I loved the sound of this historical rural crime and mystery book. It is the second book to feature Gus Hawkins, a war vet and now police officer. I haven’t read Bone Lands yet and I am wondering how that one passed me by. I will certainly be rectifying that omission very soon after loving Skull River

I could not stop reading this once I started it, Hawkins is back and this time sent to the small town of Colley. He hasn’t been there long when chaos erupts. His partner is shot and the police station with all its records is burnt to the ground. This is just the beginning. There is a high body count in this one, with plenty of dodgy characters. But t was hard to know who to trust.

I really did love the main character of Hawkins. He is damaged and suffers PTSD after what her did and saw in the war. He loves his lady, despite not being with her, and he is a dog lover, what else do you need to know.

With an intriguing ending, I will absolutely be looking out for book 3 in the future, thanks to Simon and Schuster Australia, Affirm for my NetGalley copy and physical arc.

Mounted Trooper Augustus Hawkins was introduced to readers in Fioretti's first novel, BONE LANDS. Returned from active service in the Boer War, he's scarred physically and mentally, tortured by what happened in combat, damaged again by the love he found in the first novel having been cruelly torn away from him by a snobby family and society's expectations about class and more pointedly, money.

SKULL RIVER finds him transferred to a new post in the small, fading gold town of Colley in New South Wales. A day's ride from Bathurst, you'd think there wasn't going to be much to this place: a few drunks needing locking up, stock rustling crimes, the occasional breakout of violence amongst the miners still scratching around the area, and the constant need to move on prostitutes and other less "savoury" aspects of life on petering out goldfields. His first day finds him heading straight out of town to a nearby settlement and reports of trouble there, caught up instead in the ambush shooting murder of his junior officer, the burning down of the police station, and a level of tension and terror he was not really prepared for.

What comes after that are problems with accommodation, for him, the police office, and the reinforcements that eventually arrive, around a markedly hostile reception from the local hotel owner. To say nothing of the discovery of an unidentified body in the smouldering remains of the police lockup, some very dodgy procedural bending in police communication lines, all the current police records destroyed in the fire, and a dead trooper who would have known who the man in the lockup was, had he not been killed, his body ritualistically maimed, and returned to town on the back of his own horse.

A lot happens in very short time in SKULL RIVER, alongside Hawkins trying to work out who was who and how everything and everybody in the town fits together, and what he did and didn't do here. He's been in Colley once before, when he was drinking way too much and the PTSD was at its worst. He might not remember everything that happened back then, but there are a few locals who are all too able to recall.

Meanwhile, the ambush shooting turns into a tricky investigation, not helped by the reinforcements being inexperienced young troopers, easily spooked, and the assigned detective a useless drunk, along with the higher ups in Bathurst being shiny bummed and antagonistic. Because hatred of the mounted troopers is nothing new in early white settlement days, as is the overt racism, sexism, puritanical zeal, sexual misbehaviour, violence, and utter disregard for human and animal lives alike, the suspect pool is well populated, murky and more than a bit on the nose. Although there are moments of lightness, Mrs Owen, her goats and her ministrations, a young boy with Downs Syndrome and his mother, and a band of prostitutes who start out providing a bit of harmless insult slinging, and turn out to have had their own problems with that aforementioned pool.

The novel probably should come with a trigger warning though - there are a lot of violent horse deaths in particular in this story, as well as cattle, and whilst Hawkins feels these and they aren't necessarily gratuitous but clear indicators of attitudes and the reality of the time, there is the potential for some readers to find it confronting.

At the centre of both these novels however, is a man broken by his personal experience of war, and disappointment, in a country of the verge of change, with a life that he needs to get control of. He has a close connection to his father, mostly by stint of letters they share, and he's basically a decent man, who made mistakes when obviously in the thrall of severe shell shock / PTSD. His attempts to improve his own life, and do right by the people he's pledged to protect and serve are wonderfully evoked, as is his love for the stray dog that he forms a close attachment to. Alfie's a great character in is own right, and surely the epitome of a service dog in the making. Alfie, and the sly, sometimes very dry sense of humour that this author has given her main character make this dark but not always desperate reading though - and the sense of time and place are vivid and fascinating. Hawkins is not a man "longing for the green fields of home", he's a white Australian who gets the beauty of the landscape, even if large parts of it have been battered by gold mining and the pollution and disruption left in its wake.

Whilst the killer of young trooper is eventually identified, there's damage, and fall out that the town is going to take a while to recover from, if ever. And Hawkins has a decision to make about his own future, having turned down the potential of returning to the LIghthorse, he's aware that his activities as a Mounted Trooper are causing him more stress than solace. And then there's that love interest, a woman about to be married off for her family's fortunes to be improved. He's already mulling his future, when a blast from the past limps up the hill to the police paddock he's pitched his tent in until the station is rebuilt.

Pip Fioretti burst onto the Australian crime fiction scene with her historical rural crime fiction debut Bone Lands. That book was set in 1911 in the sheep station region of far west New South Wales. It centred around Gus Hawkins, a serviceman returned from the Boer War with injuries and PTSD who is the only policeman in the tiny town of Calpa when three children of a local landowner are found dead. What set this book apart was Fioretti’s detailed rendering of the time and place – remote Australia in the time between Federation and the First World War – and its exploration of the mercantile truths that sit behind some of our firmly held myths. While it did not seem likely, Hawkins is back in a sequel, set in a different part of the state – Skull River.
Skull River opens with what can only be considered a terrible day for Hawkins. After deciding to stay with the police, Hawkins has been given a promotion and has ridden out to the town of Colley, 8 hours from the regional centre of Bathurst, where he is to oversee a number of small rural stations. But on his first day his partner is killed in an ambush and the police station is burnt down, killing a prisoner being kept inside. His PTSD well and truly triggered and fearing for his life, Hawkins calls for assistance. Once again, Hawkins has to push against the authorities to drive the investigation which is being manipulated by other agendas.
Bone Lands did not take long to firmly establish Hawkins as a fascinating character and left him with some additional issues, including a love interest locked up in an asylum. With all of that set up done, Skull River, set the not long after those events, cuts right to the chase. Hawkins appears fully formed and once again is a strong centre for this story. Intuitive, resourceful and handy with a gun (and his fists) but also damaged (both physically and mentally) by his time in the army. Hawkins does not suffer fools and has a strong sense of justice and so is perfect for what is essentially an Australian Western.
As with the previous book, Fioretti is careful to explore modern issues in a historic setting. Hawkins has some more liberal views but not to the extent that he feels like a man out of his time. It is more that his experiences have taught him to live and let live.
Skull River is a great follow up to what was a strong debut. A visceral crime novel set in a tough time that once again delivers a great sense of time and place. And with the future looking a little different for Gus Hawkins, it will be interesting to see where Fioretti seems to be taking him next.

As running Frontier Noir and police procedural set in rural Australia in 1906. Augustus Hawkins, a traumatised former, now policeman witnesses the brutal murder of a colleague and is left with much to learn and solve. He knows little of the local landscape, which of his colleagues, superiors and locals he can trust, and who is responsible for the murder. All the while he must establish trust with the locals who are often deeply suspicious of the intentions of the law given its recent history of corruption and sometimes brutality in the region. Character development of the central protagonist is excellent and there are plenty of clever plot twists along the way as Augustus reconfirms his commitment to his own humanity as he endeavours to restore order to the frontier setting he finds himself in. While these 2 plot lines are initially disparate- one personal and one professional - Augustus success in both is confirmed ultimately by his commitment to pursuing the former, a commitment he finds as the book progresses. A superb read.