Scrublands by Chris Hammer

This 500 page crime novel tells the story of a journalist with baggage. Martin Scarsden is sent to a small Australian country town to report on the first anniversary of a mass shooting in which five local men were killed outside a church by the parish priest. Scarsden is hoping to get to the bottom of why the priest did what he did. He gets to know some locals including police, relatives of the victims and friends of the priest. When two bodies are found in a dried out dam, other journalists arrive, hoping to work out if the killings are connected. Martin quickly becomes part of the story.

Hammer is a former journalist and a large part of the book involves Scarsden interviewing and chatting to police and witnesses, or trying to put the pieces together in his head. The highlight of the book for me however, was Scarsden getting involved in fighting a bushfire. There a lots of plot twists and probably a few too many police officers; I started to lose track of who was who. I enjoyed some of the other characters, including beautiful Mandalay Blonde, Fran Landers (widow of one of the victims), and Codger Harris (a former bank manager who lives as a hermit and doesn't wear clothes). I thought the descriptions of Codger, scratching himself as he tries to think, were vivid and hilarious.