Chris Hammer explores another part of rural Australia in his latest crime novel – The Valley. Hammer fans will know the drill by now: a mysterious cold open, a murder that draws the investigative team of Ivan Lucic and Nell Buchanan to a remote/isolated part of Australia, potentially some personal connection for one of them to the place or community and a generations-long history that impacts on and continues to influence current events.
In this case the setting is ‘the Valley’, an idyllic piece of forest sitting below an escarpment in the South East of New South Wales. It is based on a place called the Araluen Valley which sits near the town of Braidwood on the Western side of the Great Dividing Range between Canberra and the coast (Batemans Bay) although with a little bit of Blue Mountains landscape thrown in for good measure. The area has long been prized for its timber but also, at one time as a source of gold. Both the gold mining and logging histories of the area get explored through the narrative.
After a cold open involving the violent aftermath of a gold robbery, Hammer switches to the investigative team from his last few books – Ivan Lucic and Nell Buchanan. Their regional crime flying squad have been brought in over the top of local police to investigate the murder of a local entrepreneur Max Burnside in the Valley. Max was planning to convert the old gold mine above the town into a hydro scheme. Max was the son of a former police officer in the town, Simmons Burnside and it is through Burnside’s recollections that readers learn of some of the shady history of the Valley from back in the mid-1990s. To make matters more complex, Nell finds out that she has a family connection to the victim, a connection that eventually shines a light on her mother’s life from a time before Nell was born.
As already noted, The Valley follows the blueprint of the other Lucic and Buchanan books. Hammer uses both the investigation and backstory to explore the more recent history of the landscape. From gold mining in the 1920s to forestry in the 1980s to the green protests in the 1990s that led to much of the area being declared national park, through to the present day. But in doing so there is a lot of exposition. Hammer does his best to wrap the information up into story and draw readers in through the family connections of one of his investigators and some well paced twists but the narrative still often falls back onto telling rather than showing.
Ever since Scrublands, Hammer has used crime fiction to range around New South Wales and illuminate the environmental and developmental histories of different parts of the landscape –whether it be the opal fields (Treasure and Dirt) or the river redgum forests of the Murray River (The Tilt). In The Valley Hammer explores and exposes the landscape and recent history of another fascinating and beautiful part of Australia. And he does it, once again, by effortlessly drawing readers in with a dual timeline mystery and a redoubtable pair of tenacious investigators.
The Valley by Chris Hammer
$34.99
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