Canticle Creek

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With plenty of healthy descriptions of the surrounding natural landscape, which is further compounded by the piecing heat, the sense of place is overwhelming in this tale. The plot is well written with other memorable characters, moving along at a good pace with increasing tension as further deaths occur and Jesse herself becomes a target. She becomes involved in a murder investigation in country Victoria after a young man, Adam, she knows from NT is the main suspect. The readers of Canticle Creek will continue to follow Jesse Redpath's investigation to find out what happens. Adam had hitched a ride to Victoria with a girl he’d recently met and was now being accused of her murder, then after stealing her car, he lost control of it on a nearby country road and crashed killing himself outright.

Later, Jesse’s informed that Adam has murdered a woman, stolen her car, and then crashed it and died near Canticle Creek in Victoria.There were sulphur-crested women with orange skin and hazardous heels, feral businessmen with titanium teeth and statement ties. Also, the readers will understand that they can not save everyone if they do not want to help themselves. I did read in his acknowledgements a the end of the story that he received help and advice from Indigenous People and this has been incorporated into the story so well.

I had read some good reviews of this novel and the author is a previous award winner so I thought I would try it. After a gap of ten years, author Adrian Hyland makes a welcome reappearance thanks to his latest crime fiction release, Canticle Creek. The last time he fell foul of the law, a few months earlier, Jesse stood up for him in front of the judge, and then found him a job and a place to stay with her artist father. 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. You can almost feel the blanketing heat and crunch of dry foliage underfoot while reading Canticle Creek .

Supported in her determination by her father, they end up staying in the small artistic community that Daisy and Adam had lived in, digging into some dodgy logging practices, unearthing some suspect connections to Melbourne mobsters along the way. Despite Lawson being a well-known local criminal, police officer Jesse had always believed there was more to Adam Lawson than petty crime. As the temperature soars, and the ground bakes, the wilderness surrounding Canticle Creek becomes a powder keg waiting to explode. Jesse Redpath was a police officer in the small town of Kulara in the Northern Territory where she saw more than most and controlled more than most. As Jesse made herself known to the local cops, she made some friends – and enemies - while investigating.