Australian crime author Matthew Spencer burst onto the scene with his compulsive debut Black River. That book introduced readers to detective sergeant Rose Riley and journalist Adam Bowman and revolved around a death at an exclusive Sydney school. Both Riley and Bowman are back for a more regional crime outing in Spencer’s follow-up Broke Road.
Broke Road is the road that runs through the Hunter Valley, a popular tourist destination a couple of hours north of Sydney due to its many wineries. Rose Riley is sent up to the area with her partner Priya Patel to investigate a woman’s murder. She is told to be wary of the local force and soon begins to suspect that this is for good reason. Soon the media is interested, and on their heels comes Bowman, now working freelance after doing well out of a true crime book that he published following the Black River case. Riley soon finds the case is more complicated than it first appeared, with plenty of suspects and a connection to similar cases elsewhere.
Broke Road is a bit more of a straight forward procedural than Black River. Spencer uses it to fill in some of Riley’s backstory as it turns out she grew up in the area. He also, once again, uses his experience as a former journalist to dig into the role and conduct of the media in cases like this. Bowman is the reader’s guide to a world of confected or beaten up stories and hand-in-glove relationships between business interests and the media. The relationship between Riley and Bowman (and with Patel) is an ongoing highlight of this series.
Given how little Australian crime fiction is set in Sydney, it is in some ways a shame that Spencer followed most other Australian crime authors from the city into the regions. But that said, he does deliver a great regional crime novel. Spencer captures the landscapes and divided culture of the Hunter Valley – between the tourist and those who service the wine and tourist trade, and the locals in nearby Cessnock. And he does this through a red-herring and shifty character filled murder mystery that builds to a tense conclusion.
Broke Road by Matthew Spencer
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