This is a murder mystery, thriller and a suspenseful read. Jo Capello was a detective and now a security guard when a similar crime from his past is committed. How will he deal with the past and the present in this intriguing story.

Although a good book I didn't get the flow I was expecting from this book, the writing was good buy was missing something so all in all it wasn't a favourite of mine. The ending was strange and abrupt and that threw me a bit. The Connection with the characters was also missing but the plot and storyline was pretty good.

Thank you NetGalley and Pantera Press for giving me the opportunity to read and review this book.

In 1962, Senior Detective Joe Capello was part of a special police task force, Night Owl, investigating the similar murders of three couples in Rhodes, a suburb of Sydney on the Paramatta River. The couples were all committing adultery and were abducted three weeks before their bodies were found and posed, fully dressed and made up, in a tableau of daily life. The killer, nicknamed ‘The Jeweller’, would send their severed ring fingers, encased in a ring of barbed wire, to the Herald newspaper along with a letter revealing where the bodies could be found.

Two years later, Joe is working as a night security guard in Rhodes when another couple having an extramarital affair disappear. Joe resigned from the police after almost capturing ‘The Jeweller’ and then accidently shooting a homeless man in an abandoned building. He has trouble getting the murder cases out of his head and is suffering increasing headaches and flashbacks to his childhood when he was 12 and he and his Italian parents were sent to Rushworth internment camp in Victoria during WW2. His father would later die in the camp and Joe still has nightmares featuring a shadowy mythical character called the Cloakman who scared him at night. With the new investigation, Joe begins to spiral into a cycle of headaches, lost time and flashbacks to Rushworth.

Radburn writes a good atmospheric tale of suspense with rising tension. The murders of the couples and the staging of the bodies is very original, especially for that era. His pop culture references to the 60s help to set the era and despite his flaws, Joe is a likeable but complex character. However, although Joe is shown to be an unreliable narrator, I had some trouble reconciling the abrupt ending with the plausibility of the plot, particularly the period when Joe was in the police and appeared more stable. A more coherent lead in to the major twist, with some hints earlier on in the novel would have helped to make it work more effectively. Nevertheless, it is a chilling and suspenseful thriller that I enjoyed reading.

I enjoyed this standalone from Radburn. We move back and forth in time between the 1940s when Joe and his Italian parents arrive in Australia and spend time in a not-pleasant migrant camp (Rushworth); and then forward to the 1960s where Joe’s a cop and on the trail of a serial killer targeting adulterous couples.

It’s obvious there’s trauma in his past relating to his time at Rushworth. Radburn slowly ekes out this backstory and there are links to the killer Joe’s tracking. And the secrets from the past are carefully timed with reveals in the present.

There’s an early climax where it seems all is resolved, but Joe’s not sure it’s over and - despite initial commendations - he puts his career in jeopardy as he becomes increasing obsessed with the case. And his own past.

Joe’s obsession means he’s not always a reliable narrator so I kinda guessed where this was heading but Radburn cleverly casts doubt (several times) on any predictions readers may make.

I’ve only read a couple of Radburn’s other books (in the series featuring Taylor Bridges), but hopefully this will introduce new readers to his work and he will find new fans. I’d certainly like to see more standalones like this - with complex and twisty plots that challenge readers’ perception.

3.5 stars

Unfortunately this book wasn’t really for me. I have throughly enjoyed the author’s previous novels featuring Taylor Bridges and while I understood this was not of this series, I just couldn’t connect with the characters or the era of which it’s set.
I DNF at 25% as I have many more books that I would enjoy more

Barren Grounds is the fifth novel by award-winning Australian author, B. Michael Radburn. In the spring of 1962, the serial killer taking victims from the Sydney suburb of Rhodes has already struck three times, and now another couple is missing. The man dubbed “The Jeweller” by the media abducts couples having extramarital affairs, sends their amputated ring fingers, adorned with a fence-wire ring, to police or media and poses his victims in selected locations to convey his message.

As part of Task Force Night Owl, Detective Sergeant Joe Capello is determined to track the killer down before he does the same to Lynette Saunders and Graham King. Joe isn’t quite sure what it is about this killer and this case that gives him flashbacks to the time he and his family were held in Rushworth internment camp during the war. When he finally comes face to face with him, this unremarkable-looking killer appears to know Joe better than seems possible.

His one encounter with the killer, a confrontation at a poisonous pond on Barren Grounds, ends badly (in Joe’s eyes) and, while his superiors issue a commendation and disband the task force, Joe is unconvinced that this is over. That fixation leads to an unfortunate death and a demotion. Despite sessions with a police-appointed psychiatrist, Joe quits the force.

Two years on, plagued by debilitating headaches, he works as a nightwatchman in the vicinity of Barren Grounds, but hasn’t overcome his obsession with The Jeweller. When another grisly parcel turns up, his former boss sends for him. A phone call from the Jeweller confirms what Joe had believed all along, and another murdered couple is found. But having sorted through some of his late mother’s belongings, Joe now has an idea of who the Jeweller might be.

Despite his occasional prickliness, Radburn’s protagonist will draw the reader’s care and concern and only later will it become apparent that perhaps he’s not the most reliable narrator. This is a bit of a slow-burn thriller with a late twist in the plot that might not sit well with all readers, but is carried off fairly convincingly.

With his popular culture references and the attitudes, dialogue and behaviour of some of his characters, Radburn certainly evoke the era, especially for readers of a certain vintage, and those familiar with the locale and its history. This is very atmospheric Australian historical crime fiction.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Pantera Press.

3★
“PROLOGUE The Field of Bones 1942
Its footfalls grew louder as it drew nearer. Twelve-year-old Joseph Capello recognised the sound as coming from a nightmare – a lie of the subconscious that would dissolve with dawn’s light. And yet, the terror was real enough, as the cloaked figure stalked the shadowed passageways between the camp huts.”

Twelve-year-old Joseph Capello and his Italian parents were held in the Rushworth Internment Camp in Australia during WW2. It is perhaps not as widely known as it should be that during WW2 (and other wars? I don’t know), people who originated in countries with whom their new country was at war were suspected of being collaborators or spies. Germans, Japanese, Italians (and presumably others) were held in rough camps behind wire fences with guards.

His father died in the camp, he and his mother were released at the end of the war, and he grew up to become Detective Sergeant Joe Capello in Sydney. He was devoted to his mother.

“Everything about Mama, a Roman dressmaker, was elegant: style and grace wrapped in a ribbon of melancholy.”

When a grisly serial killer, dubbed the Jeweller, murders and stages the bodies of an adulterous couple as a theatrical tableau, Joe is part of the police investigation. The Jeweller cuts off their ring fingers, wrapping a rough piece of rusty wire around as a ring. It is headline news, of course.

Everything is happening in and around the Rhodes Peninsula, which was then an industrial area on Sydney Harbour where Union Carbide had its chemical factory. The soil in the park is poisoned, and the site is being cleaned up - the barren grounds.

Joe had bought a house in Rhodes near his mother’s, and his house sported something people these days seem to forget about – a bomb shelter in the back yard. We forget, because, you, know, the fifties were the good old days with no worries, right?

Radburn does an excellent job of weaving in Joe’s flashbacks to his boyhood as Joseph, in the internment camp, and life with his Mama and Papa. Papa used to break curfew every night, worrying Mama and terrifying young Joseph. He was a nervous boy anyway, and when Mama answered him about what their name meant, she just added to his fears.

Sitting with her outside the camp building where Papa is queuing for their blankets and hut allocation, Joseph asks Mama if their name means the same thing in English as Italian. Of course, she tells him.

“‘But you’ve never told me the meaning.’

His mother was silent for a moment. ‘You need to know your Latin,’ she said finally. ‘Your name has two meanings. One is the name for a trickster, from the Latin: capullum.’ She tapped his nose playfully. ‘Just like you, my little lamb.’

Joseph did like that idea. ‘And the other meaning?’ he asked.

‘Again from the Latin,’ she said. ‘Capa, as in cloak, or cape.’ She lifted Joseph’s chin, brushed the dust from his lips with her thumb. ‘Have you heard of the Cloakman?’

‘No.’

‘I see.’ She drew on her cigarette, stared across the road as her husband finally stepped inside the store. ‘The Cloakman is a combination of the two. He is the trickster who hides behind his black cloak, with his pockets full of mischief. The Cloakman will bring nothing but trouble and is to be avoided.’ Her fingers trembled as she dropped her cigarette on the ground and crushed it beneath her shoe.

‘The Cloakman,’ he whispered as a stifling gust of wind blew a dust devil across the road.”

Nightmares ensue, of course. When a police shooting goes wrong, Joe is required to receive psychiatric counselling. He chooses to leave the police and take a job as a security guard at a warehouse. He can’t let the case of the Jeweller go, so he keeps investigating on his own.

Now working at night and not seeing a lot of people, he’s able to hide his exhaustion, the debilitating headaches he gets and his occasional collapses. Are they from his lack of sleep due to nightmares about the Cloakman and his life in the camp, from the poisons on the barren grounds an in the air, or from a brain tumour? Whatever the cause, he’d rather not know.

Joseph’s childhood, Joe’s career, the Jeweller, and the atmosphere Radburn creates are great. I liked and cared about all the characters, some who are better friends to Joe than he realises.

What I can’t come to terms with is the ending. I can look back in the story and see clues and foreshadowing but try as I have, there is not enough to make me believe the resolution. I can see the intent, but for me, I needed more detail earlier. It is still an entertaining, scary read and will find plenty of fans.

I am disappointed only because I really enjoyed the Radburn’s three Taylor Bridges novels, which I do recommend.

[My Goodreads review includes link to my reviews of The Crossing, The Falls, and The Reach.]

Thanks to NetGalley and Pantera Press for the copy for review.

P.S. With a few tweaks, this would make a terrific movie or TV series. 😊

Twelve year old Joseph Capello accompanied his Mama and Papa to the camp in Rushworth, Victoria, which held Italian immigrants. He was lonely, his only friend a little fox terrier, Pepper, plus his sketching to keep him company. Some of the guards of the camp were nasty, some were kind, but there weren't many good things to remember from those days.

Now, 1960s in Sydney, Senior Detective Joe Capello was well thought of and respected with the force. They were on the trail of a brutal killer, The Jeweller, and Joe was determined to catch him. When Joe was contacted by the killer and directed to an old park - renamed the Barren Grounds - which was now closed to public access because of chemicals and other poisons that had leeched into the ground, the police surrounded the area, but Joe went in alone. The results of what happened that night saw Joe, two years later, out of the police force and working an overnight security job. But frustrations aside, he was still obsessed with The Jeweller...

Barren Grounds by Aussie author B. Michael Radburn is a cleverly written crime thriller with a big twist at the end! Although quite different to his previous books, I admire the author's bravery as he pointed his book in a new direction. Some of the characters were a little brash (Delaney) and some were excellently portrayed, but I particularly liked Joe. Recommended.

With thanks to NetGalley & Pantera Press for my digital ARC to read in exchange for an honest review.

Having read and enjoyed all three of the Taylor Bridges novels, I was excited to read this new standalone police procedural from B. Michael Radburn. Unfortunately I really struggled to connect with the era, the characters and some important aspects of the plot, but I enjoyed some touches of nostalgia (Pablo instant coffee, anyone?) and appreciated the coherence of the story. The second half was definitely more engaging for me than the first, so readers who think it starts off slow may be rewarded for perseverance.

Barren Grounds is a chilling, police mystery story by author B. Michael Radburn. This is my first read by this author. I picked up this one because of the gruesome sounding crime and it being an Australian author. I loved the creepy sounding “Jeweller” which reminded me of Jeffrey Deaver’s Lincoln Rhyme forensic crime series. The story was tense, suspenseful and twist-filled. I enjoyed following former Detective Joe on his hunt for the elusive killer. The story had all the usual expected elements and yet still brought something fresh and unique to this one of a kind thriller.

A cat and mouse police procedural, that I found a little too drawn out and not as fast paced as I was hoping. A quarter of the way in I'm ready to give up. Half way through I'm thinking I'll keep going. Three quarters in I'm counting how many pages to go. I'm done. Thanks to Netgalley for a free advanced readers copy in exchange for an honest review.