If you love Australian rural crime stories, then add this one to your list.
Although not set in Australia, it contains all the elements you will find familiar – the shearing shed and small town communities and their secrets.
This is an atmospheric mystery set New Zealand in the 1980s. Sanna, a Swedish backpacker, has disappeared and a year later her sister Emilia has arrived in Nashville to find some answers. The local police are not much use – they concluded it was a passing stranger responsible for Sanna’s disappearance and do not want to investigate the locals, the case now regarded as closed.
The story takes us back a year to the events leading up to Sanna’s disappearance. We meet the shearing gang Sanna was working with and hear the story from their points of view. Be warned, most of the male characters are nasty types, reflecting dated 1980s macho views, but it does give you a range of suspects to think about.
So swap the Australian dust for the verdant New Zealand bush and settle in for a gritty read and a lesson in what happens in a shearing shed.
-Cynthia, RRL
