Hirsh was a promising metropolitan officer - until he blew the whistle on a case of police corruption. Now he's been exiled to a one-cop station in South Australia's wheatbelt. Called a dog by his own cop brothers. So when he's sent to investigate gunfire up isolated Bitter Wash Road he suspects his 'back-up' might be the one to put a bullet in him. He's wrong. But the events that unfold turn out to be a lot more sinister.
Hirsch is a whistle-blower. Formerly a promising metropolitan officer, now hated and despised. Exiled to a one-cop station in South Australia's wheatbelt. Threats. Pistol cartridge in the mailbox.
So when he heads up Bitter Wash Road to investigate gunfire and finds himself cut off without backup, there are two possibilities. Either he's found the fugitive killers thought to be in the area. Or his 'backup' is about to put a bullet in him.
He's wrong on both counts. But the events that unfold turn out to be a lot more sinister.
'One of ¬Australia's best-written crime fictions to date.' Australian
'Bitter Wash Road is superb.' Weekend Australian
'Peter Temple and Garry Disher will be identified as the crime writers who redefined Australian crime fiction in terms of its form, content and style...'Disher's eye for detail is acute and his poetic analogies precise...Bitter Wash Road continues the work of re-imagining the crime genre in a very Australian way, and does it beautifully.' Age/Sydney Morning Herald
'Disher is definitely not to be missed.' Globe & Mail
'Smooth, assured mastery.' New York Times Book Review
'Exceptional crime fiction.' Courier-Mail
'Not a word is wasted: here the ancient, bare, distinctive landscape of the hardscrabble country bordering Goyder's Line is conveyed with admirably atmospheric economy.' Adelaide Advertiser
'A top-class writer.' The Times
'Disher turns out to be a superb chronicler of macho cop culture.' Sunday Times
'An absolute corker of a crime novel and puts him up there with the likes of Michael Connelly, Ian Rankin and John Harvey...This is a superbly well-plotted thriller, beautifully written-especially the descriptions of the harsh outback-and with an intriguing hero, an honest cop faced with dishonesty at every turn.' Shotsmag
'Fast-paced, funny, and believable.'Bookmunch
The winner of numerous prizes for his eclectic body of work, Garry Disher pens this razor-sharp police procedural from his popular Challis/Destry series. Now that they are lovers, Challis and Destry must guard their affections closely, for romantic relationships are against department regulations. This complicates matters as they investigate the brutal assault on a private school chaplain as well as the murder of a public official.
When hordes of eighteen-year-olds descend on the Mornington Peninsula to celebrate the end of exams, a brutal bashing attracts political attention. The victim is connected, and now D. I. Hal Challis is facing interference from on high. Newly embarked on a relationship with his Sergeant, Ellen Destry, Challis doesn't need the brass looking over his shoulder. Then a bludgeoned corpse is found outside town, and it's clear something much darker than adolescent craziness is going down.
Garry Disher crafts sharp police procedurals with a distinctive down-under flair. A young girl has been abducted on Australia's Mornington Peninsula and Sergeant Ellen Destry takes the case in Inspector Hal Challis' absence.
Ten-year-old Katie Blasko is missing. Detective Sergeant Ellen Destry, alert to rumours of a paedophile ring operating on the Peninsula, is thinking abduction. Her colleagues are thinking bad family, truancy. Her boss is thinking about the media. Her partner D. I. Hal Challis is a thousand kilometres away, watching his father die, and everyone, including Ellen, is wondering whether she's good enough to handle this without him.
* WINNER OF THE NED KELLY LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD *
SMALL CRIMES CAN HAVE TERRIBLE CONSEQUENCES
Winter in Tiverton, and Constable Paul Hirschhausen has a snowdropper on his patch. Someone is stealing women's underwear, and Hirsch knows how that kind of crime can escalate. Then two calls come in: a child abandoned in a caravan, filthy and starving. And a man on the rampage at the primary school.
Hirsch knows how things like that can escalate, too. An absent father who isn't where he's supposed to be; another who flees to the back country armed with a rifle. Families under pressure can break. But it's always a surprise when the killing starts.
Wyatt made some powerful enemies in his first three outings, and the time has come to confront them. But we know by now that Wyatt's revenge won't be showy, impetuous and futile; it will be pragmatic, elaborate—and still possibly futile. He holes up in Sydney, preparing to return home to Melbourne to play his enemies against each other in a dangerous double-cross that will tear down the notions of loyalty and obligation. Wyatt is meticulous, demanding and implacable, and this may be the toughest, coolest and most uncompromising series in Australian literature. ‘Violent, gripping, realistic.' SUNDAY AGE ‘As hard as it gets and very entertaining.' WEEKEND AUSTRALIAN
Patient, exacting and not particularly lucky, Wyatt is a criminal's criminal and this series is one of the most compelling in Australian fiction. After the heists gone wrong in Kickback and Paydirt, Wyatt is further down on his luck and deeper in with the Outfit, a network of organised criminals whose attention he's tried hard to avoid. A risky job in a Brisbane bank and the return of a femme fatale add further complications to Wyatt's increasingly desperate situation and force him to decide who he is and who he cares about. 'Disher writes with all the compassion of a well-placed bullet in the back of the head.' J.R. Carroll 'Real books, not junk fiction.' Booklist 'Wyatt's as hard-boiled as a hubcap.' Weekend Australian
Summer on the Peninsula. The heat's ramping up, the usual holiday madness building. D.I. Hal Challis is already recycling his shower water and starting to dread Christmas. But this year there's something more. Women abducted and murdered on the Old Highway. A pall of fear over the scorched paddocks. The media are demanding answers - and Challis's sleepy beat is set to explode.
Wyatt hat es auf die Lohngelder einer Baufirma abgesehen, die im australischen Busch eine Pipeline verlegt. Gemeinsam mit Leah, einer ehemaligen Prostituierten, stellt er ein Team zusammen, um den Geldtransporter abzufangen. Doch sie sind nicht die Einzigen, die Beute machen wollen. Zu allem Überfluss setzen die Mesics aus Sydney den suspendierten Ex-Bullen Letterman als Kopfgeldjäger auf Wyatt an, weil der ihnen einst bei einem Drogendeal in Melbourne in die Quere kam. Alles in allem keine guten Voraussetzungen für Wyatt, um ungestört arbeiten zu können.
Constable Paul Hirschhausen—“Hirsch”—is a recently demoted detective sent from Adelaide, Australia’s southernmost booming metropolis, to Tiverton, a one-road town in rustic, backwater “wool and wheat” country three hours north. Hirsch is more than just a disgraced cop, a rumored whistle-blower—internal investigations is still trying to convict him of something, even if it means planting evidence, and someone has a bullet they’d like to put in his head, as has been made clear by the pistol cartridge left in his mailbox.
Hirsch is just trying to keep his job, but the tiny town of Tiverton has more crime than one lone cop should have to handle. The stagnant economy, rural isolation, and entrenched racism and misogyny mean every case Hirsch investigates is a new basket of snakes. And when the body of a sixteen-year-old local girl is found on the side of the highway, the situation gets even more sinister. Whether or not he finds her killer, there’s going to be hell to pay.
“Disher has drawn both a vivid and visceral picture of a backblocks bush town, its inhabitants ground down by the stresses of isolation, hard work, and irregular, relentlessly shrinking incomes…The story pulls no punches.”—Guardian (London)
