Adam Bowman drove through Cessnock on the lookout for a certain pie shop and thinking about Truman Capote. Capote’s idea for In Cold Blood had come from a newspaper story. Bowman’s own idea percolating came from a newspaper report about a dead woman in Pokolbin, with the picture of Riley at the back of the ambulance.
BROKE ROAD marks the return of Black River’s homicide detective, Rose Riley, and freelance reporter turned true crime writer, Andrew Bowman.
Riley is responding to a young woman found dead in her Hunter Valley townhouse.
No forced entry, no signs of struggle puts a spouse in the spotlight in a region where mine and wine are fracking social cohesion. The victim was working public relations for grape growers while her hubby is a geologist for a mining company.
What appears to be a domestic violence homicide and an open and shut case, Riley’s investigation unearths connections to two other cold cases kilometres apart which suggest a serial killer is at large.
BROKE ROAD is a wine and mine mystery that literally becomes a Y dunnit, the penultimate letter of the alphabet playing an intrinsic part in the puzzle.
Within the pages of the book, Matthew Spencer has seemingly written his own review. Talking about the book journalist Adam Bowman turned out about the case chronicled in Spencer’s debut novel, Black River, one of the investigating detectives muses “a murder story, with a plot that we all know, but he meshes it with memorable characters, all these details, perception and depth, diving way down deep, to find clarity. As you’re reading it, you don’t realise, it seems so simple, but you’re gliding along, and you can’t stop reading – literally you can’t put it down – and that’s craft.”
Self referential definitely and self aggrandising perhaps, yet easily excused as BROKE ROAD delivers as a page turning procedural.
Wholly absorbing suspense, intricate plotting, and terrific characters makes BROKE ROAD fiercely readable.
BROKE ROAD by Matthew Spencer is published by Allen & Unwin.
