Red Dirt Road: great Australian crime novel 2023

S.R. White's book

Headline Publishers

Having worked for a UK police force for 12 years before returning to academic life at Nottingham Trent Uni, author S.R White was a British policeman who moved to Queen­sland and published his first crime novel Hermit (2020), feat­ur­ing police detective Dana Russo. His second Dana Russo crime novel was Prisoner (2021). White's Hermit was a top ten bestseller in Australia and nominated for a Crime Writers' Association award.  

                   

White’s third Australian crime book, Red Dirt Road (2023) was set in a tiny rural town where any resident might have been guilty of mur­­­der. This was not one of my favourite genres because darkness and nas­tiness keeps me awake in bed. But White’s story was a] Aust­r­al­ian, b] receiving great reviews and c] short and readable.

White wrote many of Australia’s supposed rural elements in Red Dirt Road: horrific acts of violence in a remote out­back town, a lone detective sent to investigate, hindered by ext­reme weather, the lack of co-operation from the locals and the vast distances trav­elled to interview suspects. Fictional Unam­ur­ra was a re­mote, in­land, one pub town with 50 residents, drought rav­ag­ed and dying. Even the nearest regional centre, Dut­t­on, was the po­lice force's most isol­ated unit, a dusty world supposedly riddled with corruption.

To help remote communities through the drought, the state govern­ment selected Unamurra as the site for an art inst­allation by a local art­­ist originally from Quebec, Axel DuBois. Dubois creat­ed 28 Angels which hung on posts with heads and wings, their arms splayed in a curved swing. But two dead men replaced the angels, arranged around the town in a moving display, each murdered by a single bullet to the heart. Two murders, 50 suspects!

An outside policewoman was sent in to help. Dana Russo was sent from Police Central in Melbourne to investig­ate. She knew the district commander didn't like her polic­ing style and she was given only a few days to get it done! Dana was deter­min­­ed to uncover the shocking secrets of this forgotten town, a town she had never heard of. So she had to use her psychological insights to solve the case.

Alex DuBois had disappeared, so he was an obvious suspect. But the investigation found no weapon, motives, witnesses or con­­nect­ions be­tween the killings, such that the murderer could have gone off any­where. How could Detective Dana Russo, alone and new to the area, solve such a brutal case?

The only local policeman was Constable Able Beralla, an aborigin­al man who was not allowed to participate in the first investigation, despite his local knowledge. Dana’s cautious approach depended on information being obtained by phone in this old-fashioned town. The police HQ needed to quickly mod­ern­ise! But when Russo discovered that Bar­ella had been taken off the original investigation, she sus­pected that neither the Dutton police nor the Unamurra citizens wan­ted the murders solved. The locals certainly seemed very suspicious.

Australian Outback

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There were many suspects to pursue and readers didn’t find out till the very end who the criminal was. As with all good crime books, this book was more about the investigation rather than the crime itself.

Being a big city resident, I was both mesmerised and dis­com­for­t­ed by the author’s descriptions of the Australian Outback. But it was a good setting for an intelligent crime novel: a gripping pl­ot, in­teresting and believable characters, reliable knowledge of policing and especially insight into human psychology. I agree with the rev­iewer who called the novel a searing slow-burner that re­lied on psycho­logical depth and drew the reader in. Fin­al­ly it ex­pl­oded with a gripping ending, making Red Dirt Road well worth reading.