"He had the same ironic expression Jack had when she said something he thought stupid of boomerish, even though, as Ruth pointed out to him, she wasn't a boomer. She was Gen X. She'd looked it up. Several times." The Bluff's lead protagonist, Ruth Dawson, is a middle-aged lawyer slumming it after being sacked by doing conveyancing in a small town called Myddle. Like most of the characters in this rural Aussie noir, she's hard to connect with, which, despite all the twists and turns, makes it hard to really care about the outcomes for any of them. As a fellow Gen X, I also found the constant undermining of social media and the people who use it and care about likes, a bit tedious (and boomerish): "That thing is a portal into a nightmare."

There are also some lazy writing devices, like the inclusion of WhatsApp message dialogue with her son Jack to explain Ruth's thoughts in places. They were unnecessary and irritating to the reader. I could see some attempts at good descriptive writing, but not all of them are successful. For example, I don't know how many sausage sangas that the author has had, but I'm pretty sure none of them "tasted of smoke and vast blue skies." The best bits of writing were about the namesake location, The Bluff, everything else felt like it was written about rural Australia from the perspective of an outsider who didn't quite capture its charm: "A drive through the Australian bush at night has a million witnesses, their eyes reflected in the headlights low on either side of the road."

Confronting and atmospheric, The Bluff by Joanna Jenkins (out 4 March) ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Australian Rural Thrillers, often called Bush Noir, are one of my favourite genres, with the past 5–7 years delivering some truly stellar reads. While The Bluff had strong moments, it left me with mixed feelings.

The story centres on Ruth Dawson, a lawyer stepping into a temporary role in the small town of Myddle. What starts as a quiet stint quickly escalates when she becomes entangled in the disappearance of a teenage girl and a murder that rocks the tight-knit community. Jenkins delivers a vivid and sobering portrayal of rural Australia, capturing the intricacies of loyalties, tensions, and unspoken divides. The themes of racism and sexual assault are powerfully and honestly explored—appropriately confronting, though undeniably difficult to read.

The plot is gripping, with plenty of twists to keep the pages turning, but the characters were harder to connect with. Most were deeply flawed and often unlikeable, which, while realistic, made emotional investment in their outcomes challenging. Ruth stands out as a strong, empathetic protagonist, though the inclusion of WhatsApp messages with her son in London felt unnecessary and didn’t add to the story.

Overall, this is a solid addition to the Bush Noir genre, but it doesn’t quite match the exceptional standard of similar books in recent years.

Trigger warning: This book contains scenes of sexual assault and racism.

Acknowledgement: Thank you to NetGalley and Allen & Unwin for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

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