Tag: Chris Hammer

Book review: Trust by Chris Hammer

On By rlsmithwritingIn ReviewsLeave a comment

Trust is book #3 (following Scrublands and Silver)of Chris Hammer’s Martin Scarsden series. If you’re not a ‘series person’, Trust is also perfectly readable as a standalone. The thing I love most about Hammer’s novels is their tightly woven, complex plotting, and book #3 did no disappoint. 

I liked him. He had a commitment to the truth. Lawyers don’t, as a rule: we just seek and reward the better argument.

When Martin listens to a phone message from his partner Mandy and hears a terrified scream, he races back to their isolated house on the hill to find her missing, and an unconscious policemen on the floor. He goes in search of Mandy and finds himself in Sydney. Meanwhile Mandy’s kidnappers reveal themselves to be violent people from a past she’s been trying to forget, and they have tentacles reaching into her and Martin’s present lives.

They didn’t live quarantined from the consequences of their actions; they could not travel unimpeded to new worlds; there was no vaccine against the past.

What ensues is a fight for survival in a plot mired in power-games, greed, corruption, privilege and fraud. Martin and Mandy must uncover the truth in order to free themselves from the past.

Trust is fast paced, action packed, Australian noir, with a dense plot that takes the reader on a roller-coaster ride. A novel for crime fiction lovers.

Book review: Silver by Chris Hammer

On By rlsmithwritingIn ReviewsLeave a comment

When a book has a sequel, you can’t really just read one in the series…

Silver follows on from Chris Hammer’s Scrublands with protagonist Martin Scarsden. In Silver we pick up a few months later. Martin is in a relationship with Mandalay, the beautiful single mum who ran the bookshop in Riversend. Mandalay inherited a fortune, including a house in the town that Martin grew up in – Port Silver. Martin hasn’t returned to Port Silver since he left to become a journalist, and to escape his traumatic childhood.

For a moment Martin sees the two towns superimposed: the tough working-class community of his youth and the gentrified retirement village it is becoming. Some fairy godmother has visited in his absence, sprinkling the silver pixie dust of family trusts, self-managed superfunds and negative gearing, but sprinkling it unevenly.

Mandalay moves to Port Silver with her son while Martin is in Sydney finishing writing a book about his experience in Riversend. The day Martin arrives at Mandalay’s rental in Port Silver, he finds a man murdered on the entryway floor. The dead guy is an old friend of his from school, and he and Mandalay become suspects. Martin needs to solve the case to save Mandalay from suspicion.

Love ’em, look after ’em, support ’em. Set ’em straight when they need it. But don’t think you can change them. They’re who they always were. Simple as that.

As with the Hammer’s first novel, Silver has many interwoven and complex plots and themes (cults, real estate speculation, greed, corruption, drugs, class divides) and a caste of interesting three dimensional characters to keep the reader engaged. In Silver, the main character Martin also has some unresolved history to deal with, so there is plenty of high stakes emotion and drama.

Book Review: Scrublands By Chris Hammer

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Australian noir, Scrublands by Chris Hammer has one of the most compellingly visual openings of a crime fiction novel that I have read. A hot dry country town, a gathering Sunday congregation, and a murderous priest.

Byron Swift has changed into his robes, crucifix glinting as its catches the sun, and he’s carrying a gun, a high-powered hunting rifle with a scope. It makes no sense to Landers; he’s still confused as Swift raises the gun to his shoulder and calmly shoots Horrie Grosvenor from a distance of no more than fives metres.

Journalist Martin Scarsden visits Riversend a year after a mass killing. He’s been tasked with writing a human interest story on how the town is going in the aftermath of its young priest gunning down five men outside his church one Sunday. Scarsden had been a roaming journalist reporting on conflict zones until an incident in Gaza left him with PTSD. The assignment to Riversend is a chance to help him get out of the office and find his feet again.

Riversend is hot, dry and depressing. A dying town hiding a lot more than a murderous priest. Why did the priest who was popular with the local youth, police, and many of the locals murder all those men?

He looks up at the hotel; there is no sign of life. What must it be to live in this town? To be young and live in this town? Every day, the same stifling heat, the same inescapable familiarity, the same will-sapping predictability.

The stories Scarsden hears from the caste of cagey and eccentric locals don’t marry up the public narrative first reported about the incident. There is Mandalay, the beautiful single mum who runs the bookshop, the local copper and hero, Robbie, who killed the priest to end his killing spree, the wily old dero, Snouch who loiters in the shuttered up Wine Saloon, and Codger the old man living alone (and mostly naked) in the remote scrublands.

As Scarsden begins to unpack the story, and wrestle with his own demons, another tragedy strikes and masses of media descent on the town, throwing Scarsden into the spotlight. His reasons for finding out what really happened suddenly become very personal – his reputation depends on it.

Who knows what dark thoughts and obsessions can take hold in the small hours of the morning, when the mind chases itself down dark passageways and perspective is lost?

Scrublands has many complex, interwoven plot lines that make the reader think and keep them guessing, and Hammer’s attention to detail in building the world of Riversend is absorbing. Published in 2018, Scrublands won the 2019 CWA Dagger New Blood Award for Best First Crime Novel. It is a compelling read and has recently been made into a series showing on STAN.