Scrublands by Chris Hammer

Publisher's Synopsis

In an isolated country town brought to its knees by endless drought, a charismatic and dedicated young priest calmly opens fire on his congregation, killing five parishioners before being shot dead himself.

A year later, troubled journalist Martin Scarsden arrives in Riversend to write a feature on the anniversary of the tragedy. But the stories he hears from the locals about the priest and incidents leading up to the shooting don't fit with the accepted version of events his own newspaper reported in an award-winning investigation. Martin can't ignore his doubts, nor the urgings of some locals to unearth the real reason behind the priest's deadly rampage.

Just as Martin believes he is making headway, a shocking new development rocks the town, which becomes the biggest story in Australia. The media descends on Riversend and Martin is now the one in the spotlight. His reasons for investigating the shooting have suddenly become very personal.

Wrestling with his own demons, Martin finds himself risking everything to discover a truth that becomes darker and more complex with every twist. But there are powerful forces determined to stop him, and he has no idea how far they will go to make sure the town's secrets stay buried.

A compulsive thriller that will haunt you long after you have turned the final page.

My Review 

Scrublands is the debut novel of Chris Hammer and marks a significant entry into the Australian crime landscape. The story is set in Riversend, a tiny town in the western Riverina part of New South Wales where the drought conditions ravage the land in a seemingly endless attack.

“He’s driven from the black soil of the flood plain into the Scrublands, a huge peninsula of mulga scrub where there is no soil, just red granular earth, like an oversized ants’ nest.”

It’s this atmospheric setting that dominates the narrative almost as much as the starkly confronting crime that has smothered Riversend in notoriety.

A year earlier, popular young priest, Byron Swift, inexplicably shot and killed 5 people at St James Church before being later shot dead himself by local police Constable Robbie Haus-Jones.

Sent to write a human interest feature to mark the one year anniversary of the shooting is journalist Martin Scarsden. Now, Scarsden is looking for redemption after a harrowing experience in Gaza where he was locked in the boot of a car for an extended period of time.

The seemingly straightforward assignment turns out to be anything but. The most startling revelation is the high regard in which the priest was held, even by family members of some of the slain men.

The question quickly becomes, what drove Swift to act so completely out of character on that fateful day?

Events quickly overtake Martin during his investigation, a bushfire rips through the nearby Scrublands, a car accident kills a local youth and bodies are discovered in a property’s dam. The greater media throng descends on the town to join him, turning the place into an absolute circus. 

“He has become the antithesis of the dispassionate, objective reporter he once was. Somehow, accidentally, he has inserted himself into the very centre of events, into the vortex of a story sucking in the attention of the nation, dragging them in like a tornado across the empty plain.”

To make matters worse, when Martin files his story it quickly becomes clear it is full of inaccuracies, to the point where his job is on the line. The locals’ regard for him plummets and his self-doubt climbs to new heights.

Scrublands is a story comprised of a complex narrative that builds across multiple threads. Apart from the year-old murder spree, we are confronted by rape allegations, potential paedophilia, extra-marital affairs, spousal abuse, a secret drug trade, an underlying ASIO investigation, backpacker murders and a Bikie gang with a growing hold over the region.

In short, there’s a lot going on and not all of it is either logical or particularly believable. Yes, I had problems with the story and they must be called out, just for my own piece of mind.

First of all, the CFS does NOT recruit random journos to join a firefighting team and send them out after a 2 minute rundown about how to survive a raging bushfire. Would. Never. Happen.

Second of all, a small town that has suffered a shooting event where so many people were slain would not wait around for a year before starting to question the reasons for the attack. They certainly wouldn’t spill their guts to a journo from Sydney who hits the town with a bunch of intrusive questions.

Overall, Scrublands progresses from what appears to be a tight investigation into the unusual aspects of a terrible year old mass-murder into a rather convoluted tale of consipracy and corruption.

Too many factors are thrown into the mix from the inclusion of multiple vets from Afghanistan to conmen, sociopathic killers and even ASIO spies! Somehow, and goodness knows how or why, a barely believable romantic interlude is added which becomes a boring on-again off-again angst driven relationship.

For all of my reservations about the telling of the Scrublands story, I did find myself caught up in the “whydunnit” question that propelled it from the start. This aspect was well-told and was enough to keep me interested enough to get to the end. 

I’m willing to overlook the rambling extraneous plotlines and can applaud it as a solid crime novel that was ultimately compelling reading.