Just a moment please, while I recover from the powerful, dramatic and ultimately heart wrenching conclusion to Red Lake, a quite brilliant new Australian crime novel by Jason Summers.
The town of Koorinda in the Riverina district of New South Wales skirts Lake Koorinda, or Red Lake as it is known because the red brown earth and red clay loam of the area make the water in the lake look red. The town’s big attraction is a water park, with dips and slides and especially one huge slide which tests the bravery of the local children. It is there, one day in 1989, that Harper goes with her little brother, Nick, to the top of the tower while their parents wait below for them to emerge from the slide.
So begins a story which has consequences that are still being felt thirty seven years later, by which time Harper and her husband, Darren, are the parents of an eighteen-year-old son, Will. Harper had been a well respected detective in Sydney before she decided to come back to Koorinda with Darren and Will. She is happy with her job as a sergeant with the local police, Darren is doing well as a builder and Will is in his last year at high school. Will has a 19-year-old girlfriend, Camilla, who is a junior reporter at the local newspaper. When a murder is discovered at Red Lake Harper is considered too close to the case and is asked to step back and make way for detectives from Sydney.
I love murder mysteries and Red Lake is a stunning addition to the genre. Momentum builds slowly and by the end of the book I was emotionally engaged, to say the least. But wait: that wasn’t quite the end of the book, and by the real end my emotions (tears) came spilling out and, as I said at the start of this review, I had to take some time out to recover.
It really is that good.
Published by Pan Macmillan
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