While I really loved Garry Disher’s Constable Paul Hirschausen books set in a small South Australian town, this book didn’t really grab me. Detective Charlie Deravin is under suspension (paid) after (mildly) assaulting his (bully boy) Inspector. So he heads back home to Menlo Beach on the Mornington Peninsula, Victoria, to pick up his surf boards from his dad’s place. His dad, Rhys Deravin along with mates Mark Valente and Noel Saltash were all members of the tiny Menlo Beach police force back in the day.

Since he is back home Charlie starts to ruminate again on what happened to his mother who disappeared 20 years ago. His parents had already separated by then and his father remarried quite quickly. It was rumoured his mother was seeing someone but, as a line of inquiry, it was not followed up well. Charlie himself was, at the time, a newly minted officer fully focussed on searching for Billy Saul a missing 8 year old boy. Many people thought that Charlie’s father had murdered his mother.

So Charlie starts asking questions and speaking to witnesses from 20 years ago. The ‘real’ police are not happy about this. Things take a turn for the worse when Anna, Charlie’s new girlfriend starts getting harassed again. Anna was a juror on a major trial which had to be abandoned and a re-trial set after ‘irregularities’. There was immense pressure on jurors to acquit but Anna would not be swayed. Charlie and Anna met during the trial and soon became an item. Again, not popular with his employers. Also not popular with the criminal friends of the accused and they are both in danger. Then some skeletal remains are found.

Things come to a head one night when Charlie finds one injured and one dead ‘person of interest’ in his mother’s disappearance and the truth comes out at last. It’s not pretty and is very disappointing for Charlie to learn about the true nature of people he trusted and looked up to.

The book was lacking a bit of drama for me and seemed a bit slow at times. But the big disappointment about this book was the ending. It ended very abruptly, I kept looking for more. If I was reading a paper book it would have felt like the last two pages had been torn out. So, while I thought this would be a stand alone book, I’m now not sure because it doesn’t feel complete and yet it wasn’t like a cliffhanger either. I’m actually stumped! Thanks to Netgalley and Text Publishing for the much appreciated arc which I reviewed voluntarily and honestly.

The Way It Is Now by Garry Disher is a stand-alone mystery story located on the Mornington Peninsula in a fictitious small town called Menlo Beach, not far from real places such as Hastings and Point Leo. Beautifully written with a complex but intriguing multi-layered mystery storyline.

In 2000 we meet policeman Charlies Deravin whose parents live at Menlo Beach but are in the process of being divorced. While Charles is working in Melbourne he is bussed down to Menlo Beach to assist in the search for a young boy, Billy Saul, who has gone missing. Billy wasn’t found. On the same day, Charles’s mother, Rose, suddenly disappears in mysterious circumstances with her abandoned but crashed car found some distance away near Tooradin and his father, Rhys, also a policeman, under a cloud of suspicion. Nothing was proven.

Twenty years later - it’s 2019 - 2020 and Charles now a Detective Senior Constable, is back at Menlo Beach at the beach shack, having been suspended after shoving a senior police officer. With time on his hands, between surfing and cycling, he undertakes his own re-investigation of his mother’s disappearance. This investigation, along with several other mysteries being pursued, gets quite complex and embroiled with the other events and issues.

Charles is a very real person, with flaws and personal problems and is wonderfully developed throughout the story. His interactions with his family are quite complex and involved adding to the depth of the story. I found this a very touching and emotional story which was superbly written and incredibly captivating. I became very attached to Charles who seemed to be trying to do his best but struggled to become what he wanted to be.

The time frame of 2019 to 2020 finds intense bushfires overtaking the East Coast of Australia and the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. Garry Disher writes beautifully about the beach side locations, but also the atmosphere of a small town with everyone ‘knowing’ everyone’s business.

Highly recommended read.

Thank you to Netgalley and publisher Text Publishing for a copy to read and review.

Twenty years ago Charlie Deravin’s mother disappeared. His parents were in the process of divorcing and his father was widely suspected of being responsible, but no charges were ever laid. At the time Charlie was a junior policeman. Now he is a detective on forced leave after his actions caused a mistrial. With time on his hands, he is again investigating his mother’s disappearance.

I love Garry Disher’s writing and if you like writers like Jane Harper, Chris Hammer and Peter Temple who immerse their books in rural Australian settings, I am sure that you will too. His characters are rounded and nuanced and real and his sense of place – in this case, Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula - is palpable. It’s a gently paced mystery but it completely holds your interest. The book is set in early 2020 and the emerging coronavirus pandemic is integrated into the story.

Veteran Australian author Garry Disher has been serving up excellent crime novels since the early 1990s when the first of his books about the professional thief known only as Wyatt, Kickback, appeared. Since then he has produced another eight books in the Wyatt series and seven about Mornington Peninsula police detective Hal Challis. More recently, Disher has written three excellent novels about about struggling South Australian rural policeman Constable Paul Hirschhausen, the most recent of which, Consolation, won the 2021 Ned Kelly Award for Best Crime Novel.

Now with his latest book, The Way It Is Now (Text), Disher heads off in a new direction with another great lead character.

Charlie Deravin is back living in his family’s holiday house on the Mornington Peninsula. On forced leave from the police sex-crimes unit, after he made a mess of things at work, Deravin is trying to reshape his life. With time on his hands he decides to refresh his never ending investigation into his mother’s disappearance. Twenty years ago his mother went missing from the local area, believed murdered. His father, a former policeman, has always been the main murder suspect, though her body was never found. Now as Deravin starts poking into the old case, new evidence comes to light and he finds that re-opening old wounds can be dangerous.

This is a another well-crafted crime novel by Disher, which excels in its characterisations and the subtlety of it plotting. The story takes a little time to get underway, but once the main elements are in place the pace picks up and the book moves in interesting and unexpected directions. Disher keeps a good grip on the various strands of the plot and he skillfully builds the tension as the different parts come together in a tense and exciting conclusion.

As with all of Disher’s novels, the depiction of the semi-rural, beach locale rings true and he skillfully mixes together lyrical descriptions of the natural environment with stinging critiques of the human inhabitants, creating a captivating milieu.

The characterisations are also very good and multi-faceted. The local inhabitants are portrayed in a honest, clear manner and Disher skillfully captures the complexity of relationships, especially between family members. The contrast between the local police and the detectives from Melbourne is also nicely portrayed and Disher excels in his vivid physical descriptions, even of minor characters:

He was one of those older men who seemed cobbled together from many men. Little pot belly, skinny shanks, eyes wide apart, gristly ears and a neat nose; pianist’s fingers. Out of his ranger’s uniform his forehead was ghostly white, his forearms and legs like old leather.

Deravin is a very well-rounded character. Sufficiently different from Disher’s other detectives, he can be astute and determined, but he is also capable of making stupid mistakes and is no super hero. He is a very convincing portrait of a good man wracked by uncertainty and past scars.

Fleshing out the book are Disher’s usual clear eyed observations on a range of topical issues from sex crimes to the beginning of the COVID pandemic, including this telling description of the jury in a rape case involving a popular footballer:

the jury was stacked with older women unsympathetic to young women who cried rape when they got themselves into trouble. They’d said things like, ‘We all know what little missy gets up to of a weekend.’ And that old classic: ‘Boys will be boys,’

In all, The Way It Is Now is a very impressive piece of crime fiction. It holds attention, and impresses with its depth and reflections. The plotting is masterful and the book entertains while raising serious issues. Another potential award winner for Disher!

This book is absolutely brilliant and it will not be the last Disher novel that I read.

The way it is now is a well paced novel with a tightly woven mystery spanning twenty plus years. Dishers characters are so well written and fleshed that you feel like you know them and you have a vested interest in finding out what happened all those years ago. Charlie though a flawed character is basically a good man and my heart ached a little for him at times while reading this.

Disher ability to set a scene is amazing there were times I swear I could hear the surf in the background. I could picture the beach house and imagine sitting out the back with Charlie.

Disher also manages to bring the realty of life for all of us over the last two year into this novel in a really unobtrusive way.

Another great novel by a great Australian writer.

Thanks to Netgalley, the author and the publisher for a chance to read and review this book.

‘The Way It Is’ is my first Garry Disher read, why have I waited so long?! Detective Charlie Deravin a troubled officer who is on suspension takes some time out at his childhood home, now his family’s beach house. This fuels his 20 year obsession with his mother’s unsolved disappearance from the same area and he starts chasing down leads in the hope of clearing his father’s name. Cue: opening a can of worms. The story takes place in early 2020 and Disher’s writing vividly portrays contemporary issues – Australian bushfire crisis, climate deniers, corona virus, untouchable male sports stars and weaves them into a fast paced narrative. I was frustrated by Charlie and some of his choices whilst equally cheering him on to find out ‘whodunit’ and was kept guessing throughout. Whilst we do find out who’s responsible I felt the novel finished abruptly and it was jarring to reach the final line of text. Perhaps this is to leave the door open for more adventures with Charlie. #TheWayItIsNow #NetGalley #textpublishing

Fresh from the triumph of his Hirsch trilogy set in the remote South Australian countryside, Garry Disher returns to his beloved Mornington Peninsula, a tongue of land between bay and ocean near Melbourne, in ”The Way It Is Now.” Policeman Charlie Deravin, newly parted from his wife and on enforced disciplinary leave from the sex-crimes unit, returns home to a beach shack. Like many crime fiction heroes, he is a mess, with one burden being the overhang from the never-solved disappearance of his mother two decades earlier. Surfing, just existing, this loose spirit idly digs into the past, until the day bodies turn up and the past catches up. Stylistically, The Way It Is Now feels nothing like the low-key lyricism of the South Australian series, it is much more muscular and adventurous, but a commonality is a wonderful immersion in the mystery’s locale, this time a mix of real Mornington Peninsula towns and suburbs, and some fictional ones. You can feel the sand, smell the salt. As ever, Disher’s control of the highly intriguing plot is masterful, never revealing too much, always keeping the reader on her toes. As ever, once begun, the book demands to be completed. One of the best global crime fiction novels of 2021, The Way It Is Now cements Disher’s crown as the best Australian mystery writer, bar none.

Charlie Deravin is back in Menlo Beach where he grew up and started his career in the police force. Twenty years before Charlie was a young constable working on a missing child case when his mother disappeared. His father was also a local police detective, and some of his police buddies still work in the town. At the time his mother disappeared, his parents were in the process of divorcing and selling the house so his father was a prime suspect, but as she was never found and there was no evidence of any of the suspects being involved, the case remained open.

Now twenty years later, Charlie is back in his old home after being suspended from his job in Melbourne after pushing over a senior officer. Apart from surfing, he doesn’t have much to do and so starts following up cold leads from his mother’s investigation, trying to piece together what happened. His love life is complicated and is part of the reason he pushed his senior officer.

Garry Disher has delivered another excellent murder mystery in a setting he is more than familiar with. He is a master of depicting small Australian coastal towns with their small-town gossip and views, of today as well as twenty years ago. Charlie Deravin is flawed in many ways but an honest policeman who has made some mistakes in his desire to get to the truth. The plot is multilayered with current events in a Melbourne trial also playing a role and Charlie will follow a few false leads before realising what really happened the day his mother disappeared. This is also the first novel I’ve read where the emergence of covid on the world stage has an impact on the plot. This is classic Disher’s and sure to please his many fans as well as those who enjoy good quality Australian crime fiction.

The Way It Is Now is a stand-alone novel by best-selling award-winning Australian author, Garry Disher. Detective Senior Constable Charlie Deravin has been suspended from duty. As he waits to learn his fate, he’s spending the time in the old family cottage in Menlo Beach on the Mornington Peninsula, enjoying occasional visits from his daughter and, at other times, his new lover.

It’s the perfect opportunity to do some follow-up with all those who were around when his mother went missing, twenty years earlier, and maybe track down her lodger who had a watertight alibi, but disappeared soon after. Finding that man, in the hope he might have some vitally relevant information, has consumed Charlie for all the intervening time, and cost him his marriage.

Rose Deravin’s car was found crashed, abandoned, personal belongings strewn on the road, blood on the car keys, in late January 2000. Her body has not been found. Many people, including Charlie’s older brother, Liam, believed that her soon-to-be ex-husband, Senior Sergeant Rhys Deravin, was responsible: Rhys had no alibi, claiming to be investigating a security van hold-up on his own.

On the same day, nine-year-old Billy Saul went missing from the nearby beach. His body has also not been found. Now, a pair of podcasters is in the area, asking questions, flashing photos and making everyone uneasy. Charlie’s conversations with the people tracks down reveal just what a scrappy job the police made of the initial investigation and later cold case enquiries.

And then, the excavation of the block near Rose Deravin’s house turns up the skeletal remains of two bodies.

Disher gives the reader a tightly plotted tale with red herrings, misdirections and surprises in the lead up to the exciting climax, enough to keep even the most astute reader guessing right up to the final reveal. His protagonist proves to be a man of integrity despite the mistakes he admits to: a character who is easy to cheer on. The support cast are wholly credible, the people we meet in everyday life. The dogwalker in the final scene deserves an honourable mention for quick thinking.

Disher faultlessly conveys his era and setting: his depiction of the coastal Australian town will resonate with any reader who has visited one, and his inclusion of national and world events of the time, devastating bushfires, footballers considering themselves above the law, and the emergence of a certain virus, is realistically done. Another piece of superlative Aussie crime fiction from a master of the genre.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Text Publishing.