A new genre to me – ‘outback noir’; The Dry might fall into this category.
An apparent murder in a grim town in the Australian outback, inhabited by old tired (white) Australians, some Aborigines and a camp for migrants. The three communities are deeply suspicious of each other, although the aborigines are pretty marginalised.
A white woman appears to have been stoned to death and a Greek origin city detective is sent to investigate and unsurprisingly gets a pretty hostile reception.
The cultural/racial origins of Aussie society are well covered; the detective’s origins are as immigrant as the whites and the more recent migrants as the Aborigine policeman points out to him.
Quite a good detective novel; I don’t think I would rush to read any more.
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