Red Dirt Road

 Red Dirt Road

Reviewed By  Nan van Dissel       February 28, 2023

 

Author  S.R. White

Distributor:      Hachette Australia
ISBN:                 9781472291165
Publisher:         Hachette Australia. Imprint Headline.
Release Date:   January 2023  

   Website:   https://www.hachette.com.au

FaceBook:    

YouTube:   

Instagram:   

X Formally Twitter:    

Detective Danna Russo knows her career is on the line, when her boss and district Commander Anton McCullough sets her up for failure by assigning her a stalled dual murder case in the remote Australian outback town, Unamurra.

Why was the local police officer, Able Barillo, with his expertise and local knowledge excluded from the earlier superficial investigation? Why were the bodies displayed as macabre angels? Dana, with no clues and strangely uncooperative, uninterested town folk has one week to answer all these questions. Will Russo’s fresh eyes and unusual approach, which focusses on the psychology of the killer, solve this complex case? 

Two local Unamurra men, Larry Muir, farmer and Tim, husband of pub owner Annie Ogden, are murdered and their corpses strung up in full sight of the fifty town residents, like angels from a recent avant-garde art installation of twenty-eight angels, which were designed to bring in the tourists’ dollar. Why? With no apparent connection between the killings, Dana is unsure as to whom to trust; there is even some doubt surrounding Able Barillo.

This atmospheric narrative takes the reader deep into the Australian outback during a prolonged drought. Although this is a low-key police procedural, it is as much about life in a remote town as it is about solving a murder. Even though this is the third Dana Russo novel, it lends itself to being enjoyed as a standalone book.

Crime, Fiction