Bitter Wash Road

Constable Paul ‘Hirsch’ Hirschhausen is a whistle-blower. Hated and despised, he has been exiled to a one-cop station in the middle of dusty nowhere. There are fugitive killers on the loose, the body of a sixteen-year-old girl, grumpy locals, and gun-toting landowners; more than one constable can handle, that’s for sure.

This book was everything I wanted from an Australian crime novel: a stoic but scrupled cop, the baking Aussie landscape, and a series of call-outs and crimes where everything comes together perfectly at the end.

By the finale of this book, I was so caught up with Hirsch and… show more.

Tiverton, the setting for this book, is a typical outback small town—derelict houses, one pub, a harsh landscape, and a policeman back in uniform after a corruption scandal back in the big city. Hirsch’s patrol area is huge and he’s often as much a social worker as a police officer. He’s an outcast in all senses of the word, but his dogged determination to do his job right leads him into all sorts of trouble. I love the setting, the endless roads, the eccentricities of people living in the back of nowhere, and the murder mystery that takes you where… show more.