Review: Dust by Michael Brissenden

I've just come back from the UK where I lived in one of the most dangerous places on earth, a quaint English village. At any moment, I might have been murdered by the local vicar, the friendly publican, the sweet old lady next door or the postman. At least according to crime novels and popular TV shows. 

Now that I'm back home in Australia, I'm quickly discovering that the title of most dangerous place to live has a new contender, small town Australia. Especially in drought. Again, according to crime novels. 

Earlier in the year I read Peter Temple's The Broken Shore and Truth, long considered the high watermark of crime writing in Australia. Truth won The Miles Franklin Award. The two novels burned themselves into the brains of many aspiring writers and ever since we have seen countless iterations of Temple's themes - city vs country, nature vs man, man vs himself. 

So much so that it's hard to publish a crime novel in Australia that doesn't walk that familiar well-trodden road into the bush.  

A little weary of the whole genre, I picked up Dust by Michael Brissenden.
 
The book is set half a day's drive west from Sydney, there's been no rain, the lake has dried up, the town is slowly dying, a city cop, saddled with a fresh recruit, arrives to solve a murder, the local cop is ‘old school’ and unhelpful, the locals wary.

 Cleverly, Brissenden opens this familiar tale in the voice of twenty-one year old Aaron Love, who's reeling having discovered the body of a journalist, torn open by crows, in the middle of the dry lake. I immediately thought of Jaxie Clackton from Tim Winton's The Shepherd's Hut. But Aaron is softer and more approachable than Jaxie and I warmed to him immediately.

 he chapters from Aaron's point of view are the most engaging of the book. Brissenden appears to really throw himself into them and enjoys the challenge and the freedom of creating the world through Aaron's eyes. They are brilliantly done.

 The author, Michael Brissenden, was a highly respected journalist and the book is further lifted out of the ordinary by the frightening accuracy of his portrayal of the clash of cultures in today's Australia - most recently witnessed in Nazi rallies in Australian cities - and his willingness to draw parallels between nutjob conspiracy theories and right wing talking heads, and the actual everyday conspiracies of privilege and corruption.

 Read in one way, the book gives complacent liberals like me a hard kick up the bum. Read in another way, we are made to ask for whom the bell tolls.

 In short, Dust is a highly entertaining, informative, fast paced, well-written, genre reviving thriller that kept me reading well into the night. Peter Temple would be proud.

 Postscript: I see that Brissenden has written other novels, looks like I will be heading into his backlist now. Bye for now.