Review: BONE LANDS, Pip Fioretti

• 
  this edition published by Affirm Press 2024
  
• ISBN 978-1-922922-86-4
• 378 pages

Synopsis (publisher)

Isn't it your job to stop people being murdered?' 

1911, on a winter's night in arid New South Wales wool country, mounted trooper Augustus Hawkins discovers the bodies of three young people. They are scions of the richest family in the district, savagely murdered on a road that Hawkins should have been patrolling, had he not been busy bedding the local schoolteacher.

Detectives arrive from Sydney and the disgraced Hawkins, a traumatised veteran of the Boer War, comes under fierce scrutiny. With his honour and sanity at stake, he becomes hell-bent on finding the murderer. But as ever darker secrets are revealed about the people he thinks of as friends, Hawkins is forced to confront an uncomfortable question: who is paying the price for the new nation's prosperity?

My Take

On the night that Australian towns celebrated the coronation of King George V with local balls and dances, 3 young people are murdered on a back road in New South Wales.The motive for the murders is obscure and the murderers are hard to trace. If Constable Hawkins had been doing his job, he might have prevented the murder, or at least that is what their father believes.

Detectives from Sydney are despatched to conduct the investigation but there is little to base an investigation on. Black trackers are sent out to follow some tracks from the murder site. Eventually the truth is revealed but it is a long investigation with truth the casualty in many ways.

Set over 100 years ago, the author does a good job of setting the scene, and helping us to understand how things worked in that time.

An interesting read.

My rating: 4.4

About the author:

Pip Fioretti lives in Sydney, and enjoys hiking, books, friends and family. Bone Lands is her first crime novel.