Summer 1963 in Darwin. Hot and humid, the Territory town is reeking with corruption and intrigue. Constable Senior Ned Potter is an honest, down-to-earth policemen in an environment that doesn’t appreciate that quality. There are murders, yet those in charge insist that he doesn’t get involved. Ned struggles and drinks more than he should and Bonnie, his wife, with their little baby girl, loves him but isn’t happy where things are at. The other main character is Charlotte Clark who married too young to an ex rodeo rider Bobby, and she also isn’t happy with her lot but doesn’t know what to do.
The plot becomes entangled with the corruption, the racism of time, domestic violence and abuse of alcohol. The search for justice is complicated and is slow and time consuming.
This is an unusual story that doesn’t follow a straight path with a leading character that is as rough and rugged as the land in which he lives but who you come to admire.
Recommend read.
Thank you to Netgalley and publisher Hachette Australia for a copy to read and review.

Australian crime is so hot at the moment and still is no exception. Senior Constable Ned Potter has problems, plenty of them. Set in the 1960 Darwin, this book is filled with the stormy clammy feeling of Darwin, and the racist crude and hungover feeling of the time. Filled with twists and heart racing turns this will be a best seller.

HAPPY PUBLICATION DAY!
Still | Matt Nable 🦅

If this gorgeous cover isn’t enough to make you grab the book off the shelf in stores today then hearing it is an evocative, confronting and page-turning thriller from an Australian writer that screams THE DRY and SCRUBLANDS you should be jumping on the couch Tom Cruise style!

Having recently discovered a love of Australian atmospheric novels this one literally had my skin prickling from the heat and humidity, my eyes burning with the rawness of Darwin 1963.

This is a true work of art, the calm before the storm in the lives of the women the book centres around, the corruption and racism running deep through the core of Darwin in the 60s.

I loved Charlottes character, having just read Like Mother (see my last post!) which was similarly set in a small Australian town in the 60s I am really starting to get feel for the oppression women faced 60 years ago and the rise of feminism to break those boundaries.

There are some definite trigger warnings in this book - alcoholism, racism, brutal violence, minded, corruption.

Thank you to Hatchette, NetGalley and the author for my ARC in exchange for this honest review and promotion

Still is an engrossing and frequently confronting read, exploring the theme of police and government corruption in Darwin, the capital of Australia's Northern Territory, during the early 1960s.
The book opens with the dramatic scene of an underworld execution in a dark mangrove swamp not far outside Darwin. Our flawed hero, Senior Constable Ned Potter, is the first representative of NT Police to come across the scene, where local fishermen have discovered the decomposing body of Ernie Clay. Clay was an indigenous man, who had survived a fractured childhood in Queensland, as a member of Australia's "Stolen Generation". Potter is quickly side lined from the case by his crooked and racist superior, Senior Sergeant Joe Riley, but visits Clay's widow, a white woman, to express his condolences. She's afraid to say any more, but makes the tantalising comment, "They killed him because he saw."
For the remainder of the book, we follow Potter's often thwarted efforts to investigate and lift the veil of police corruption and political interference from Darwin's ambitious Mayor, Desmond Landry, as further brutal killings occur and Potter is treated as a pariah by his colleagues.
Meanwhile, Charlotte, wife of NT Fire & Rescue officer Bobby Clark, is facing her own struggles. Her husband is a boorish man, who's in the thick of the conspiracy involving Riley and Landry. She unwittingly becomes drawn into the heart of the drama when she rescues a wounded indigenous man not far from the swamp where Ernie Clay was found weeks earlier. She secretly nurses him back to health, as an understanding grows between them.
The picture Matt Nable paints of 1960s Darwin, with its relentless humidity, overt racism, frequent domestic abuse and uncontrolled drinking, is not pretty. Nevertheless, there are passages of stunningly evocative prose, as Nable details such apparently mundane subjects as an aged Land Rover, the smell of a pub during wet season, or the process Charlotte follows when fishing for whiting from the beach. The stillness to which the title refers, is repeatedly conjured in the view from the coast towards the Timor Sea, which both Ned and Charlotte find restorative in the moments between oncoming storm fronts, both literal and figurative.
The two characters from whose perspectives the intertwined narrative unfolds, Ned and Charlotte, are not unexpectedly those who are best developed and the reader's sympathy for both grows over the course of the novel. Ned is particularly compelling as a character - he regularly gets so drunk after work that his relationship with his wife Bonnie and baby daughter are threatened, and yet his commitment to finding justice and truth are unwavering. He seems to be some years (decades?) ahead of his colleagues when it comes to matters of systemic racism and treatment of victims and their families. Meanwhile, Charlotte is a woman who is feeling dissatisfied in her marriage prior to the events detailed in the novel. She's tied to Darwin by her dying father, but yearns for a more fulfilling life.
I found Still a stimulating read, with occasional flashes of brilliance, but perhaps let down a little by several unexplained plot incongruities and a rather abrupt and overly-neat ending. Nevertheless, readers who are willing to suspend their disbelief and go along for the ride will find this a worthwhile excursion into top-end noir, with plenty of character interest and an action-packed storyline.
My thanks to the author, Matt Nable, publisher Hachette Australia and NetGalley, for the opportunity to read and review this title.

Senior Constable Ned Potter finds a man’s body in creepy shallow marshland near Darwin and he has no idea it’s the first of three bodies he will find during the summer of 1963. Ned is married to Bonnie, they have a baby daughter and are still deciding what to name her. Like most blokes Ned likes to have a knock off drink at the Victoria Hotel, a cold beer goes down well at the end of a hot humid day and Ned’s problem is he has more than one.

Charlotte Clark is married to Bobby, he was once a rodeo cowboy and he now works for the fire department. She’s unhappy, being a housewife is boring and she spends most night waiting for her husband to come home from the pub and keeping his tea warm. Charlotte is restless, she goes for walks along the beach, fishing and borrows Bobby’s car to visit her dad who’s in a nursing home.
One night she stops the car, she needs some fresh air and she gets out of the vehicle and a hand goes over her mouth. It’s a man, he badly hurt, he’s absolutely terrified, she needs to get them both out of the area quickly ,where to take him and how to treat his injuries?

Charlotte and Ned discover that Darwin is full of corruption, it’s a rather sinister place, and you can’t trust anyone and including some of the police. Ned’s sure the three murders are linked, his boss doesn’t want him looking into the similarities between the cases, and it really gets to him.
Still is a little rough around the edges, like Darwin would have been in the sixties, lots of drinking, violence, crudeness, racism, the story isn’t predictable and it kept me guessing until the end. I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review and four stars from me.

Matt Nable has done a fantastic job at recreating Darwin during the summer of 1963. His use of vivid imagery made the pages come to life in a way that made me be able to feel the unbearable humidity, smell the rain before the storms and hear the rambling drunks down at the local pub. He has also managed to capture the racism, abuse, alcoholism, male dominance and corruption in a way that is not only emotionally raw but also extremely confronting.


The story follows Senior Constable Ned Potter and housewife Charlotte Clark as they both come face to face with the seedy underbelly of Darwin. I love the fact that the hero in this story is really flawed but at the same time he still has a good heart. I liked how Ned never backed down from doing the right thing even though he knew that there would be serious consequences. I am in total awe of just how much courage and strength Charlotte had. She suffered a lot during her marriage to that waste of space Bobby and she definitely deserved a lot better. She definitely had a pure heart which is seen as the story progresses.


Still is a dark, intense and gut wrenching story that will leave you guessing until the very end.

I recieved an advanced copy for free, and this is my honest opinion.

A really nice twist on the current revival of Aussie crime novels. Moving the location to Darwin in the 60's is great - the humidity, the harshness, the isolation, all really come across throughout the story.

There is also a level of detail here, in both characterisation and description, that is frequently lacking in mystery novels. Not in this one. It feels rich and detailed, full of emotion and feeling. When the book turns dark, you really feel it, and when the main character, Senior Constable Ned Potter is uncovering secret after dark secret, it is gloriously tense.

Ned is the perfect flawed hero, and with so many horrible support characters and a pile of dark deeds to wade through, this novel is a gruesome delight.

Not only is Matt Nable a stellar Australian actor he certainly knows his way around writing a gripping crime novel. Still is set in Darwin in 1963, when times were extremely different to today and man’s inhumanity to man ran shamefully deep.
Still is dark, and at times devastatingly sad, but under those emotions is an enthralling web of murder and intrigue that the protagonist Ned Potter cannot leave alone. With alcohol, violence, racism and corruption burning bright throughout this complex story, you are taken on a journey into the depths that unhinged people will stoop to and the plight of one police officer’s fight for justice.
The heat from the streets of Darwin could be felt through the pages, with such detailed descriptions that I could see the perspiration on brows and cold beers on the bar. As we learn more about the character of Charlotte it becomes obvious that she is more than just a housewife chained the kitchen sink and I enjoyed watching her blossom. The character development in this story is outstanding, and I was constantly cursing the despicable characters that Nable created.
Still depicts many things in is this novel and was a perfect choice for its title. This book will reel you in hook, line and sinker, a tense gripping crime novel that will leave you hungry for more from Matt Nable. Thank you to Hachette Australia and Net Galley for this early reading copy.

This was a great book. I loved how the author gave great descriptions and backgrounds to the characters. This book could nearly be a true crime novel, so believable was the content. I loved how it all wrapped up. I wished there was a little more to Charlotte's ending. A story of Corruption, Racism, Perseverance, Bravery and Survival. A must read.

EXCERPT: The snake's head lifted, it's hood flared and it looked at the shadowy figures, like a fighter adopting his stance. It unravelled itself and moved away, down the embankment into the large snarls of lantana and wild saltbush.

'Stand him up.' The voice came from a large broad-shouldered man, his shape caught briefly in the half-moon's light. The voice wasn't much more than a whisper, though considering where they were, it wouldn't have mattered had he yelled. The only sign of mankind was the corona from the town's lights to the west of them and even it had been dulled by the ocean mist. In the darkness in front of the blockish end of a derelict machine-gun post, a prone man was pulled up by his armpits. He stood, his face lifting from the shadows and into the light. His bottom lip was split in its centre and fell loosely either side of the gash.

'You were in the wrong place at the wrong time.'

ABOUT 'STILL': Darwin, Summer, 1963.

The humidity sat heavy and thick over the town as Senior Constable Ned Potter looked down at a body that had been dragged from the shallow marshland. He didn't need a coroner to tell him this was a bad death. He didn't know then that this was only the first. Or that he was about to risk everything looking for answers.

Late one night, Charlotte Clark drove the long way home, thinking about how stuck she felt, a 23-year-old housewife, married to a cowboy who wasn't who she thought he was. The days ahead felt suffocating, living in a town where she was supposed to keep herself nice and wait for her husband to get home from the pub. Charlotte stopped the car, stepped out to breathe in the night air and looked out over the water to the tangled mangroves. She never heard a sound before the hand was around her mouth.

Both Charlotte and Ned are about to learn that the world they live in is full of secrets and that it takes courage to fight for what is right. But there are people who will do anything to protect themselves and sometimes courage is not enough to keep you safe.

MY THOUGHTS: Summer. 1963. Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia. It's humid. Hot. There's crocs, stingers and sharks. The fishing's good. The beer's cold. The climate rascist. Corruption rife. Women the property of their men. People went to the Territory to go missing. That's the way it was.

Matt Nable has given us some of the most magnificent and some of the most despicable characters that I have ever encountered. Charlotte is one of the magnificent ones; a woman in an abusive relationship, the kind that was frequently the norm back then. But a woman who will rise above society's expectations and make peace with herself and her actions. Constable Ned Potter is a 'good bastard'. He's not perfect, but he stands up for what he believes in, at great personal cost.

The story is dark. It flows along at its own pace. Nable spends some considerable time throughout the book creating atmosphere; the damp, stifling heat, the mosquitoes, the drinking, the bullying, which all adds to the personality of this tale. It is a tale of cruelty and abuse, of corruption and cover ups. It is violent. And, in places, shocking.

Don't expect Still to be fast moving. It's not. But it will keep you turning the pages in a kind of fascinated horror. Nable doesn't pull any punches. He tells it how it was, warts and all. Incredibly realistic.

⭐⭐⭐⭐.5

#Still #NetGalley

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T: @MattNableOnline @HachetteAus

#australiancrimefiction #mystery #Darwin

THE AUTHOR: Matthew Nable is an Australian film and television actor, writer, sports commentator and former professional rugby league footballer (Manly Sea Eagles). With his wife and three children, Matt divides his time between Sydney and Los Angeles.

DISCLOSURE: Thank you to Hachette Australia via Netgalley for providing a digital ARC of Still by Matt Nable for review. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own personal opinions.

For an explanation of my rating system please refer to my Goodreads.com profile page or the about page on sandysbookaday.wordpress.com

This review and others are also published on Twitter, Amazon, Instagram and my webpage

I like this latest trend for crime novels set in outback Australia although Nable avoids the usual small country town and instead sets Still in 1960's Darwin. Back then the town was apparently raw and rough and a perfect setting for corruption in the police force. (It is much nicer today!)

Senior Constable Ned Potter finds himself caught up in the corruption and struggles to find a way out. There is plenty of nastiness along the way - domestic violence, murders, beatings, racism - you name it and it probably happens. My only criticism is that it goes on too long and gets solved too suddenly and easily at the end.

‘They killed him because he saw.’

Darwin, Summer, 1963. It is hot and humid when Senior Constable Ned Potter finds a body dragged from shallow marshland. From the state of the man’s body, Ned is certain that he has met a violent death. But Ned meets resistance in trying to find answers. And this body is only the first of several.

This is a story of corruption and violence, of abuse, oppression and racism. Isolation and location have roles, as do alcohol and the weather. Like almost every male in the story, Ned Potter drinks too much. This strains his relationship with his wife Bonnie and helps undermine his credibility with his superiors. The other central character is Charlotte Clarke. Charlotte is a young married woman, bored with her role as a housewife and unhappy in her marriage. She wants more from life. A chance encounter with an injured man changes Charlotte’s life.

The body count increases. People claim not to have seen anything; Ned is strongly encouraged to back off. Who can he trust? It seems as though everyone in a position of authority is corrupt. Ned persists despite threats. He is sure that the deaths are linked.

There is plenty of tension in this story. Ned risks everything to find the truth while Charlotte is also treading a dangerous path. Why have these three people been murdered? What are the links between them, and why is Ned’s boss so eager to look the other way? Corruption and coverup: there are some in Darwin who will go to any lengths to protect themselves.

A highly recommended mystery thriller.

Note: My thanks to NetGalley and Hachette Australia for providing me with a free electronic copy of this book for review purposes.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

Nable's vivid and detailed descriptions within Still has brought the NT to life, right on the page. Shining a light of Australia's more racist and untold not so long ago past.
Set within a sinister, social melting pot of a town, this narrative flows seamlessly between Ned and Charlotte. Ned is a very flawed police officer who wrangles against the local corruption and systemic racism within this town. While Charlotte struggles in an isolated and abusive marriage, feeling trapped and having no way or reason to leave.
It did take me a little while to get into this, however, once it did I was hooked. I loved Nable's visceral description of the environment and atmosphere of this slow burn read. Another good Australian crime novel.
3.5 stars

A special thank you to Netgalley and Hachette Australia for an ARC of this book.

This is a compelling and evocative read one that had me turning the pages, set in Darwin in The Northern Territory in 1963 the weather is hot, humid and still, there are corrupt police and a lot more going on, men who drink very heavily and police officer Senor Constable Ned Potter discovers a body in the swamp and starts searching for answers that are not going to be easy to find.

Ned knows that this death was not a good one but he is thwarted at every turn by his boss to do any investigating, this plays on his mind and then he finds another two badly beaten bodies he does what he can but when his wife and baby are threatened he is left no choice but to stand back if his conscience will let him.

Charlotte is twenty three and married to an ex-cowboy now fireman she is struggling with her married life at the moment and while out on a drive she finds a badly injured man this will make her re-think a lot of things in her life as she steps in to help and keeps secrets as she does so.

There is a lot going on and Ned and Charlotte learn that there are lots of secrets in this town and that danger is not far away and showing strength and courage is the only way to finally uncover these secrets and set things right before there are more deaths.

The descriptions of the setting bought Darwin to life for me I felt the heat and humidity as I was reading, life was different back in 1963 men drank so much but why did they were there reasons? and life was not an easy one, this is a story that I would recommend it really is a page turner and it took me a while to discover what the secrets were.

My thanks to Hachette AUS for my copy to read and review

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the chance to review this ARC.

Still by Matt Nable is a great novel for fans of 'The Dry' or 'Wimmera'. Set in Darwin in the 1960's, Ned, a police officer fights against the systemic racism and corruption to bring a murderer to justice.

This book was well written, with the imagery making you feel like you are actually there. Each characters story is portrayed in such a way that you can almost see yourself in their shoes (sometimes even the 'bad guys').

I found this book a little slow in parts, however I think overall this gave it a more authentic feel of the slow way of life in Darwin in 1960.

Would recommend to fans of Aussie crime novels set in the past!

The heat and humidity of Darwin’s summer in 1963 was filled with men with a great thirst, corruption and murder. Senior Constable Ned Potter, his wife Bonnie and as yet unnamed baby daughter lived a quiet life until Ned found the first body. The beating the body had taken before death was obvious, but with Ned’s boss not letting him investigate, and declaring it to be a possible suicide frustrated Ned. When Ned discovered two more badly beaten bodies, he knew deep down the deaths were connected.

When Charlotte Clark took herself for a drive to get away from the mundane, she was shocked to come across a badly injured man. He’d been beaten and stabbed, needed help desperately but wouldn’t allow Charlotte to take him to the hospital or police. Charlotte’s husband Bobby was a man Charlotte no longer felt anything for, and she spent her time trying to find a way to get away from him – and Darwin.

What would be the outcome of the events of the summer of ’63, when corruption and murder were rife?

Still by Aussie author Matt Nable has a title that depicts the contents. The weather was still before the storm; the women’s lives were still before the events; the heat in the air made everything still around them. It was hard to become accustomed to if you were a visitor to the area. Filled with racism, crude and rough Territorian men, plenty of grog and drunks everywhere and a twisted mystery that kept me turning the pages. Recommended.

With thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for my digital ARC to read in exchange for an honest review.

I did have some high expectations for this one being a thriller but I felt like it was more of a murder mystery book than anything. I did enjoy reading it though.

*** I'll add in a *trigger warning* that this book does have discrimination against aboriginals, abuse, swearing and vivid description of death in this story. Read at your own discretion.

Set in Darwin, Nable showcases the stillness yet extremities of the outback in North Terrority through his photographic words through the five senses. At times I felt the hot humid sun, the smell of burning tar melting or the smell of rain, the taste of beer going down my throat and imaging the landscape, animals, nature and people right before my eyes.

The concept of finding out who is involved with the plot early on in the book, however holding enough information in, to spill why and who did what later on in the book adds a great element from it. Making it different from the average mystery/thriller novel.

Thankyou to Netgalley, Hachette for the gifting of this ARC ebook. And thankyou to Matt Nable..

The story takes part in the Northern Territory where men were men, women knew their place and racism was seen as a way of life against the indigenous population. The murders were a backdrop for I became more interested in the morals and ethics that the characters considered normal and the way this impacted decision making in everyday life when push came to shove.
All in all big boofy blokes got their comeuppance corrupt officials were seen off some women became stronger and the indigenous were still where they were when this all started and forty years later that two per cent population have had over 400 deaths in custody.
Independent review NetGalley / Hatchette Australia

Australian actor Matt Nable takes readers to a steamy Darwin in the early 1960s for his debut crime thriller Still. In doing so, he follows a recent trend of Australian crime not only going regional but of interrogating this particular time period. Setting crime stories in the 1960s allows authors to not only get away from the dilemma of mobile phones in crime fiction but to shine a light on Australia’s more racist and unreconstructed past.

Ned Potter is an inspector with the Darwin police force. His antenna twitch when a man found dead in the marshes shot twice is declared a suicide by his boss. But it is not until he accidentally stumbles over two more bodies and there is more interference from above that he finds himself itching to investigate on the side. Unable to deal with the pressure, Ned retreats into the bottle, his alcoholism making him easy prey for those trying to manipulate the case. At the same time, housewife Charlotte Clark, dreaming of a better life rescues an injured Aboriginal man and hides him away on her father’s old property to recover.

Nable is less interested in creating a mystery in Still than in exploring small town corruption. The outlines of the conspiracy are revealed early and includes the Mayor, the police chief and one of the local priests among others. And while the “why” of this cabal is kept vague early on, anyone with a passing knowledge of this period of history will probably guess the types of crimes that the powerful are trying to cover up. This leads to a softer, surreptitious investigative response rather than the more common explosive third act. Which makes Still an interesting mix of down the line crime tropes and some more original approaches to the procedural.

Still gives a real sense of Darwin of the time – the crocodile infested marshes, the beaches, the pubs – and of the incessant heat, broken by the occasional storm. Although after a while some of the adjectives and descriptors of the atmosphere and the environment become a little repetitive. And while alcohol has always been a problem and a crutch it would be nice once in a while to find an investigator who did not have a substance abuse problem.

Overall, though, Still is another great crime fiction debut which does its best to breaks out of the procedural mould and delivers an atmospheric sense of place and time.

I loved Matt Nable's new book "Still" Written with amazing illustrative wording, I could picture myself there. Matt's writing is getting better and better with each new book. Will definately hand sell this one.