Nocturnal insects rattle “like white noise”. In The Dry, Falk wanders down gloomy country roads. The remoteness of the bush drums home the savagery of their imprisonment, and their very survival depends on their embracement of that same harsh environment. As seen by Hyland’s Aboriginal protagonist – amateur detective Emily Tempest – the desert in central Australia is alive and animate to the mining companies, however, it is a resource to be exploited.Ĭharlotte Wood’s feminist horror novel The Natural Way of Things, published last year and also optioned for a film, sees 10 women drugged, abducted and held against their will in the outback. Adrian Hyland’s two crime novels Diamond Dove (2006) and Gunshot Road (2010) take place in rural towns where mangy dogs swarm. Garry Disher’s Bitter Wash Road (2013) is set in the bare, brittle “hardscrabble country” of South Australia’s wheatbelt. “Nordic crime writers understand that the more interconnected the world is, the more people crave a sense of place – the more distinctive and unusual the better.”Ī number of Australian crime and horror writers have embraced the singularity of the local landscape over the last decade.
“Place matters more than ever in a globalised world,” noted a 2012 Economist piece titled Those Bloody Scandinavians.
In Scandinavia the landscape goes a long way towards creating a sense of dread, as does a bloody past and history of dark folklore. Yet their relative peace seems to make homicide and butchery – when committed to the page – all the more alarming. Both regions, for example, are among the safest in the world: indeed, Australian murder rates are at record lows.
There is a parallel to be drawn here with Scandinavian noir. In the wake of The Dry’s success (it has already been sold to more than 20 publishers worldwide and Reese Witherspoon’s production company has optioned the film rights) – it is worth asking the question: how has Australian crime writing carved itself a niche using the landscape as a canvas for fear? From ice and snow to the desert sun Harper’s debut novel, published in May, portrays the outback at its most cruel: a force that gives and takes life, as unforgiving and fierce as the bleak Nordic snowscapes that have become synonymous with great crime and horror writing. Did Luke really kill his wife and son in cold blood? Or is foul play at hand? When policeman and former Kiewarra resident Aaron Falk returns home for his childhood friend’s funeral he starts to ask questions.
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