SCRUBLANDS

Chris Hammer / Allen & Unwin

Almost-washed-up newspaper journo Martin Scarsden is sent to report on how a country town is coping in the wake of a killing spree. It’s been 12 months since the bloody Sunday when a priest gunned down five locals from the steps of his church before being shot dead himself. But the stories that Martin hears in drought-stricken Riversend don’t gel with reported “facts”. And when two bodies are discovered in scrublands, he finds himself squirming in the eye of a media storm. In his fiction debut, Hammer’s beautifully descriptive prose taps into the dark side of rural Australia.