonders — and giving this series a go. Another nail-biter from Matthew Reilly, the readership for this book skews male, 16+

Thank you to the publisher for sending me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

The One Impossible Labyrinth
Matthew Reilly
October 2021
Pan Macmillan

2 Sisters Detective Agency by James Patterson and Candice Fox

Two sisters go into the family business they didn’t know they had – catching killers. Attorney Rhonda Bird returns home to LA to bury her estranged father, and discovers that he left her two final surprises.

The first is a private detective agency. The second is a teenage half-sister named Baby.
When Rhonda goes into her father’s old office to close down the business, she gets drawn into a case involving a young man who claims he was abducted.

The investigation takes Rhonda and Baby to dark and dangerous places. Soon they are caught in the crosshairs of an angry criminal cartel and an ex-assassin seeking revenge . . .

Renowned suspense writers James Patterson and Candice Fox unite once again for the 2 Sisters Detective Agency, which follows a revenge-driven father as he hunts down his daughter’s attackers, and a young public defender whose father’s death unearths dangerous family secrets. Over time, the two timelines begin to intersect.

The novel features quite a large cast of eccentric characters – the tall, pink-haired and striking public defender, her savvy half-sister, and a psychotic, budding murderer lacking any remorse. Don’t expect every character to survive.

“Vera arrived late. She always did. She liked to keep them waiting, give them an opportunity to talk about her. The more people talked about you while you weren’t around, the more mythical you became. The more powerful.”

Whilst the story is complex and it does take a bit of time to wrap your head around the two unfolding storylines, this does allow for a complex but satisfying thriller. Each chapter is quite short, allowing for a quick and punchy read.

The strongest character probably should’ve been Rhonda, but personally, I loved Vera the most. Young, dangerous but very intelligent, she’s found her passion in being a criminal. She’s experimenting more and more, hurting people she feels deserve it but feeling no remorse for her actions. When she and her ‘crew’ break into the home of ex-assassin Jacob Kanular, it sets off a high-stakes game of cat-and-mouse that puts her entire group at jeopardy.

Rhonda’s storyline is not as fast-paced; it’s a mixture of plot-driven and character-driven. When her father, who she hasn’t seen or communicated with in twenty-five years, dies, she’s forced to take on his business and custody of his teenage daughter – Rhonda’s half-sister, who she didn’t know existed. So whilst she becomes entangled in a deranged murder plot, she’s also trying to navigate the sudden existence of a teenage sibling whose safety is her responsibility.

“Another thunk behind him. Another into the boulders of granite either side of him. He followed the narrow natural trail, stumbling over cactus and rocks, falling and getting up and pulling himself onward as the shots followed him into the night.”

Admittedly, where the story falters is the POV shift between chapters. The novel largely follows Rhonda and her chapters are written in first person. But occasionally there are other chapters following Jacob or Vera, or someone else from Vera’s crew, and they’re written in third person. This stylistic decision felt really disjointed and often I started a chapter with absolutely no idea whose story I was following – it would’ve been really helpful if each new chapter had the characters’ name alongside the chapter number, so we knew whose story we were now jumping to.

Other than this, I felt like Baby’s characterisation was a bit caricature and unnatural – she gets better throughout the novel, but when we meet her she seems like a stereotypical depiction of a teenager, and not very three-dimensional.

The only other element that I felt was a bit liming was the romance in the novel. It was small and almost inconsequential. It bubbled so late in the novel it didn’t seem realistic, and I feel like if you took it out of the book it’d make no difference.

“Jacob felt his lip twitch. It was the only outward sign of the boiling, searing rise of fury inside him, the stirring of old reserves of killer rage. He rolled the video back.”

Fast-paced and high stakes, 2 Sisters Detective Agency is recommended for readers of crime and thriller. Readership skews 30+

Thank you to the publisher for mailing me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

2 Sisters Detective Agency
James Patterson & Candice Fox
October 2021
Penguin Random House Publishers

Cutters End by Margaret Hickey

A desert highway. A remote town. A murder that won’t stay hidden.

New Year’s Eve, 1989. Eighteen-year-old Ingrid Mathers is hitchhiking her way to Alice Springs. Bored, hungover and separated from her friend Joanne, she accepts a lift to the remote town of Cutters End.

July 2021. Detective Sergeant Mark Ariti is seconded to a recently reopened case, one in which he has a personal connection. Three decades ago, a burnt and broken body was discovered in scrub off the Stuart Highway, 300km south of Cutters End. Though ultimately ruled an accidental death, many people – including a high-profile celebrity – are convinced it was murder.

When Mark’s interviews with the witnesses in the old case files go nowhere, he has no choice but to make the long journey up the highway to Cutters End.

And with the help of local Senior Constable Jagdeep Kaur, he soon learns that this death isn’t the only unsolved case that hangs over the town…

Set in the South Australian outback, Margaret Hickey’s Cutters End transports us to rural Australia and centres around a suspicious death thirty years earlier. At the time it was ruled an accident, but what really happened along that deserted and dusty highway? Was the death of Michael Denby really an accident?

This novel falls fairly easily into the rural crime and Australian Outback noir genre, and doesn’t stray too far from the stereotypical elements of the space — the flawed male detective with a troubling marriage, a young woman holding a few too many secrets, a decades-old cold case that remains unsolved, and the desolate town filled with sketchy inhabitants. You’ll know from simply glancing at the cover whether this is novel you’ll want to read.

Cutters End is definitely a commercial novel and will find many valued readers looking for some sort of escapism. This would be a great book to gift for Father’s Day.

“She returned to her papers, indecisive. Since Mark’s visit, and perhaps just before, she sensed that her life was becoming unstuck. Her hand rested on the photograph from the old newspaper clipping. Nothing seemed definite and the resolve she’d enjoyed for a number of years was slipping.”

With all rural thrillers, setting is integral. Get that wrong and you’ve lost the atmosphere. In Cutters End, Margaret captures the thick heat and humidity of rural Australia with ease — the desolate town and its silences, the houses and businesses few and far in between, with plenty of distance and solitude to commit a crime and keep it hidden. Everyone knows each other and secrets can remain hidden for years.

In most rural thrillers, evidence is lacking so the story relies on the protagonist slowly unravelling the crime secret-by-secret, and this usually stems from townsfolk. In Cutters End, whilst some evidence reveals itself over the course of the novel, Mark’s interactions with other characters and his ability to piece together clues helps him solve the crime.

“The phone rang: his mother. Mark felt the familiar pang of guilt that she was calling him and not the other way around. His mother still lived in Booralama, the country town he grew up in. The rose gardens, the long, slow, winding river and the old gum trees — the town never failed to fill him with fault nostalgia for all things young and free.”

Told with a dual timeline, moving between the 1980s/1990s and the present allows Margaret to reflect on each era. In the past, hitchhiking was incredibly common but posed significant dangers for young women. Additionally, women who were abused or hurt were rarely believed, so it was easier for crimes to go unpunished. The present storyline follows a fairly standard kind of procedural pace, with Mark finding similarities between the events in Cutters End and the notorious Milat backpacker murders.

Admittedly, I did feel like a couple of loose threads undervalued the rest of the novel, particularly around TV presenter Suzanne Miller and her interest in the case. She’s in one scene and we barely hear from her again. I felt there was a missed opportunity to incorporate her into the story, because at present it feels like you could cull her and it’d barely make a difference. Secondly, Mark’s relationship with his wife felt thinly developed, and their storyline as a whole could’ve been explored a bit more.

“As the dark paddocks rolled on by, gradually giving way to subdivisions and then traffic, he thought about his own lack of resolve over the years. He seemed to float along; things came to him and he accepted them as par for the course.”

Pacy, intriguing and exhilarating, Cutters End is recommended for fans of rural crime, such as Jane Harper, Chris Hammer and Greg Buchanan. Readership skews 25+

Thank you to the publisher for sending me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

Cutters End
Margaret Hickey
August 2021
Penguin Random House Publishers

Billy Summers by Stephen King

Billy Summers is a man in a room with a gun. He’s a killer for hire and the best in the business. But he’ll do the job only if the target is a truly bad guy. And now Billy wants out. But first there is one last hit. Billy is among the best snipers in the world, a decorated Iraq war vet, a Houdini when it comes to vanishing after the job is done. So what could possibly go wrong?

How about everything.

This spectacular can’t-put-it-down novel is part war story, part love letter to small town America and the people who live there, and it features one of the most compelling and surprising duos in King fiction, who set out to avenge the crimes of an extraordinarily evil man. It’s about love, luck, fate, and a complex hero with one last shot at redemption.

You won’t put this story down, and you won’t forget Billy.

Stephen King’s latest thriller, Billy Summers, follows an ex-marine contract killer whose final kill turns out to be more complex than originally planned.

When Billy is offered an extraordinary amount of money to kill a convicted killer, he bunkers down in an office building for months under a new identity — he’s pretending to be a man writing a novel, so people won’t suspect him of foul play and he’ll have optimal range when it comes time to make the shot.

But there’s something about this one last job that feels uncomfortable. The escape plan seems foolproof, but Billy has an inkling he’s being played. And soon after he kills his target, it’s about more than just survival. This is where the novel really picks up.

“Hoff smiles. Probably it’s charming when he’s on his game but he’s not on it now. He’s in a room with a paid killer. That’s part of it but not all of it. This is a man who feels the walls closing in, and Billy doesn’t think it’s because Hoff suspects he might be played for a patsy. He should know but he doesn’t.”

Billy Summers is a little slow for the first third, but once Billy completes the kill he was hired for, the pacing quickens, the stakes heighten, and the novel gets very good. We meet a new character, Alice — she’s wounded, broken, complex and she offers something fresh to the novel. It’s hard to talk about the rest of the novel without giving spoilers away, but the story does venture into really dark territory, particularly pertaining to Alice.

She does, however, offer some light in the novel. Together, Billy and Alice compliment each other as they work to deal with the fallout of recent events. The novel would’ve felt a bit limiting or lonely if Billy remained solo for his journey, so the introduction of another major character was no doubt a stylistic decision to keep the story moving in an interesting and inviting way, but also to allow the chance for Billy to grow and reflect as a character. Being around Alice resembles some sort of father-daughter bond, and we witness them both grow over the course of the story.

“At some point during that summer — his season of many identities — Billy re-reads the story of Bob Raines’ death and the hearing that followed. Then he goes to the window and looks out at the courthouse, where a sheriff’s car has pulled up to the curb.”

Admittedly, there are a few moments in the book that feel a little out of joint. King suggests some sort of attraction between Billy and Alice, which doesn’t feel natural — in a post-MeToo era, this element of the book does feel a little dated and inappropriate. And the scene where Billy takes Alice in after she’s been attacked, and then examines her body and describes it to the reader, didn’t feel overly necessary. Lastly, Alice seems really eager to join Billy on his endeavours, despite knowing him very little.

“He thinks briefly of deleting everything he’s written, it’s awful, but saves it instead. He doesn’t know what anyone else might think, but Billy thinks it’s good. And good that it’s awful, because awful is sometimes the truth.”

Recommended for readers of thriller and crime. Billy Summers is a little different to the horror and fantasy reads that fans of Stephen King will be accustomed to, but I do think his fanbase will enjoy this latest offering. Readership skews male, 25+

Thank you to the publisher for sending me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

Billy Summers
Stephen King
August 2021
Hachette Book Publishers