Jesse Redpath is such a force of nature that it wouldn’t be surprising if she had her own weather system. In this second book with her as the crime-fighting protagonist, she’s moved from the Northern Territory to Satellite, a town on the outskirts of Melbourne, to be closer to her father. Her first day on the job is the start of a monstrous roller-coaster ride.

Wild weather primes a gothic atmosphere, with storms and floods lashing the area. Jess finds a man on a tractor crushed by a tree. This seems a tragic accident, however Jess feels that something’s not quite right with the scene. Soon that death is treated as murder. Then, driving through the rain, she almost runs over Nash Rankin who dived in front of her car to save a turtle. She’s instantly intrigued by – and attracted to – him. They’re naked in front of his fire when police storm through the door and charge Nash with the crushed man’s murder.

Nash has a history – he was convicted of his friend’s murder but was judged to be suffering a psychotic episode at the time. He flees into the scrub (the wiregrass hills). The police want to arrest him; Jess wants to prove his innocence. As she begins to find who might be trying to frame Nash, she becomes the target. In an ironic twist, a tree is felled onto her house, then an arrow is shot at her. Nash’s family was involved with a cultish church. Jess believes this underpins Nash’s problems.

Despite his arrest, he still has friends on the force. His travails are covered at breakneck speed, with Jess at the front of a runaway train.

Reviewed by Bob Moore

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Adrian Hyland is the award-winning author of Diamond Dove, Gunshot Road and Kinglake-350, which was shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for non-fiction in 2012.

His books have been published internationally, including in Britain and the US, and translated into a variety of languages, including German, French, Swedish and Czech.

The Wiregrass is published by Ultimo Press.