Dirt Town by Hayley Scrivenor

 

Dirt Town by Hayley Scrivenor is another story of crime in a small Australian country town. Hayley Scrivenor has absolutely nailed it! Hayley has created the town of Durton, nicknamed Dirt Town by its inhabitants, seven hours west of Sydney and populated with interrelated families and others who have lived there either their entire lives or for many years. 

When a young girl goes missing DS Sarah Michaels and DC Wayne Smith who were on their way back to Sydney from another job are called in to investigate. Although Sarah is still suffering from the break up of a personal relationship she is able to channel her energy into the new assignment and she and DC Smith begin a thorough investigation into little Evelyn’s disappearance.

The plotting is superb with events over a four day period being shown from different points of view. I liked that something that was happening to one character at one time was then presented as happening to another character at the same time. Sarah Michaels keeps an open mind and has a notebook in which she draws triangles looking for relevancies in all the different pieces of information she is amassing.

Sarah also has an acute sense of smell which seems to help her, I guess, when she is building profiles. I completely identified with her reaction to car freshener, by the way.

Crime fiction is one of my favourite genres, and outback Australian crime fiction keeps getting better with each new voice. How lucky we are to have so many talented writers in our lives!

I highly recommend Dirt Town and, hopefully, Hayley Scrivenor will be following it up with lots more terrific books.

Published by Macmillan