I love the setting of this book, rural Australia. A small town where 3 murders took place 17 years ago, the killer was caught and is behind bars. Now a tour company has come to the town wanting to put Rainier on the map with a "scenic" tour of where the murders occurred and where the man was caught. Some people want it, and some people don't. But then the tour operator is found dead in the same place one of the victims. Gemma, who has lived in the town her whole life and 'found' the last of the victims, believes she can figure out who killed the latest victim.

There were a lot of characters to keep track of in this book, and a lot of relationships and questionable parentage. The book started off slow and was difficult to get into, but the last half was much more interesting. It was interesting how everything tied together in a unique way at the end.

Murder Town opens with a tense prologue that immediately threw me into the action and had me needing to know more. 

This plot driven murder mystery has a well developed story, several great twists, and plenty of suspects with long held secrets and complicated relationships. I enjoyed the portrayal of a rural town made up of lifelong relationships, old grudges, and the many complex aspects of life in a small community. The decades old wounds from a serial killer terrorizing their town are brought back to the surface by a copycat crime in present day, making an engaging, fast read that I flew thru in a day.

Overall, I didn't find Murder Town as captivating and unforgettable as the author's prior book, Wake, but it was still an enjoyable and satisfying murder mystery. I'll definitely pick up the next book in the series.

This was a good small town trying to survive type book. I loved the rural Australian setting of this one and feel like the author did a great job with the descriptions so I could envision it clearly. I enjoyed the plot and the writing, though I did struggle a little at some of the point of view changes. I didn’t feel that they were succinct enough to warrant leaving off chapter headings letting the reader know who’s POV we were on, and I was frustrated a few times. The pacing is on the slower side, but it isn’t a bad slow, it feels like it is intended to be on the slower side so the reader can fully grasp all the details that are being laid out. I enjoyed the twists and turns and felt that they were well done, I didn’t really see all of them coming and I liked that. I think that this is more in line with a true mystery and not necessarily a thriller. It is a nuanced mystery, and one you will want to make sure you are paying attention fully for, so you don’t miss any details.

A book that dances around serial killers? Sign me up, buttercup!

Shelley Burr, you are a rockstar

This book is dark! I was completely consumed as soon as I concluded the first chapter. There was no shortage of twists and turns and I was on the edge of my seat the entire time. The twist was insane and unpredictable!

I can not wait to see what Burr comes out with next! Murder Town releases November 5th and I strongly encourage you to purchase this book! Happy reading, folks!

Check out this teaser :

Gemma Guillory has lived in the Australian Outback enclave of Rainier her entire life. She knows the tiny, red-dust town’s ins and outs by heart, knows the people like they are her family, their quirks as if they were her own.

She also knows her once charming town is now remembered for one reason and one reason only: three innocent people died there at the hands of a serial killer. The last stop on the Rainier Ripper’s trail of deaths fifteen years ago was her picturesque little tea shop. She knows that the consequences of catching the Ripper still haunt her policeman husband and their marriage to this day, and some of her neighbors are desperate enough to welcome a dark tourism company keen to cash in on Rainier’s notoriety as the “Murder Town.”

When the tour guide is killed by a Ripper copycat on Gemma’s doorstep, the unease that has lurked quietly in the original killer’s wake explodes into the light, and Gemma is drawn into the investigation. Unbeknownst to her, so is a prisoner named Lane Holland, a former private investigator who earned a living cracking cold cases before he ran afoul of the law.

A small town, struggling to survive years after a bypass has left it away from the traffic it needs to survive may have a new lease on life when a tour company wants to move in. Its claim to fame is a tragic story of a serial killer who had struck fifteen years earlier but when the tour operator is murdered, everyone is suspect. The small town in the outback setting is interesting and the characters ring true. As a big fan of Candice Fox and Jane Harper I'm thrilled to add Shelley Burr to my list of must read writers.

I wish we could give half stars because this is more of a 3.5 then a 3 in all honesty.
Small Town, murders, secrets, and lies.
This is my kind of thriller drama!
If you want a good solid read look no further.

I also like to say this is a slow burn, I add that on my thriller reads because people can be harsh if they are expecting a face paced crazy ride.

Murder Town is book 2 in the PI Lane Holland series by Shelley Burr.
This was such a page turner.
A gripping thriller that starts at a measured pace, and the suspense intensifies with surprising twists and turns as I turned the pages!
With a great cast of characters that are believable and intriguing. It was paced well and just a fun, suspenseful story.
This well paced atmospheric murder mystery set in the Australian outback will keep you guessing until the very end.
Now I’m on the hunt for book one Wake.

Thank You NetGalley and William Morrow for your generosity and gifting me a copy of this amazing eARC!

I was excited to read Shelley Burr’s next novel after Wake, and Murder Town does not disappoint! Lane Holland who is also a staring character in Wake is a murder investigator in Murder Town but with a twist. Murder Town is set in Rainier, a small town in the Australian Outback. Many years ago a serial killer, the Rainier Ripper, terrorized the town killing 3 people. Now in present day a new murder in Rainier appears to be tied to the long ago murders. There is good character development and twists and turns. I would recommend reading Wake first.

Murder Town starts off kind of slow, with several members of a small town community debating just how much attention they want to draw to the fact that three murders were committed in their town by the same named Rainier Ripper. In the midst of mixed feelings and arguments, the tour guide is found murdered outside the building where the group was meeting, opening up a can of worms on the murders from years ago and the reason why someone was just killed and by whom. This is the point where it gets interesting, because naturally in a small community everyone is very interconnected, and protagonist Gemma quickly learns, keeping quite a few secrets. The inconsistencies of the murders increasingly seem to indicate that they aren’t all the actions of a single man currently dying in prison. But this means the clock is ticking to find out who is responsible for which deaths. Readers of Shelley Burr’s previous book will recognize Lane, a private investigator now in prison after the death of his father, who is recruited to try and find out from the Rainier Ripper more about the killings. The story wraps up in a tidy way with more twists than the reader may have expected, but leaving a clear indicator as to what Burr’s next story will be about. I don’t know that I’d call the book a true page-turner, but it was interesting and I enjoyed the way it played out. A complimentary copy of this book was provided by the publisher. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Very well written and full of twists and turns. I wouldn't necessarily call this a thriller but the mystery aspect was intriguing and kept me hooked until the end.

I really liked this "mystery within a mystery." Set in the small fictional Australian town of Rainier, Shelly Burr introduces the reader to Gemma, owner of a tea room and hotel, central to a triple murder fifteen years prior.
Rainier still harbors old wounds from the Rainier Ripper, a killer who still sits in prison. Now, a tour company wants to make a killing from the ghastly murders and disrupt the still-healing community.
Gemma, her teenage daughters and cop husband are against the tour, as is the whole town.
When the tour guide is found butchered in the town fountain, the site of a Ripper murder, a new terror embraces Rainier.
Is the killer one of Gemma's guests? Are they tied to the past? Is Rainier ready for another bloodbath?
Only the real Ripper knows. Former detective, now inmate Lane must interview and learn the truth before Gemma and her family succumb to a new monster hiding in plain sight.
Take a trip to Murder Town, Australia. Burr's double mystery is fast, clever and filled with bloody red herrings.

This book was good, but not great. I did like the connections between the characters and how they continued to build. However, nothing really stood out as outstanding. It was a generic mystery/thriller. I also feel as though the story ended abruptly. I would have liked to hear the questioning that happened with Christian, Ruth and Nico along with Hugh and Aubrey. Thank you for the opportunity to read and review!

I loved another book by this author so went into this one with high expectations, which generally is not a good thing and not the fault of the author. It is more of a cozy mystery, small town, lots of characters that have known each other for a long time and the various secrets, issues between them that get stirred up when someone gets murdered. It seems like the same serial killer that killed three others from the town, but he is in jail, so....... This book was slow and at times the characters got mixed up in my mind. It wasn't a favorite of mine but would read others by this author

3.5 stars

This book had some interesting twists and turns but it was so slow paced that I found I had a hard time staying focused. For the majority of the book it feels like nothing happens and I kept getting bored and not wanting to pick this book back up. Even knowing how everything tied together it feels like there was a lot of unnecessary filler that just didn’t really add to the story for me.
There were also a lot of characters in this book and I had a hard time remembering who was who and how they were related to/involved with each other.
If you’re looking for a slow paced mystery/thriller about a small town full of suspicious people you might like this book. It’s definitely not a fast paced, action filled story but I think knowing what to expect going into it helps.

Thank you to NetGalley and William Morrow for the ARC!

3.5/5 ⭐️

Murder Town' is a good thriller with a decent mystery at its heart. It's filled with old secrets and present-day lies. It's set in a small town that has suffered a steady decline in the fifteen years since the murders, blighting the lives of the remaining locals while also seeming to offer them their only path to survival. The suspect pool is small but interesting. Best of all, although the man convicted of the killings is in jail, another murder is committed in the same style at a time when most of the townsfolk are gathered together.

The story is told mostly from the point of view of Gemma Guillory, a lifelong resident of the town, who has a personal connection to the killings, is (unhappily) married to a local police detective, has secrets of her own and is just starting to discover that she knows much less about her neighbours than she thought she did. As she tries to figure out who did the latest killings she has to rethink her relationship with everyone around her and re-evaluate what really happened fifteen years earlier.

I liked Gemma Guilory and I became engaged in her search for the truth, especially as it started to put her safety at risk.

This book is much more plot-driven and while the twists and surprises add tension and excitement, they're most definitely not character-driven.

Unfortunately, this ended up being a DNF for me.

It wasn't for any glaringly awful reason. I just...kept losing interest.

I didn't love or hate the characters and I didn't love or hate the plot.

I just wasn't particularly entertained.

* ARC via Publisher

Add this to your TBR! Murder Town has all of the components you want in a thriller-- murder, mystery, secrets, spies, and intrigue. There are plenty of twists that come to light at the end, and I bet you don't see the main one coming! Nicely done, Ms. Burr!

This is the second book by this author that I've read. It is essentially a second story in the Lane Holland case and although he place a pivotal role, he's hardly in it. I'm not sure I buy the story that put him into it but outside of that I think it's a solid book. She really writes great small town characters, evokes so much of the rural mindset and feelings (I don't know rural Australia but I do know rural dryland US and they seem somewhat similar). There are a couple different threads here and most of them are resolved by the end but just enough left outstanding to make you think about books 3/more in this vein.

I received an advance copy from Netgalley and the publisher.

(Spoilers)
I liked this cozy cold case murder mystery for the first half. But there is a second part to the mystery that just makes the book crazy the second half. And it just kept getting crazier. There were a lot of unbelievable mistaken identities and idiotic police decisions (overlooking the business partner who had an insurance policy on the victim?).

It's hard to top the quality of the author's first novel, WAKE, and the presence of the likable Lane from that book was ill-placed. Overall, too much happening in this book.

Thank you William Morrow for the digital review copy.

I received a free copy of, Murder Town, by Shelley Burr, from the publisher and Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Gemma Guillory lives in Australia, Ranier, her town is famous for a serial killer who has never been caught. This was an interesting read, it was good, but I did not enjoy the language at times.