The Valley, the seventh book in Chris Hammer’s outback crime series, is set in the forests between Canberra and the South Coast. Images: Supplied.
Emma Grey’s Pictures of You has cracked USA Today’s Bestseller list, and Chris Hammer’s Cover the Bones (the UK title of The Seven) has been named by The Times as one of its top 10 crime novels of the year. Congratulations to both authors!
Chris Hammer’s The Valley (Allen & Unwin) is the seventh in his outback crime series, but it takes Canberra readers much closer to home.
The book is rich in familiar landscapes—the verdant forests between Canberra and the NSW South Coast. While the crime story is as deliciously complex as the previous six, this one especially appealed to me because of the author’s elegant writing about the startling beauty of the landscape and how it shapes the characters who live in or move through it.
The author’s development of his two main protagonists, Nell Buchanan and Ivan Lucic, from earlier works is an irresistible hook for the reader. They are sent to The Valley to investigate a death, and immediately, they (and we) question why, as it is not geographically within their usual remit.
The historical time frame in this book takes us back to the days of environmental protests about the logging of native forests. Could the seeds for the contemporary crime lie there? There’s much unravelling of family histories and community secrets to be done.
It’s not just a matter of family connection and loyalty, but police and political involvement in the logging and mining industries. Nell has skin in the game and assumes the lead police role. Her acts of physical daring, or perhaps bravado, make for thrilling reading.
Questions of morality are important in Chris Hammer’s crime writing. The author is interested in the corruptive influence of money and power. His villains are varying shades of venal, but his gaze is unwavering. The reach of justice is satisfyingly long in this novel.
Hammer creates people for whom we care, and stories brimful of issues about which we tear out our hair in the real world. It’s writing with both style and substance.
In Pictures of You, Emma Grey turns the trope of a classic romance into a tale of relentless coercive control.
Readers may not have thought of Emma Grey as a crime writer, but Pictures of You (Penguin Random House Australia, 2024) places her firmly in that genre.
It’s a story of darkness and light, with photography playing a role in the plot and as an overarching metaphor for the situation of Evie Hudson, from whose amnesiac eyes we see half of this story. We meet her at the funeral of her husband, the darkly charismatic Oliver Roche, and learn that she has lost all memory of this relationship.
Enter the other point of view, Drew, a photographer and good guy who has loved Evie since their school days. They met when the exclusive boys school he attended was trying to clean up its dubious image by conducting some joint activities with the neighbouring girls’ school.
Evie attends Drew’s photography group and suggests that they all make work about girls. Drew is the only boy who gets it and a tentative relationship begins, interrupted when Oliver comes on the scene and goes all out to make Evie ‘his’.
This may sound like a classic romance, but the brilliance here is that the author turns the trope into a tale of relentless coercive control.
This is an important book, tackling the topic of abusive relationships, the self-serving control of a partner by the person they should be able to trust. In the real world, not everyone has a Drew to see them through.
Emma treats the subject with sensitivity and insight, never sacrificing story to polemic. She writes with a delicate touch while wielding an incisive instrument, her prodigious capacity for compassion elevating the work and magnifying its reach. She understands loss and the courage it takes to love.
Barbie Robinson is co-founder and a content creator for Living Arts Canberra, a not-for-profit media outfit supporting arts and community in the Canberra region and books worldwide through its website, podcast interviews and at 24/7 internet radio station, at Living Arts Canberra.
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