| Home | What's New | Links | Contact | Ned Kelly Awards |
|
|
Gunshot Road by Adrian Hyland | ||||
|
From the Dustjacket
Emily Tempest. Small, black, snaky as a taipan's tooth: the woman least likely to pursue a career in policing. Now, somehow, Emily's become the aboriginal Community Police Officer for the outback (not to mention throwback) town of Bluebush. Being allergic both to authority and to keeping her big mouth shut, she's immediately at odds with her new boss. And a death at the Green Swamp Well Roadhouse just makes things worse. Officially it's a simple case of two old drunks and a hammer. Emily's not convinced. Fast, funny and action-packed - Gunshot Road is Australia's literary thriller of the year. |
Publisher : Text Publishing
First published : 2010
ISBN : 9781921656309
No. Pages : 369 pages
Used copies of Gunshot Road are available for sale at (click for list of available books)
| ||||
|
Reviews
The mystery isn't so much the point of the book as the texture of
Emily's world, and it's a rich adventure even without the action that
erupts (mostly right on top of her) occasionally. She's an appealing and
(something to remark upon given the gender difference between author
and character) believable character, and the series reveals a very
different facet of the Australian experience from the others in the crop
of the current, remarkable burst of creativity in Australian crime
fiction.
internationalnoir.blogspot.com
In Gunshot Road Emily has been convinced to join the police as an Aboriginal Community Police Officer; a move which surprises many. When she attends to the murder of Doc, a mad geologist, she thinks that the initial explanation of his murder is too neat. His death is pinned on one of his intellectual sparring buddies - Wireless. She doesn't know why but she just knows something is amiss. She does some of her own investigation which lands her in lots of trouble with the law and also with the rough townsfolk. Adrian Hyland himself worked for many years in the Northern Territory and lived in Aboriginal communities. The Book Show, ABC
This is simply a marvellous book. It is a crime story, and an exciting one, but more importantly the book is a poem, full of emotion and insight. Every sentence is beautiful, as the author depicts a harsh yet rich landscape that is also a character in the story, seen through the unique perspective of the most unusual and attractive detective I have come across in a long while, Emily Tempest. And as icing on the cake, there are science jokes - technology and science figure heavily in the plot, but more interestingly, are as much part of the words on the page as any other subject addressed by this talented writer.
| |||||
|
|
