This book is great! Would definitely recommend. Thanks so much to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

Scrublands will be on my list of favorites next year!

After a traumatic event in Gaza, reporter Martin Scarsden is sent to Riversend, a small country town in Australia devastated by a long drought. A year earlier, a charismatic young Anglican priest had opened fire on the church steps--killing five men. Martin's assignment is to write about the the effects on the town a year later.

The question of "why" reverberates--why did Byron Swift shoot down the five men before being killed himself by his friend Constable Robbie Haus-Jones? Surprised by the response of various town members who still seem to admire and respect the young priest, Martin is perplexed.

The owner of the local bookshop urges Martin to investigate the why. Why a popular and beloved young man committed such a violent and senseless crime. A simple assignment is thereby turned on its head as Martin's own curiosity pulls him deeper into the story. Some things about the original story don't seem to fit, and Martin finds himself falling into a rabbit hole leading to more questions than answers.

Not wanting to give away too much, I found this one of the most fascinating and intricate novels I've read in a while. The descriptions of the small town of Riversend and the scrublands make the setting an essential part of the story, the characters are complex, and as other developments occur, the question of how everything fits together becomes more acute. The narrative keeps building, the puzzle more confounding, the action more intense.

Beautifully written, Chris Hammer's first novel is a gripping, curious, and complex tale that kept me engrossed.

Chris Hammer has worked as journalist for more than thirty years, alternating between covering federal politics and international affairs. Chris has worked as Senior Writer for The Age, Chief Political Correspondent for The Bulletin and Online Political Editor for Fairfax. As a roving international correspondent for SBS TV’s Dateline program, he reported from more than thirty countries across six continents.

Chris is the author of two successful and well-received non-fiction books, published by Melbourne University Press: The River: A Journey through the Murray-Darling Basin and The Coast: A Journey along Australia’s Eastern Shores. The River was shortlisted for the 2010 Walkley Book Award and won the ACT Book of the Year in 2011. The book recounts Chris’ travels through the Australian bush during 2008 and 2009, from Queensland to South Australia, at the height of the worst drought in Australian history. It’s those travels and the people he met that provided the inspiration, and inform the setting, for Chris’s first work of fiction, Scrublands. (source)

A stunning first novel and highly recommended.

NetGalley/Touchstone
Crime/Investigation. Jan. 8, 2018. Print length: 385 pages.

SCRUBLANDS
Chris Hammer
Touchstone Books
ISBN 978-1-5011-9674-4
Hardcover
Thriller

Chris Hammer is primarily known as an Australian journalist with well over three decades of experience in covering politics and international affairs. He has written two well-received non-fiction works concerning the geography and culture of areas of Australia, which is why SCRUBLANDS, his latest book, is a bit of a surprise. Unlike Hammer’s prior efforts, SCRUBLANDS is a work of fiction, and its setting is a small village in its late twilight, rather than an entire geographical region. Hammer’s focus, however, remains razor sharp in this slowly boiling tale of the secrets and vice beneath the surface of quiet habitats.

SCRUBLANDS third person present tense narrative follows Martin Scarsden, a somewhat troubled reporter on assignment in a one street town named Riversend. The name of the town is ironic, given the near drought conditions which have existed in the area during recent memory and contributed in part to the town’s decline. It is the “in part” qualifier which brings Scarsden to Riversend on the one-year anniversary of the town’s greatest tragedy. One year before, a priest assigned to the church there shot and killed five men without warning before Sunday morning services, before he himself was gunned down by the local constable. Scarsden’s assignment is simple enough. He is tasked with reporting how the remaining residents of the town are dealing with the aftermath of the tragedy which touched literally everyone there and which still resonates along the town’s main street, particularly since the reason for the priest’s actions died with him. Scarsden, still somewhat traumatized from his experiences as a war correspondent in Afghanistan, quickly finds himself tempted to color outside the lines of his assignment. He slowly and tentatively --- at least at first --- begins to probe what may have caused the priest to suddenly commit mayhem in full view of his arriving congregation. Discovering the truth is not easy. It seems as if everyone in the town is living a lie, some of which have nothing to do with the murders but which nonetheless adversely impact upon Scarsden’s efforts to uncover the truth. When the bodies of a pair of hitchhikers who had gone missing around the time of the dramatic mass murder are also uncovered it appears that their deaths may have been connected to the Sunday morning killings as well. Things change quickly, however, and the story which Scarsden is reporting is a fluid one so that what seemed to be true on one day is revealed to be false the next. Scarsden soon finds that he himself is part of the story, and not in a good way, and the mysteries that surround the time seem to multiply exponentially by the hour. Each is gradually solved, until the main mystery --- the priest’s motive for the Sunday morning murders --- is all that remains. The story is part Matryoshka, part origami, one that unfolds slowly over the course of a story, the occasional quirky elements of which sometimes hide a sharp and dangerous edge, even as the story becomes a tale of redemption tinged with sadness.

Hammer’s prose is lyrical and deeply descriptive. One can almost feel the heat of the Australian scrubland rising from the book’s binding. My only quibble with the multilayered mystery was that it occasionally felt as if Hammer was taking just a bit too long to arrive at his ultimate destination during SCRUBLANDS. Nonetheless, the intricate plotting, turns of phrase, and sharply drawn characters in SCRUBLANDS make Hammer’s debut work of fiction worth reading.

Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
© Copyright 2019, The Book Report, Inc. All rights reserved.

I’ll say straight away that I liked this book and would read more by this author. There were a few things that I didn’t care for but overall, what a great plot. Anyone can read from the book cover/descriptor the story of a priest who guns down 5 men in front of his church. The journalist, Martin Scarsden, arrives in town to report on how the residents are coping a year after the tragedy. Martin is suffering from PTSD after an incident in the Gaza strip, his editor sending him out on this story to give him a chance to get back in the journo game. Why would an admired priest turn killer?

Best I can describe the way the story unfolds is to think of a nesting doll. There are layers and layers of stories that intertwine, the residents’ dark secrets, the greed, guilt and love and motivations of the characters. There are multiple crimes that are revealed in this investigative journalist’s report.
Some of the character names are a hoot – you have Harley Snouch and Mandalay “Mandy” Blonde who are supporting characters.

I’m learned about bush fires in the Scrubland, how they work, quite different from a house fire. Smoke inhalation gets you in a house fire but a bushfire flat out cooks you. This was addressed in another Australian book I enjoyed, Jane Harper’s debut book The Dry. The scenery described is almost apocalyptic, the land has a harshness and character of its own.

What I didn’t care for was how the character Codger Harris was introduced. He’s waaaay out in the Scrubland where it’s dry and extremely hot. When Martin arrives at Codger’s dilapidated house he finds the old man inside, naked and masturbating. Sorry but that part just didn’t fit into the story, it didn’t blend and it was an unnecessary detail to introduce us to Codger. It was established how unbearably hot it is, so much so that Codger didn’t wear clothes in this isolated part of the scrubland. By the way, he is an integral part of this story and has his own interesting past which dovetails with the ending.

Aussie Noir. Is this a book type, because if not, if should be.

A young priest shoots and kills 5 people at Church - and is later shot dead by Constable Robbie Haus-Jones. Journalist Martin Scarsden is assigned the story and visits the town of Riversend, one year later.

Scarsden is struggling with PTSD after a trip to Gaza. He also find that even after his heinous crimes, the priest is held in high regard by a large number of people in the town.

This is the kind of book my dad would have liked. Multiple storylines, drug trafficking, murder, shooting, tragedy. It's the kind of story that would appeal to the right reader - unfortunately - that reader is not me. Still, this is a fabulously written story.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this book.

The 2019 blockbuster hit of the Australian outback! Scrublands is as compelling and engrossing a read as The Dry

The premise of this book really intrigued me, a journalist gets involved in a mass shooting by a pries in an Australian town facing hardship and drought sounded right up my alley. Martin is the journalist who becomes entangled in the chaos of one small Australian town. Why did the young, well liked priest open fire outside of his church one morning? What secrets are so many of the townspeople keeping? And believe me, there are a lot. I found the beginning to be very interesting and engaging but there came a point where the author began repeating large chunks of happenings that we already saw play out. This continued so much that by the halfway mark I began skimming. I'm not sure what this was supposed to accomplish but for me it slowed the pace way down and I became frustrated. Also repeated many times was the heat. I felt like readers can understand without being constantly reminded in the exact same ways that it's hot there. I was initially drawn into the story of why the priest murdered so many people but I felt like that took a backseat to quite a lot of side plots. For me, it was all just too much, I skipped large sections and read the last few chapters.

Scrublands is a crime fiction readers read. Terrific plotting, terrific characters, and fantastic Aussie noir. I hope to hear more from Mr. Hammer soon. Highly recommended.

Tl;dr: Scrublands is a well-written suspense novel with a great plot, fascinating characters, and a setting that truly makes you feel you're in the vast expanse of Australia that lies outside the tourist haunts.

I really enjoyed Scrublands--Mr. Hammer has a knack for setting (I felt like I was in the fictional town of Riversend, no small feat) and plot--there are a lot of strands, but they're all handled deftly and woven together well.

Martin is a journalist sent to do a story about Riversend on the one year anniversary of a shooting that was committed by the town priest, an alleged pedophile who was killed by the lone local police officer after he shot and killed five people right before Sunday service.

Of course, there's more to the story, and Martin in surprised by how strongly almost everyone in town, including the police officer who killed the priest, maintains that he was innocent of the accusations leveled against him.

But why would an innocent man kill five people? How did the priest even get a gun, let alone know how to shoot? And why, when Martin tries to learn more, does he find himself dealing with even more questions? Why did the priest kill only a few of the people gathered at the church that day? How to reconcile the good and godly figure he hears about with the hard living and free loving man he finds out about? And if the priest, Byron, is innocent, then who killed the two tourists whose bodies are found out in the scrublands outside town? Why did the town's only pub/hotel close so suddenly? What happened to the owner and does it play a role in what the priest did? Does it play a role in the why?

And then there are the inhabitants of Riversend. I loved, loved, loved, that all of them were complex, and I also loved that Mr. Hammer is aware that life in a rural, isolated community doesn't always bring out the best in people--in fact, sometimes it brings out the worst. The absolute worst.

Look, the plot of Scrublands sounds slightly bananas--mass shooting, possible pedophile, more dead bodies, and Martin arriving in Riversend while reevaluating his own life in the wake of a traumatic experience that's left him with not much of a career and PTSD--and I went into it extremely skeptical, but it works. It really does, and manages to have some twists I didn't see coming, but better still, a great (if grim) exploration of what drives people to live in such an isolated area, what the costs are, and how even as it brings a lot of darkness, it also brings moments of light. Riversend might hold many (many) secrets, but it's also a community.

The only downside to Scrublands is the supposed love connection between Martin and resident town bombshell Mandalay Blonde (the name doesn't help). Mandalay is fascinating, a mess of contradictions and also a huge liar and possibly the town resident with the most secrets (though there are a lot of others vying for that crown) -- but she's so boring in her pseudo-romance scenes with Martin and he's at his most boring in them too. I also felt the push at the end regarding them was horribly forced.

In Scrublands, there's such a raw sense of place--and of lies slowly, slowly unraveling into a quagmire that makes the lies almost preferable--that makes it a gripping read. It's not an easy one, nor does it want to be, but somehow that makes it beautiful. A terrifying, sharp, beautiful--but beautiful nonetheless.

Would have been five stars, but that forced romantic subplot knocks it down to four and a half. Still, if you're looking for a deeply place oriented suspense novel with fascinating characters and a great plot, Scrublands is absolutely worth checking out.

If you enjoyed Jane Harper’s The Dry, Chris Hammer’s intricate mystery will return you to the parched Australian interior. Martin Scarsden is a troubled journalist who has been sent to Riversend to write a feature about the town on the first anniversary of a horrific crime, and perhaps to save his career. This novel is as multilayered as puff pastry, and the revelations will stay with you long after you finish reading.

Scrublands is a multilayered investigative crime novel which starts off as a seemingly simple assignment for journalist Martin Scarsden when he is sent by the Sydney Morning Herald to write a follow up feature on a mass shooting that occurred a year ago. Martin is still having nightmares about his last assignment in the Gaza strip where he endured a horrifying experience that nearly killed him and his editor thinks this assignment will help him recover.