Publisher's Weekly Review
Sydney journalist Martin Scarsden, the hero of Australian author Hammer's stellar first novel, is still recuperating from a traumatic experience while covering a story in the Middle East when he's sent to Riversend to write an article about how the people of the drought-stricken town are coping one year after Byron Swift, a local priest, inexplicably shot down five men in cold blood outside his church one Sunday morning. Martin first stops at a bookstore, where he meets its beautiful owner, Mandalay Blonde, who's struggling to come to grips with a painful past. Mandy insists that Byron, who was killed by a cop shortly after he committed his horrific crime, was a decent man who treated her and her late mother kindly, not the child abuser some believed him to be. Mandy urges Martin to try to find out why he did it. Martin learns after talking to others that more tragedies may be connected with the mass murder. The stakes rise when Martin breaks a journalist's fundamental rule by becoming part of the story, which turns out to be a "heady mix of murder, religion, and sex," as Martin comes to realize. Richly descriptive writing coupled with deeply developed characters, relentless pacing, and a bombshell-laden plot make this whodunit virtually impossible to put down. Agent: Faye Bender, Book Group. (Jan.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
A novel's opening moments are there to rivet readers' attention; this one begins with a dazzler. A parish priest stands outside his little church in the heat-soaked Australian scrublands on a Sunday morning, chatting with parishioners. He steps inside for a moment, comes back with a rifle and blows away five members of his congregation. Readers who turn pages anxious for understanding will have to wait. Instead, the narrative picks up a year later, as reporter Martin Scarsden visits the dusty, dying town where the murders took place. He's not there to investigate the still-unsolved crime but to write about how everybody is holding up. His poking about reveals a hidden marijuana farm, a plot to steal water, and a murder tricked up to look like suicide, with only occasional references to the slaughter that started the novel. This story is a mix of beautiful writing and a maddeningly slow, overly complex plot. Still, we're hooked. Who is this priest who can put a bullet through a man's neck at a hundred yards?--Don Crinklaw Copyright 2018 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
PSYCHOLOGICAL SUSPENSE IS a genre that needs to be handled with kid gloves. Too much reality - or too much foolishness - and the pact made with the reader to believe in the unbelievable is broken. Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen seem to have mastered the formula in AN ANONYMOUS GIRL (St. Martin's, $27.99), a creepy-crawly tale about putting your trust in a stranger; specifically, in a strange psychologist. Jessica Farris, a young theatrical makeup artist living on peanuts, sneaks into a high-paying "morality and ethics research project" being conducted by Lydia Shields, a psychology professor at New York University. Anticipating a formal printed questionnaire, Jessica is disconcerted to be bombarded with highly personal questions. "Subject 52, you need to dig deeper," she's prompted by the dauntingly elegant Dr. Shields, who knows Jessica is an impostor, but finds her interesting. And dig she does, revealing herself so completely that Dr. Shields focuses exclusively on her. Although this will no doubt set off alarms for discerning readers, Jessica seems oblivious to the unlikelihood of such a setup. And indeed, it turns out that Dr. Shields is really looking for an attractive (and rather dumb) young woman to test her husband's fidelity. Given the rather far-fetched premise of this tale of mutual sexual obsession, the authors do a neat job of ratcheting up the suspense when Jessica begins going out on assignments to pick up married men in bars. And it comes uncomfortably close to being a justifiable betrayal when Dr. Shields's husband has an affair with Jessica, confirming his wife's previously unfounded hypothesis that he's "an unrepentant adulterer." At least he has the discretion to warn his lover about his wife. "She's dangerous," he says. "Watch yourself." But it's the danger that makes infidelity such fun, and the authors know exactly how to play on their characters' love of danger to bring them to the brink of disaster - and dare them to jump off. you could choke on the bonedry atmosphere of SCRUBLANDS (Atria, $26.99), Chris Hammer's gritty debut novel about a sex scandal that has left a small Australian desert town reeling. A year has passed since a church shooting torched the parched landscape of Riversend, where everyone talks about the punishing weather but few have the stamina to take it without boiling over into rage or despair. The chary locals are less forthcoming about the lingering horror of the mass shooting in which a young priest took the lives of five members of his elderly congregation. A journalist named Martin Scarsden has been assigned by his editor at The Sydney Morning Herald to write a feature about how the town is coping with the trauma, only to be told by Mandalay Blonde, the owner of a bookstore, that the real story is why the priest carried out the killings in the first place. And while he's at it, why not find out if the accepted motive of pedophilia holds up. Taking up the challenge, Scarsden delves into the history of this cursed town and its haunted inhabitants, emerging with a sensitively rendered back story about people who have willfully blinded themselves by staring into the sun too long. the only thing sadder than a majestic hotel fallen on hard times is one with a dead body in Room 413. Detective Aidán Waits of the Manchester police force finds the corpse, its jaws locked in a hideous death grin, in Joseph Knox's edgy noir mystery THE SMILING MAN (Crown, $26), and for his sins catches the case. Those transgressions include a meth habit that pretty much puts Waits in debt to his hard-nosed superior officer, Superintendent Parrs, who holds him on a short leash. "It's convenient to keep a compromised officer around the place," Parrs gloats. "Someone I've got so much dirt on that I can use him for special jobs." Here, "special" means "illegal," and Waits uses his burglary skills to plant drugs on a suspect. Despite these unorthodox ploys, he's a smart guy who understands that "sometimes you confound expectations, sometimes you grow into the thing that people think you are." thirty years ago, six teenagers went camping in Brinken Wood. Five of them came out alive, and one of them was never seen again until now, in the opening pages of SHE LIES IN WAIT (Random House, $27). This enjoyably chilling suspense tale by Gytha Lodge conveys both the thrills and the dangers of being a teenager on the brink of adult independence. Aurora Jackson never had the chance to taste those thrills before the dangers caught up with her, leaving her bones behind to be found by a rebellious little girl poking around in the woods. Lodge tells the story in interlocking time frames that shift from the present to a summer day in 1983 when 14-year-old Aurora was allowed to hang out with her older sister Topaz's "strange, anarchic, brilliant and beautiful friends." The obvious questions of how she died and at whose hand are properly dealt with. But the fascination of this story is in the character studies of the surviving children, all grown up now and participants in a dark mystery that they all wish had never seen the light of day. Marilyn STASIO has covered crime fiction for the Book Review since 1988. Her column appears twice a month.
Guardian Review
Miles Franklin award winner Peter Temple, who died in March this year, was an Australian crime writing pioneer. He paved the way for the talents of Jane Harper and Emma Viskic - and now Chris Hammer, whose debut novel Scrublands (Wildfire, £16.99) is already a bestseller there. This sharply observed slice of outback noir makes good use of its closed-world setting: a sun-baked, drought-ravaged town whose remaining inhabitants live with the ever-present threat of an all-consuming bushfire. A mass shooting by a young priest, who is himself shot dead by the local police officer, gets the media's attention, and one year later journalist Martin Scarsden is dispatched to write a human interest piece on how the town is coping. He discovers that a lot of people have things to hide - and then two bodies turn up in the local dam. The clunkier elements - Scarsden's emotional baggage, and his on-off romance with a much younger woman - are more than compensated for by well-rounded characters, masterful plotting and real breadth; this is an epic and immersive read. Scandinavia is not normally associated with excessive sunshine, but the lowlife cast of the final volume in Martin Holmén's Stockholm saga, Slugger (Pushkin Vertigo, £8.99, translated by Annie Prime), are tormented by an unprecedented heatwave. This is a truly dark portrait of the city - sweaty, sleazy, corrupt and brutal - and, because it's 1936, the political climate is also hotting up with the rise of a pro-Nazi movement. Boxer turned enforcer Harry Kvist starts asking questions when the body of his friend and former lover Pastor Gabrielsson is found murdered in his church with a star of David daubed in blood on the floor beside him. The investigation isn't easy - not only are the police more interested in antisemitic rumours than the truth, but he finds himself caught up in a turf war between two of the city's most vicious gangs. Tragic and moving, with a spectacular denouement, it's a fitting ending to a superb trilogy. Told from a kaleidoscope of different points of view, Good Samaritans by Will Carver (Orenda, £8.99) is a blend of serial killer thriller and domestic noir. Suicidal Hadley wants a friendly ear, but what she initially thinks is a call-back from the Samaritans turns out to be insomniac Seth, who spends his nights dialling people at random, "hoping for some connection". His marriage is in the doldrums; wife Maeve seems only interested in schlocky television shows and news reports of a murder investigation into young women whose bodies are found dumped in the countryside. Samaritan Ant, felling guilt about a friend's death, spends his nights listening to other people's problems, and Detective Sergeant Pace is bewildered by a killer who uses bleach on his victims to eradicate all forensic traces. Carver weaves these strands together for an unsettling but compelling mixture of the banal, the horrific and, at times, the near-comic, wrong-footing the reader at every turn. There's also a fair bit of bleach action in Lizzy Barber's first novel, My Name Is Anna (Century, £12.99), as the devoutly Christian mother of the eponymous teenager scrubs away literal and metaphorical stains. She and her daughter live a secluded life in Florida, until a secret visit to a forbidden theme park leaves Anna positive that she has been to the place before, and the anonymous gift of an oddly familiar pendant compounds the feeling that there is a mystery in her past. Meanwhile, in London, 16-year-old Rosie learns that the trust set up to find her older sister, who disappeared 15 years ago, has run out of money, and she decides to conduct her own investigation ... It's not difficult to join the dots, and having Anna and Rosie pass the narrative baton between them risks putting the reader ahead of the game, but Barber has created characters with sufficient appeal to fuel real suspense. Night of Camp David by Fletcher Knebel (Vintage, £8.99) was described by the New York Times as "a little too plausible for comfort" when it was first published in 1965. Fifty-three years later, this political thriller, which is set in what was then the future (1976), has dated in some ways but, in the light of both Watergate and current events, seems eerily prescient. President Mark Hollenbach is a paranoiac who sees conspiracy everywhere, wants to introduce wiretapping on all phones, and is intent on turning his back on existing alliances and organising a summit with the Soviet premier with the aim of forming a nuclear coalition. The young senator Hollenbach takes into his confidence fears that the president has lost his mind and tries to persuade his colleagues to act, but it's an uphill task. The ending is something of a damp squib, but this may be because, in the words of Mark Twain, "Truth is stranger than fiction, but that is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; truth isn't." - Laura Wilson.
Library Journal Review
A year after a tragedy involving an Anglican priest, journalist Martin Scarsden arrives in Riversend, Australia, to tell the story of the small town. He discovers a dying community facing drought and economic disaster while fighting the impressions of the outside world. Martin attempts to dig deeper but faces opposition, anger, and stories that contradict one another. Was the priest a pedophile? Was he a saint or a sinner? Are the police even telling the truth? Identities are uncovered, and even old tramps are not who they appear to be. Dealing with his own war zone-induced PTSD, Martin also encounters an entire town suffering from the trauma resulting from the priest's actions, bushfires, and a fatal car accident. Father Byron Swift's secrets have already changed so many lives; they will also alter Martin's. VERDICT Hammer's intricately plotted, atmospheric debut introduces the bleak Australian scrublands, an area haunted by its past. Fans of Jane Harper's Australian crime novels will welcome another author with a rich descriptive style.-Lesa Holstine, Evansville Vanderburgh P.L., IN © Copyright 2019. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Scrublands 1 Riversend Martin Scarsden stops the car on the bridge leading into town, leaving the engine running. It's a single-lane bridge--no overtaking, no passing--built decades ago, the timber milled from local river red gums. It's slung across the floodplain, long and rambling, desiccated planks shrunken and rattling, bolts loose, spans bowed. Martin opens the car door and steps into the midday heat, ferocious and furnace-dry. He places both hands on the railing, but such is the heat of the day that even wood is too hot to touch. He lifts them back, bringing flaking white paint with them. He wipes them clean, using the damp towel he has placed around his neck. He looks down to where the river should be and sees instead a mosaic of cracked clay, baked and going to dust. Someone has carted an old fridge out to where the water once ran and left it there, having first painted a sign on its door: FREE BEER--HONOR SYSTEM. The red gums along the banks don't get the joke; some of their branches are dead, others support sparse clumps of khaki leaves. Martin tries lifting his sunglasses, but the light is dazzling, too bright, and he lowers them again. He reaches back into the car and cuts the engine. There is nothing to hear; the heat has sucked the life from the world: no cicadas, no cockatoos, not even crows, just the bridge creaking and complaining as it expands and contracts in thrall to the sun. There is no wind. The day is so very hot, it tugs at him, seeking his moisture; he can feel the heat rising through the thin leather soles of his city shoes. Back in the rental car, air-conditioning straining, he moves off the bridge and down into Riversend's main street, into the sweltering bowl below the levee banks. There are cars parked here. They sit reversed into the curb at a uniform forty-five-degree angle: pickups and farm trucks and city sedans, all of them dusty and none of them new. He drives slowly, looking for movement, any sign of life, but it's like he's driving through a diorama. Only as he passes through the first intersection a block on from the river, past a bronze soldier on a column, does he see a man shuffling along the footpath in the shade of the shop awnings. He is wearing, of all things, a long gray overcoat, his shoulders stooped, his hand clutching a brown paper bag. Martin stops the car, reverses it assiduously at the requisite angle, but not assiduously enough. He grimaces as the bumper scrapes against the curb. He pulls on the hand brake, switches off the engine, climbs out. The curb is almost knee-high, built for flooding rains, adorned now by the rear end of his rental. He thinks of moving the car forward, off the concrete shoal, but decides to leave it there, damage done. He crosses the street and enters the shade of the awnings, but there's no sign of the shuffling man. The street is deserted. Martin regards the shopfronts. The first has a hand-painted sign taped to the inside of the glass door: MATHILDA'S SECONDHAND SHOP AND ANTIQUES. PRE-LOVED CLOTHING, KNICKKNACKS, AND CURIOS. OPEN TUESDAY AND THURSDAY MORNINGS. This Monday lunchtime, the door is locked. Martin inspects the thrift shop's window display. There's a black beaded cocktail dress on an old dressmaker's mannequin; a tweed jacket with leather elbow patches, hem a little frayed, held aloft on a wooden clothes hanger; and a garish set of orange work overalls draped across the back of a chair. A stainless-steel bin contains a collection of discarded umbrellas, dusty with disuse. On one wall there's a poster showing a woman in a one-piece swimsuit luxuriating on a beach towel while behind her waves lick at the sand. MANLY SEA AND SURF, says the poster, but it has sat in the window too long and the Riverina sun has leached the red from her suit and the gold from the sand, leaving only a pervasive pale-blue wash. Along the bottom of the window is an array of shoes: bowling shoes, golf shoes, some well-worn riding boots, and a pair of polished brown brogues. Dotted around them like confetti are the bodies of flies. Dead men's shoes, Martin decides. The shop next door is empty, a yellow and black FOR LEASE sign in the window, the outline still legible from where the paint has been stripped from the window: HAIR TODAY. He takes out his phone and snaps a few photos, visual prompts for when he's writing. The next store is entirely shuttered: a weatherboard façade with two small windows, both boarded up. The door is secured with a rusty chain and brass padlock. It looks as if it's been like that for a lifetime. Martin takes a photo of the chained door. Returning to the other side of the road, Martin can again feel the heat through his shoes and he avoids patches of oozing asphalt. Gaining the footpath and the relief of the shade, he's surprised to find himself looking at a bookstore, right by where he's parked his car: THE OASIS BOOKSTORE AND CAFE says a sign hanging from the awning, the words carved into a long slab of twisting wood. A bookstore. Fancy that. He hasn't brought a book with him, hasn't even thought of it until now. His editor, Max Fuller, rang at dawn, delivering his brainwave, assigning him the story. Martin packed in a rush, got to the airport with moments to spare, downloaded the clippings he'd been e-mailed, was the last passenger across the tarmac and onto the plane. But a book would be good; if he must endure the next few days in this husk of a town, then a novel might provide some distraction. He tries the door, anticipating it too may be locked. Yet the Oasis is open for business. Or the door is, at least. Inside, the shop is dark and deserted, the temperature at least ten degrees cooler. Martin removes his sunglasses, eyes adjusting to the gloom after the blowtorch streetscape. There are curtains across the shopfront's plate-glass windows and Japanese screens in front of them, adding an extra barricade against the day. A ceiling fan is barely revolving; the only other movement is water trickling across slate terraces on a small, self-contained water feature sitting atop the counter. The counter is next to the door, in front of the window, facing an open space. Here, there are a couple of couches, some slouching armchairs placed on a worn rug, together with some book-strewn occasional tables. Running towards the back of the store are three or four ranks of shoulder-high bookshelves with an aisle up the middle and aisles along either side. The side walls support higher shelves. At the back of the shop, at the end of the central aisle, there is a wooden swing door of the type that separates kitchens from customers in restaurants. If the bookshelves were pews, and the counter an altar, then this might be a chapel. Martin walks past the tables to the far wall. A small sign identifies it as LITERATURE. A wry smile begins to stretch across his face, but its progress is halted as he regards the top shelf of books. There, neatly aligned with only their spines showing, are the books he read and studied twenty years ago at university. Not just the same titles, but the same battered paperback editions, arranged like his courses themselves. There is Moby-Dick, The Last of the Mohicans, and The Scarlet Letter, sitting to the left of The Great Gatsby, Catch-22, and Herzog. There's The Fortunes of Richard Mahony, For Love Alone, and Coonardoo, leading to Free Fall, The Trial, and The Quiet American. There's a smattering of plays: The Caretaker, Rhinoceros, and The Chapel Perilous. He pulls out a Penguin edition of A Room with a View, its spine held together by adhesive tape turned yellow with age. He opens it, half expecting to see the name of some forgotten classmate, but instead the name that greets him is Katherine Blonde. He replaces the book, careful not to damage it. Dead woman's books, he thinks. He takes out his phone and snaps a photograph. Sitting on the next shelf down are newer books, some looking almost untouched. James Joyce, Salman Rushdie, Tim Winton. He can't discern any pattern in their arrangement. He pulls one out, then another, but there are no names written inside. He takes a couple of books and is turning to sit in one of the comfortable armchairs when he is startled, flinching involuntarily. A young woman has somehow appeared at the end of the central aisle. "Find anything interesting?" she asks, smiling, her voice husky. She's leaning nonchalantly against a bookshelf. "I hope so," says Martin. But he's nowhere near as relaxed as he sounds. He's disconcerted: at first by her presence and now by her beauty. Her hair is blond, cut into a messy bob, bangs brushing black eyebrows. Her cheekbones are marble, her eyes sparkling green. She's wearing a light summer dress and her feet are bare. She doesn't belong in the narrative he's been constructing about Riversend. "So who's Katherine Blonde?" he asks. "My mother." "Tell her I like her books." "Can't. She's dead." "Oh. Sorry." "Don't be. If you like books, she'd like you. This was her shop." They stand looking at each other for a moment. There is something unapologetic about the way she regards him, and Martin is the first to break eye contact. "Sit down," she says. "Relax for a bit. You've come a long way." "How do you know that?" "This is Riversend," she says, offering a sad smile. She has dimples, Martin observes. "Go on, sit down," she says. "Want a coffee? We're a café as much as we're a bookshop. It's how we make our money." "Sure. Long black, thanks. And some water, please." He finds himself longing for a cigarette, even though he hasn't smoked since university. A cigarette. Why now? "Good. I'll be right back." She turns and walks soundlessly back down the aisle. Martin watches her the whole way, admiring the curve of her neck floating above the bookshelves, his feet still anchored to the same spot as when he first saw her. She passes through the swing door at the back of the store and is gone, but her presence lingers: the cello-like timbre of her voice, the fluid confidence of her posture, her green eyes. The door stops swinging. Martin looks down at the books in his hands. He sighs, derides himself as pathetic, and takes a seat, looking not at the books but at the backs of his forty-year-old hands. His father had possessed tradesman's hands. When Martin was a child they had always seemed so strong, so assured, so purposeful. He'd always hoped, assumed that one day his hands would be the same. But to Martin they still seem adolescent. White-collar hands, not working-class hands, somehow inauthentic. He takes a seat--a creaking armchair with tattered upholstery, tilting to one side--and starts leafing absentmindedly through one of the books. This time she doesn't startle him as she enters his field of vision. He looks up. Time has passed. "Here," she says, frowning ever so slightly. She places a large white mug on the table beside him. As she bends, he captures some coffee-tinted fragrance. Fool, he thinks. "Hope you don't mind," she says, "but I made myself one too. We don't get that many visitors." "Of course," he hears himself saying. "Sit down." Some part of Martin wants to make small talk, make her laugh, charm her. He thinks he remembers how--his own good looks can't have totally deserted him--but he glances again at his hands, and decides not to. "What are you doing here?" he asks, surprising himself with the bluntness of his question. "What do you mean?" "What are you doing in Riversend?" "I live here." "I know. But why?" Her smile fades as she regards him more seriously. "Is there some reason I shouldn't live here?" "This." Martin lifts his arms, gestures at the store around him. "Books, culture, literature. Your uni books over there, on the shelf below your mother's. And you. This town is dying. You don't belong here." She doesn't smile, doesn't frown. Instead, she just looks at him, considering him, letting the silence extend before responding. "You're Martin Scarsden, aren't you?" Her eyes are locked on his. He returns her gaze. "Yes. That's me." "I remember the reports," she says. "I'm glad you got out alive. It must have been terrible." "Yes, it was," he says. Minutes pass. Martin sips his coffee. It's not bad; he's had worse in Sydney. Again the curious longing for a cigarette. The silence is awkward, and then it's not. More minutes pass. He's glad he's here, in the Oasis, sharing silences with this beautiful young woman. She speaks first. "I came back eighteen months ago, when my mother was dying. To look after her. Now . . . well, if I leave, the bookshop, her bookshop, it closes down. It will happen soon enough, but I'm not there yet." "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be so direct." She takes up her coffee, wraps her hands around her mug: a gesture of comfort, of confiding and sharing, strangely appropriate despite the heat of the day. "So, Martin Scarsden, what are you doing in Riversend?" "A story. My editor sent me. Thought it would be good for me to get out and breathe some healthy country air. 'Blow away the cobwebs,' he said." "What? The drought?" "No. Not exactly." "Good God. The shooting? Again? It was almost a year ago." "Yeah. That's the hook: 'A year on, how is Riversend coping?' Like a profile piece, but of a town, not a person. We'll print it on the anniversary." "That was your idea?" "My editor's." "What a genius. And he sent you? To write about a town in trauma?" "Apparently." "Christ." And they sit in silence once more. The young woman rests her chin in one hand, staring unseeing at a book on one of the tables, while Martin examines her, no longer exploring her beauty, but pondering her decision to remain in Riversend. He sees the fine lines around her eyes, suspects she's older than he first thought. Midtwenties, maybe. Young, at least in comparison to him. They sit like that for some minutes, a bookstore tableau, before she lifts her gaze and meets his eyes. A moment passes, a connection is made. When she speaks, her voice is almost a whisper. "Martin, there's a better story, you know. Better than wallowing in the pain of a town in mourning." "And what's that?" "Why he did it." "I think we know that, don't we?" "Child abuse? An easy allegation to level at a dead priest. I don't believe it. Not every priest is a pedophile." Martin can't hold the intensity of her gaze; he looks at his coffee, not knowing what to say. The young woman persists. "D'Arcy Defoe. Is he a friend of yours?" "I wouldn't go that far. But he's an excellent journalist. The story won a Walkley. Deservedly so." "It was wrong." Martin hesitates; he doesn't know where this is going. "What's your name?" "Mandalay Blonde. Everyone calls me Mandy." "Mandalay? That's something." "My mum. She liked the sound of it. Liked the idea of traveling the world, unfettered." "And did she?" "No. Never left Australia." "Okay, Mandy. Byron Swift shot five people dead. You tell me: Why did he do it?" "I don't know. But if you found out, that would be a hell of a story, wouldn't it?" "I guess. But if you don't know why he did it, who's going to tell me?" She doesn't respond to that, not straight away. Martin is feeling disconcerted. He'd thought he'd found a refuge in the bookstore; now he feels as if he's spoilt it. He's not sure what to say, whether he should apologize, or make light of it, or thank her for the coffee and leave. But Mandalay Blonde hasn't taken offense; she leans in towards him, voice low. "Martin, I want to tell you something. But not for publication, not for repetition. Between you and me. Are you okay with that?" "What's so sensitive?" "I need to live in this town, that's what. So write what you like about Byron--he's past caring--but please leave me out of it. All right?" "Sure. What is it?" She leans back, considering her next words. Martin realizes how quiet the bookstore is, insulated against sound as well as light and heat. He can hear the slow revolving of the fan, the hum of its electric motor, the tinkling of the water on the counter, the slow breath of Mandalay Blonde. Mandy looks him in the eye, then swallows, as if summoning courage. "There was something holy about him. Like a saint or something." "He killed five people." "I know. I was here. It was awful. I knew some of the victims; I know their widows. Fran Landers is a friend of mine. So you tell me: Why don't I hate him? Why do I feel as if what happened was somehow inevitable? Why is that?" Her eyes are pleading, her voice intense. "Why?" "Okay, Mandy, tell me. I'm listening." "You can't write any of this. Not the stuff about me. Agreed?" "Sure. What is it?" "He saved my life. I owe him my life. He was a good man." The distress eddies across her face like wind across a pond. "Go on." "Mum was dying, I got pregnant. Not for the first time. A one-night stand with some arsehole down in Melbourne. I was thinking of killing myself; I could see no future, not one worth living. This shitty town, that shitty life. And he saw it. He walked into the bookstore, started his banter and flirting like usual, and then he stopped. Just like that. He looked into my eyes and he knew. And he cared. He talked me around, over a week, over a month. Taught me how to stop running, taught me the value of things. He cared, he sympathized, he understood the pain of others. People like him don't abuse children; how could they?" There is passion in her voice, conviction in her words. "Do you believe in God?" she asks. "No," says Martin. "No, neither do I. What about fate?" "No." "That I'm not so sure about. Karma?" "Mandy, where is this going?" "He used to come into the store, buying books and drinking coffee. I didn't know he was a priest at first. He was attentive, he was charming, and he was different. I liked him. Mum really liked him. He could talk about books and history and philosophy. We used to love it when he dropped by. I was disappointed when I learnt he was a priest; I kind of fancied him." "Did he fancy you?" Looking at her, Martin finds it difficult to imagine a man who wouldn't. She smiles. "Of course not. I was pregnant." "But you liked him?" "Everyone did. He was witty, charismatic. Mum was dying, the town was dying, and here he was: young and vital, full of self-belief and promise. And then he became more than that--my friend, my confessor, my savior. He listened to me, understood me, understood what I was going through. No judgment, no admonition. He'd always drop by when he was in town, always check on how we were doing. In Mum's last days, at the hospital down in Bellington, he comforted her, and he comforted me. He was a good man. And then he was gone as well." More silence. This time it's Martin who speaks first. "Did you have your baby?" "Yes. Of course. Liam. He's sleeping out the back. I'll introduce you if you're still here when he wakes up." "I'd like that." "Thank you." Martin chooses his words carefully, at least he tries to, knowing they can never be the right words. "Mandy, I understand that Byron Swift was kind to you. I can readily accept he wasn't all bad, that he was sincere. But that doesn't equal redemption, not for what he did. And it doesn't mean the allegations aren't true. I'm sorry." His words do nothing to persuade her; she merely looks more determined. "Martin, I'm telling you, he looked into my soul. I glimpsed his. He was a good man. He knew I was in pain and he helped me." "But how can you reconcile that with what he did? He committed mass murder." "I know. I know. I can't reconcile it. I know he did it; I don't deny it. And it's been messing me up ever since. The one truly decent human being I ever met besides my mother turns out to be this horror show. But here's the thing: I can believe he shot those people. I know he did it. It even rings true, feels right in some perverse way, even if I don't know why he did it. But I can't believe he abused children. As a kid I got bullied and bashed, as a teenager I got slandered and groped, and as an adult I've been ostracized and criticized and marginalized. I've had plenty of abusive boyfriends--almost the only kind of boyfriends I ever did have; narcissistic arseholes capable only of thinking of themselves. Liam's father is one of them. I know that mentality. I've seen it up close and nasty. That wasn't his mentality; he was the opposite. He cared. That's what's fucking me up. And that's why I don't believe he abused children. He cared." Martin doesn't know what to say. He sees the passion on her face, hears the fervor in her voice. But a mass murderer who cared? So he doesn't say anything, just looks back into Mandalay Blonde's troubled green eyes. Excerpted from Scrublands by Chris Hammer All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.