This is number 4 in the series. Set in Australia, I love a book that is set in rural Australia. Especially a police procedural. Having not read his other books, I was still able to read this one as a standalone. I will definitely be reading his other books too.

“Days End” is a laconic crime novel from an outstanding writer. It’s part of a loosely connected series, but also works well as a standalone.

Constable Paul Hirschhausen – “Hirsch” – is the lone police officer in tiny Tiverton, although he has support from the three officers in a nearby, marginally larger, town. His work is diverse, covering everything from petty theft and vandalism to serious crimes like murder.

Right now, for example, he’s dealing with a possibly missing tourist, a dead body, vandalism, expressions of racism, and some low level scams. In addition, his romantic partner’s teenage daughter is dealing with cyberbullying.

Although Hirsch is often rushing from one problem to another, and much of it is urgent, there’s a laid back sense to this. Sheer distance means that things can’t always happen fast. The variety of things going on means that Hirsch doesn’t get to concentrate on any one thing for long.

The writing style is very laconic. It’s spare and to the point, but still vividly evokes the Australian landscape and the rhythms of a small town. The style suits the tone of the novel, and indeed enhanced the atmosphere.

The policing storylines are complete in this novel, but the relationships extend across novels. However, it was easy to feel the relationships, and understand where the characters were in them. I hadn’t read any of the earlier novels featuring these characters (although I have read other Disher novels), but still felt that I knew all I needed to know.

I enjoyed this a great deal. It’s extremely contemporary in many of the issues raised, but the spare tone reminds me of hardboiled novels of an earlier era.

This is absorbing and interesting, thoroughly enjoyable to read – but not, I might say, particularly emotionally involving. It’s an intriguing puzzle, rather than something that prompts visceral feelings.

I so wanted to enjoy Day's End, in fact after I read my ARC, I went on to buy the audiobook hoping that I would enjoy it a bit more. Sadly neither was enjoyable. At first I was put off by all the COVID and vaccine propaganda. It took up way too much of the book. On my second try I found that there wasn't actually much of a story. Too much going on. It felt like the stories were written to fit around a certain narrative. I read for enjoyment and escapism, not to have woke opinions shoved down my throat.

I love Garry Disher's novels and Paul Hirschausen. I enjoyed this novel set in rural Australia as I enjoyed the previous story.
Even if it's a sort of country noir, there's a sort of lightness that makes them entertaining even if the setting is often destitute and the characters are flawed.
This is an excellent novel and I strongly recommend all the series.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this ARC, all opinions are mine

Hirsch’s rural beat I first imagined is a quiet backwater town, Tiverton, surrounded by farms as big as towns but not challenging as far as policing is concerned. How wrong I was! I won’t give spoilers but just be prepared for some very dramatic events most of which at first seem random but by the end the threads do pull together.
The context of the size of the area Hirsch has to cover was made clear when he advise alone of his senior colleagues ‘there’s only him and the beat is as big as Belgium. I actually think Belgium might be a calmer place to be.
My first in what I soon realised was a series but easy to read as a stand alone. I enjoyed it all even the gory bits.

4.5*. Day’s End is the 4th outing for Garry Disher’s excellent Senior Constable Paul “Hirsch” Hirschhausen, the only cop in a small rural Town with a “beat” the size of Belgium.

The quiet streets of Tiverton are punctuated by numerous small town issues with no apparent connection. A mother looking for her backpacker son who hasn’t been keeping in touch, a dodgy family who have moved in and are a haven of petty crime, graffiti and various low level scams. However, things ramp up when someone unsuccessfully attempts to destroy the contents of a suitcase by burning it. The life of small town cop Hirsch is never dull but what can bind these many disparate events together.

Beautifully paced, Day’s End works on multiple levels. There are strands of plot that slot together with ease but not in an obvious way. The dialogue is fabulous and I really enjoy going back to Hirsch and the other local residents. This would work brilliantly as a standalone but I would wholeheartedly recommend the whole series, which keeps getting better. Hugely looking forward to No5. This is a very special series.

Thanks to Viper, Serpent’s Tail, Profile and Netgalley for an ARC.

This is the first Gary Disher book that I have read and I've thoroughly enjoyed it. Disher has an eye for those small details which give this novel an authentic feel with its warts-and-all depiction of rural small-town life.
When covering COVID themes Disher isn't afraid to sit firmly on one side of politics and is entertainingly critical of conspiracy theorists. I'm looking forward to catching up on some earlier titles in this series.
My thanks to the publishers and Netgalley for an advance review copy.

EXCERPT: Out in that country, if you owned a sheep station the size of a European principality you stood tall. If you were a rent paying public servant, like Hirsch, you stood on the summit of Desolation Hill.

Not much of a hill - but it was desolate. It overlooked patches of saltbush and mallee scrub and a broad, red-ochre gibber plain that stretched to the horizon; wilted wild-flowers here and there, deceived by a rare spring shower.

It also overlooked an image of Wildu, the spirit eagle, carved into the plain: spanning three kilometres from wingtip to wingtip and poised to strike. And Desolation Hill was one of the last places Willi Van Sant had visited before he disappeared.

ABOUT 'DAY'S END': Hirsch’s rural beat is wide. Daybreak to day’s end, dirt roads and dust. Every problem that besets small towns and isolated properties, from unlicensed driving to arson. In the time of the virus, Hirsch is seeing stresses heightened and social divisions cracking wide open. His own tolerance under strain; people getting close to the edge.

Today he’s driving an international visitor around: Janne Van Sant, whose backpacker son went missing while the borders were closed. They’re checking out his last photo site, his last employer. A feeling that the stories don’t quite add up.

Then a call comes in: a roadside fire. Nothing much—a suitcase soaked in diesel and set alight. But two noteworthy facts emerge. Janne knows more than Hirsch about forensic evidence. And the body in the suitcase is not her son’s.

MY THOUGHTS: Day's End is the fourth book in Garry Disher's Paul Hirschhausen series, and may very well be the best so far - although having said that, two others have also been five star reads. Although Day's End is part of a series it works well as a stand alone. The author provides enough background information without overwhelming the storyline to enable this.

Day's End is set during Covid, but again Disher doesn't let it overwhelm the storyline either, just works it in matter of factly, making good used of the differences in people's beliefs and the tensions that prevailed.

I love Hirsch's caring nature. He makes monthly sweeps of the outlying areas, calling in to remote dwellings to check on the occupants, alleviate their loneliness, and to observe. Most places he is welcome, some he isn't.

Tiverton, like most small remote towns, has fallen victim to the scourge of drugs. Unemployment is high, there's nothing for the youth to do other than to amuse themselves with petty, and not so petty, crime and get off their faces on whatever is to hand. In direct contrast to this is the lives lead by the privileged and wealthy in the area - new SUVs, a helicopter or two, boarding schools, and horses.

As is normal, there are several threads to this story: A missing man and his girlfriend; Hirsch's ongoing relationship with high school math teacher Wendy; bullying; racial tensions - I love the character of Aunty Steph! - including white supremacy; drugs; thefts; graffiti; and assaults. But there's also something big going down - Hirsch is ordered to pull his head in by the Federal Police who have suddenly appeared in his little corner of the world. Yet not one thread overwhelms another - they all meld seamlessly to create a masterful portrait of Hirsh's life.

I was immediately immersed in Hirsch's world from the first paragraph and was delighted to remain there until closing the cover on that final, and dramatic, ending.

Disher is an author who paints pictures with his words and brings his characters to life.

Favorite Line: 'Their high achiever was Jacob. Arrested for stealing a car, he'd arrived at his magistrate's hearing in a car he'd stolen to get himself there.'

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

#DaysEnd #NetGalley

I: @serpentstail

T: @GarryDisher @serpentstail

THE AUTHOR: Garry Disher was born in 1949 and grew up on his parents' farm in South Australia.

He gained post graduate degrees from Adelaide and Melbourne Universities. In 1978 he was awarded a creative writing fellowship to Stanford University, where he wrote his first short story collection. He travelled widely overseas, before returning to Australia, where he taught creative writing, finally becoming a full-time writer in 1988.

DISCLOSURE: Thank you to Serpent's Tail/Viper/Profile Books via NetGalley for providing a digital ARC of Day's End by Garry Disher for review. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own personal opinions.

Garry Disher does it again with a timely crime thriller set in peak covid times. He gets right into the nitty gritty of life and why people do the things they do.
Hirsch is fast becoming one of my all time favourite fictional characters.

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to get this book before it was archived I will be reading it and will post my review to all relevant book sites

Garry Disher sits in a quality of his own as an Australian noir crime writer with my favourite character, Hirsch, at its center,  the only policeman on duty in a God foresaken place called Tiverton and an area to patrol that would make anyone in Europe go pale. 

The upcoming " Day's End" is the 4th in the Hirschhausen series which I have become addicted to,  but maybe because this is the third Aussie crime novel I have read lately with crystal meth dealers in its plots, this new "Hirsch" does not get my usual five stars simply because I found the story not completely tight and sometimes confusing.

Disher's  great writing is always a treat as is his ability to start the book with seemingly benign assignments, here driving an international visitor, Janne Van Sant, to her sons last employer before he disappeared, resulting in a whole firework of events. Disher is great when describing life in the outback, Hirsch's plight and emotions,  the strange and dangerous characters living in these place. Even if not 5 stars this time, always such captivating reading.

This is book 4 in the Hirsch series but easily stands alone. Set in small town Australia, during Covid, Paul Hirsch is back policing his rural beat. I love the characterisation and the descriptive passages, the steady pace and the topical plot, politics and racism. It's very well written and an easy 5*. I would recommend reading the previous books too. Thanks to Net Galley for my ARC.

Garry Disher's latest Aussie rural noir offering in his Constable Paul 'Hirsch' Hirschausen series is a superb and gripping read from beginning to end. Hirsch's South Australian beat is a phenomenal size, occupying his entire days, from beginning to day's end, and often nights too. He is compassion personified as he regularly drops in on far flung residents as well as those in the small town of Tiverton, the vulnerable, the ill, the troubled and the troubling. Covid has taken its toll, and their are the usual Covid deniers and conspiracists as can be seen when he has to attend an incident when Dr Pallai is administering Covid jabs. However, the stresses and strains are fraying the social fabric that held communities together, hampered by anger, isolation, social, economic and political inequalities, unemployment, with manipulative white supremacy groups intent on creating greater divisions and more.

Hirsch is driving and accompanying Dr Janne Van Sant from Belgium to the last place that her missing son, Willi, had worked, she has not heard from him for 3 months. Sam and Mia Dryden run a large and prosperous property, claiming that Willi and his new girlfriend left to travel together, and had sent them a postcard. Something feels decidedly off about the couple and on their way back Hirsch is called to the scene of a burning and smouldering suitcase stuffed with the body of a dead murdered man, but it is not Willi, and not someone Hirsch recognises. Hirsch scarcely has a moment to breath as his schoolteacher partner, Wendy, and her daughter, Kate, find themselves targets of a malicious campaign and vicious online bullying. There are the incoming Brenda Maher's criminal family and suspicious activities that culminate in an event that not surprisingly traumatises Hirsch, but there is just no time to go see the therapist.

I have barely touched the surface of what Hirsch has to endure, such as internal interviews, white supremacy groups, graffiti, a valuable ram shot dead, a plane crash, and further murders. He finds himself being warned off by federal cops, and Wendy helps him when he begins to experience panic attacks. Disher is a marvellous crime writer who crawls beneath the skin of Aussie society, town and rural, with all the harrowing contemporary issues that mar it. It falls on the shoulders of the likes of Hirsch to respond on a daily basis to the symptoms, the solutions do not lie in their hands, but it exacts an enormous price from him and others. This is unmissable Aussie crime fiction that I recommend highly! Many thanks to the publisher for an ARC.

Four stars

I really enjoyed being back with Hirsch as he solves crime in a rural Australian community and found this to be a great page turner of a read.

An insight into online trolling of a teenage girl, police life in the aftermath of the pandemic, racism, drugs, violence, social division and so much physical distance to cover for a small town. There is a lot going on in this book.

As always, I loved the way the stories all started to intertwine. But one of my favourite parts of the writing is the human aspect of it all. I would have liked a little more Wendy and Katie, but I felt their absence highlighted Hirsch’s struggling mental and emotional capacity to deal with the crimes and people he was facing.

I did find the scene involving the baby and the dog made me want to put the book down and walk away. I’m not sure that it brought enough to the plot to make it a necessary addition for me.

I would like to thank Netgalley and Serpent’s Tail/Viper/Profile Books for an advance copy of Day’s End, the fourth novel to feature Senior Constable Paul “Hirsch” Hirschhausen set in the rural South Australian town of Tiverton and its environs.

Hirsch is escorting Janne Van Sant round the area her missing son was last seen. On their way back they discover a burning suitcase with a body in it. It isn’t Willi Van Sant as Janne quickly establishes, but it is a headache for Hirsch, along with the “covid morons” and a general sense of unease and change in the district.

I thoroughly enjoyed Day’s End, which is another tale of inept criminality with a laser focus on current societal issues. It is set in the times of Omicron, when COVID was at its deadliest and the anti-vaxxers at their most strident. How quickly those of us who escaped lightly forget the fear and precautions that prevailed as that time seems distant now. The novel is a welcome reminder of how too few of us endured and came out the other side.

I found the novel hard to put down. It starts with the disappearance of Willi Van Sant and the body and when those cases move to other jurisdictions Hirsch gets involved in a series of low level crimes that seem to all tie in to a local family and various other disputes and mysteries. Not everything is linked together, but there are enough tangential links between the characters to keep the reader turning the pages for more. There are some shocking scenes and a dismaying solution to one part of the problem, but overall this is a realistic novel with real life problems and solutions, apart, perhaps, from Janne Van Sant, who is the original bada**.

The novel is told entirely from Hirsch’s point of view and he is an excellent protagonist. He didn’t chose to be in Tiverton (see the previous novels for an explanation) and is a city boy at heart, but he’s making the best of it and does a great job of it, not just enforcing the law, but making welfare visits and settling local disputes, even if his superiors don’t quite see it that way. Of course, calling someone a covid moron on video doesn’t help. He’s drawn sympathetically, often unsure and in this novel traumatised, but determined to get justice. Somehow, all his various investigations overlap and he manages to end up in places he’s been forbidden from going on different cases. That made me smile.

Day’s End is a great read that I have no hesitation in recommending.

Another brilliant piece of Aussie noir from Garry Disher, small towns, big stories and a strong emotional edge to the writing makes this endlessly addictive and brilliantly engaging.

Always a central mystery with smaller events circling around it, the characters are pitch perfect and this is by far one of my favourite series. It is a gentle narrative that occasionally shocks you out of your comfort zone, easily read in one sitting mainly because you won't want to put it down.

Highly Recommended.

Paul Hirschausen aka Hirsch is a cop managing a rural beat in South Australia. The small town where he is based has its fair share of the kind of problems that beset such places all over the country. But Hirsch is committed to looking after his community, packed full of eccentric and memorable characters.

Unfortunately, the pandemic is taking a toll on people's mental health, as well as the inevitable concerns some have about the physical effects of the virus. Related to the lockdown, Hirsch is trying to help visitor Janne van Sant locate her son, a backpacker who went missing around the time the lockdown kicked in. What they find however, is something else entirely...

This is a cleverly conceived, sneakily humorous book with a well-drawn, likeable protagonist in Hirsch. The dramatic surroundings come to life in Disher's writing, and the story weaves together multiple strands, seemingly without effort. Recommended for readers who enjoy well-written, well-observed stories set in small towns with offbeat characters.

Day’s End is the fourth book in the Paul Hirschhausen series by popular Australian author, Garry Disher. Early spring, and Senior Constable Paul Hirschhausen is kept busy with his twin roles, “law-upholder and welfare worker”, which currently includes escorting Dr Janne Van Sant, the mother of a missing Belgian backpacker, Willi Van Sant around his last known locations. She is unconvinced by the story his last employers tell.

A detour on their return to Tiverton involves a body in a burning suitcase (not Willi’s, his mother confirms), requiring Homicide Squad involvement, on top of the necessary follow up on the backpacker, and a visit to a recently arrived family steeped in criminal culture. And so ends another week as sole cop in a rural South Australian small town.

Before the month is out, Hirsch has dealt with racist and slanderous graffiti, online bullying, neighbourhood harassment, an internet home rental scam, the sharing of racist and elder-abuse videos, an assault on a local school teacher, and encounters with what he terms “covid morons”.

He attends a light plane crash, and deals with a vicious dog at a PTSD-inducing scene, endures an uncomfortable zoom conference with his superior and an Internal Investigations interview. The exciting climax involves some very nasty members of a right-wing paramilitary group, and by the final pages there is a not inconsiderable body count.

Disher always manages to insert some (often dark) humour, as when Hirsch has a run-in with the Australian Federal Police:
“‘We snatched you off the street, as you put it, because we want you to back off.’
‘Back off from what?’
‘Poking your nose in where you shouldn’t. This is a need-to-know situation, and you don’t need to know.’
It was like being in a bad spy film.”

Disher is a master of descriptive prose and expertly conveys the atmosphere and attitude of the rural town: his cast of townspeople will likely be familiar to anyone who has visited such a place. Actual residents of the area would be able to say for sure, but Disher’s depiction of South Australia’s mid-north certainly feels authentic.

Amid a glut of flawed heroes, Hirsch is a refreshing protagonist: comfortable in his own skin; not perfect but certainly principled; not battling drugs or alcohol, not tempted by illegal or immoral activity; an essentially tireless cop, exuding integrity, dedicated to enforcement and protection tempered with the judgement calls essential in rural policing. Each additional dose of Hirsch makes him more likeable: another instalment will be very welcome.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Serpent's Tail/Viper.

Thanks to Netgalley for a copy of this book for an honest review.

I love Garry Disher books, the Hirsch books in particular. This one is another fine addition to the collection. Disher is a very descriptive writer, which I appreciate, but there is one section of this book that made my stomach churn (no spoilers; you'll know it when you read it). Highly recommend anything written by this legendary Australian author!

What a busy week Hirsch is having.
So many threads, so many crimes, and all the connections... from small time stuff, to murder.
Really enjoyed catching up with Hirsch. He's a good solid, dependable character who cares.
A series I'm hopeful to keep reading for many years.