Margaret Hickey is fast establishing herself as one of the best Australian rural crime authors. She has build on her understanding of these communities to deliver a string of engaging and atmospheric procedurals. Her latest book, An Ill Wind, takes on a rural hot button issue – wind farms. In it she tries to explore all sides of the debate and the way it has divided communities.
An Ill Wind has a great opening hook – early one morning Geordie Pritchard is found hanging from the blade of one of his company’s wind turbines in the little Victorian town of Carrabeen. Pritchard comes from a wealth family that made its money in environmental destruction but he has tried to turn this around with investment in windfarms. Quickly on the scene are local police Will Lovell and his heavily pregnant wife Belinda Burney. Will and Belinda met as recruits and work in Melbourne but have taken a temporary posting in the town so that Belinda can be closer to her ageing father. The pair start to assist the local investigative team and soon find a range of long held resentments and suspects. At the same time, Belinda is asked to investigate a series of mysterious thefts from the local high school.
After a trilogy featuring South Australian detective Mark Ariti, this is the second book where Hickey is feeling out new investigators. She uses the pair of Will and Belinda to explore and epitomise the wealth divide in these small towns. Will comes from money, much like the victim Geordie, while Belinda’s family came from the wrong side of the tracks, although her father Reg commanded some respect in the town for his shearing prowess. This divide and the long simmering resentments that it creates, are important in the dynamics of the town. To this end, Hickey is keen to flash her credentials as a chronicler of the whole of the rural experience, not just the farming side:
No one ever mentions the townspeople when they write about the country, Belinda thought. It’s always about farmers and their problems. When was the last time she’d read an article about the petrol station in a country town? Or about the grand old pub, with its rotten balcony and wine-stained carpet? What about the post office, or the shop that sold cheese sandwiches thick with margarine in half-frozen white bread? You never heard about them, did you? Most of all, you never heard about the people who lived in the back streets, in the weatherboards and cheap cladding of the town. In the cities, suburbia is a mystery; in country towns, back streets are a myth.
There are plenty of broader issues raised in this novel. Foremost, the plot also allows Hickey to explore the tensions around windfarm development. From the economic and environmental benefit, to their impact on the landscape, to the conspiracy theories around windfarms and cancer. But Hickey also takes readers into the culture of exclusive private schools and university colleges. This is the world that Geordie comes from but also one that is familiar to Will who turned his back on it to join the police.
Overall, An Ill Wind is another solid rural procedural. It suffers only in the surfeit of these narratives – set in a small town where everyone knows everyone, and everyone knows everyone’s business, going back multiple generations. The windfarm angle makes An Ill Wind interesting but not enough to necessarily allow it to rise above the pack. Those looking for a Australian rural crime fix, though, are in good hands.
An Ill Wind by Margaret Hickey
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