In this, the third outing for Constable Paul Hirschhausen, ‘Hirsch’ has settled into a routine in the town of Tiverton, wheat and wool country halfway between Adelaide and the Flinders Rangers. He has got to know the locals and spends time with his girlfriend, Wendy, a teacher at a school in the next town and her daughter, Katie.
It is winter and Hirsch is patrolling the streets of the town he has come to call home. There is a snowdropper targeting elderly women but otherwise things are relatively quiet, until suddenly, they’re not.
Within the space of a couple of hours Hirsch receives a call from a teacher at Wendy’s school who has concerns about a home-schooled student she is supervising via online learning. This is followed by a panicked call from the school about a father losing his cool and threatening violence at the school.
Thus, master storyteller, Garry Disher sets the scene for another beautifully realised tale of small-town Australia.
As the plot unfolds, the layers of the town peel back to reveal a dark underbelly of corruption, child abuse, neglect and fraud. Complicating matters, the teacher who reported the suspected abuse has developed an unrequited obsession with Hirsch, so in between chasing fugitives and unravelling a complex scam perpetuated by stalwarts of the local community, he is also dodging the persistent and unwelcome overtures of Miss Ogilvie.
I have been a long-time fan of Garry Disher’s work, from the early days of ‘The Peninsula Mysteries’, and his writing has become better and better. His prose is sparce but could only be Australian, much like the landscape of his novels. His characters are complex but far from impenetrable and the dialogue is as dry as the outback.
Consolation is another fabulous read and I am very much looking forward to the next episode from this small-town country copper.

Reviewed by Maryanne Vagg