By the end of a working day, Constable Hirsch is bloated on cups of tea he didn’t want, because he knows he’s the only person some of these people will see all week.
That single habit tells you almost everything about him. In Mischance Creek, Garry Disher’s outback cop spends his days checking firearm licences across a scatter of farms three hours north of Adelaide, and he does a hundred small, sideways kindnesses while he’s there. He knows the people on his patch are doing it hard in the drought, and he notices if someone has unexplained bruises.
The country he polices is unforgiving. There’s dust on everything, the roads are rutted, and the book opens with a man brought in to shoot starving stock. The harsh landscape presses hard, shaping everyone living here.
There’s real crime here too – a conspiracy-minded group harassing locals and running people off the road, and a buried historical mystery that surfaces when a woman’s dead mother is found in the outback. The two threads collide, and the violence follows Hirsch home.
There’s a humane centre within this harsh environment. Steph, who runs the Aboriginal drop-in centre, raises the alarm about the harassment and won’t let the police look away. And Hirsch sometimes gets a few precious moments on weekends to let go of work when he sees his partner Wendy and her daughter fleetingly.
What stayed with me most is how connected Hirsch is to this place. There’s so much about it that’s harsh, but it’s meaningful to him, and Disher helps you understand why a person would give themselves to a place that knocks them around so much.
This unvarnished look at a small community is an excellent addition to the Hirsch series.
