Review: THE REDLINE, Adrian Hyland

• 
  This edition an e-book made available through my local library on BorrowBox
  
• ISBN: 9781761153556
• Published 25 / 11 / 2025
• Pages: 336
• QBD Books 
• #3 Jesse Redpath series 

Synopsis (publisher)

An open road. A dead cop. A killer in the hills ...I flicked on the torch, swept the surrounds. Nothing. Then I directed the beam into the trees on the other side of the road.

Up on a high, jutting branch, something moved. It may have been a white face, a pale body, a curved leg. Or it may have been none of those things. Was it human? Too quick for me to tell. A ripple, a blink and it was gone. But it seemed to leave an afterglow, an impression upon the fabric of the night.

I took a deep breath. What had I seen? It had appeared to be a pair of piercing eyes in a pale visage. It could almost have been an owl, so compelling was its gaze, so swift its departure. Maybe it was just a trick of the light, a distorted shadow?

There was a crunch of leaf in the litter below and it was gone.

Whatever it was, it sent a chill through me.

It's the festive season in the Windmark Ranges and Sergeant Jesse Redpath's day is going from bad to worse. It begins with her having to arrest the usual drunks and troublemakers and ends with the death of a colleague out on the Redline road. A death which may or may not have been an accident.

Jesse learns there have been other deaths and disappearances in the ranges, and that the local rumour mill suggests the perp is an elusive, semi-mythical character who goes by the name of 'Anarchy'.

Beneath the charm of a close-knit community, a darker truth festers, and Jesse's driven to expose it, no matter the disruption to the valley's fragile tranquillity.

My Take

Three years since we have had a novel from Adrian Hyland. 

Jesse Redpath is filling in for a colleague on leave and is a little older than we last met her but no less enthusiastic about her job. This novel turns out to be a fast pace thriller.

My rating: 4.6

I've also read

5.0, GUNSHOT ROAD

4.5, CANTICLE CREEK -#1

4.7, THE WIREGRASS -#2

 
The Redline is the third in Adrian Hyland’s Australian regional crime series featuring Sergeant Jesse Redpath. The books are is set in a group of small towns in the fictional Windmark Ranges, a few hours drive from the centre of Melbourne. This entry is named after a local road that has earned the nickname “the redline” due to the drivers who redline their cars while speeding along it. 

Review: THE WIREGRASS, Adrian Hyland

• 
   this edition made available as an e-book on BorrowBox by my local library
  
• published 2023 by Ultimo Press
• eISBN 978-1-76115-036-4
• 322 pages

Synopsis (publisher) 

A murder made to look like an accident. A disgraced cop trying to forget his past.

My eyes sprang open. What was wrong? Something had been hovering down in the backwoods of my brain. A disturbing image that only rose to the surface when I began to relax. Wild winds, wet hair, black bark, blood. A crushed body. The poor bastard killed by the falling tree at Wycliff Rise. Something about that scene wasn’t right.

Nash Rankin is a disgraced cop trying to escape his past – his career was destroyed when he chose to take justice into his own hands. Now he’s living a quiet life in a small town, caring for the local wildlife and trying to stay away from trouble.
 
Jesse Redpath has a new job in a new town: Satellite. The stormy weather that greets her first few days on the beat seems like a sign of what’s to come. A local has died in what looks like an accident, but Jessie isn’t so sure that the ‘accident’ wasn’t planned. All the evidence points to Nash, but Jesse’s not sure about that either.
 
Seems like Nash has enemies. And what looks like a close-knit community might just be a cover for dark secrets.

No amount of rain will wash this town clean.

The new Jesse Redpath crime thriller from the bestselling author of CANTICLE CREEK.

My Take

Readers looking for authentic Australian crime fiction will not be disappointed.

Central protagonist Jesse Redpath is an interesting character who brings intuition to a police procedural set in a compelling Australian landscape. The setting is in the northern Victorian highlands not far from Canticle Creek where Jess has family. Her new appointment as a police station head gives Jesse a chance to show what she is made of, but before long she has has a new man in her life, has blotted her copy book, is suspended, and being targetted by those she has been investigating.

Adrian Hyland has a lovely writing style.

Highly recommended.

My rating: 4.7

I've also read

• 5.0, GUNSHOT ROAD
• 4.5, CANTICLE CREEK

Review: CANTICLE CREEK, Adrian Hyland

• 
   this edition published by Ultimo Press 2021
  
• ISBN 978-176115003-6
• 342 pages
  

Synopsis (publisher)

Two bodies. One long hot summer. A town that will never be the same.

When Adam Lawson's wrecked car is found a kilometre from Daisy Baker’s body, the whole town assumes it’s an open and shut case. But Jesse Redpath isn’t from Canticle Creek. Where she comes from, the truth often hides in plain sight, but only if you know where to look. When Jesse starts to ask awkward questions, she uncovers a town full of contradictions and a cast of characters with dark pasts, secrets to hide and even more to lose.

As the temperature soars, and the ground bakes, the wilderness surrounding Canticle Creek becomes a powderkeg waiting to explode. All it needs is one spark.

A twisty crime thriller set in small town Australia perfect for readers of The Dry and Scrublands.

My take

It is over 10 years since I have read anything by Adrian Hyland and CANTICLE CREEK demonstrates that he still has the touch.

Jesse Redpath is a Northern Territory outback cop. She is the officer in charge of the station at Kulara. One of the local boys Adam Lawson has gone off the tails a bit and Jesse has put in a word for him with the local magistrate and has set him up with a job at the roadhouse, and boarding with her artist father. Despite getting on well with Jesse's father Ben, Adam takes off for the south and ends up going to Melbourne. The next Jesse hears is that he has been killed in a road crash near Canticle Creek after killing his girlfriend. This doesn't sound like the Adam that Jesse and her father knew.

Ben Redpath is a highly regarded artist.  He has been invited to Melbourne to participate in a joint art exhibition and Jesse decides to accompany him and to go to Canticle Creek to satisfy herself that everything had been done to investigate Adam's death.

This was a very believable book. I really like the new character Jesse Redpath, who always seems to ask those extra questions. Here also is a writer who seems to have a special connection to "country" which he acknowledges himself at the end of the book.

My rating: 4.5

I've also read 5.0, GUNSHOT ROAD

Review: GUNSHOT ROAD, Adrian Hyland

This edition published by Soho Press 2010
ISBN 978-1-56947-636-9
372 pages

When Tom McGillivray, superintendent of the Bluebush Police and an old friend of the Tempest clan, came up with some paid employment for Emily as an Aboriginal Community Police Officer, she was happy to accept. The deal was that she would spend a month in Bluebush in training and then she'd be based at Moonlight Downs as its ACPO.

Emily's just come back from a short training course in Darwin in time to catch the tail end of the Bluebush aboriginal community's Young Man's Time. On her way from the women's camp to work she stops and washes off her body art under a garden hose, and dons her oversize police uniform. That in itself seems symbolic, as she attempts to bridge two cultures.

She arrives at work to find that there's been a murder: One oldie has killed another out at Green Swamp Well, and McGillivray is in hospital, his place taken by a new senior sergeant Bruce Cockburn. On their way to the crime scene Emily senses something out of place and discovers a Range Rover that's gone off the road, its occupants spilled into the gully and in need of help.
When they eventually make it to Green Swamp Well, Emily finds that she knows both the victim, and the apparent perpetrator, two eccentrics who had a history of argumentation, but were underneath it all the best of mates.

Emily was never going to get on with Senior Sergeant Cockburn: where he tries to simplify things, she sees complications. Emily's aboriginal background gives her a heightened sense of disturbed balance. He reminds her that she is simply meant to be a liaison officer not an investigator, but Emily really can't help herself.

There is such a lot to like about this book: starting with Emily herself and her unexpected sense of humour, and then there is such a range of interesting and intriguing characters, and description that takes you right into the heart of the outback. I like the way Hyland layers our introduction to people and events. One or two characters from his earlier novel DIAMOND DOVE make an appearance. Emily herself seems more certain of who she is, and she has a status with the locals that I didn't pick up in the earlier novel.

The author says, in the blog post he wrote for Readings:
Takes a little time for the country to get to know you.
.....
It is this world-view, and its ongoing clash with the threshing machine of Western materialism, that lies at the heart of Gunshot Road. I find this conflict utterly compelling, and of great significance; 

I have no hesitation in  recommending that you find a copy of GUNSHOT ROAD.
My rating: 5.0

Other reviews to check

• Reactions to Reading
• Petrona
• International Noir Fiction
• Kittling: Books

Debut author Adrian Hyland topped the oz_mystery_readers 2007 best reads list with DIAMOND DOVE with 5 people recommending it. The group discussed it in September when Adrian was the group's guest on Quiz an Author, an event when an author is invited to be an online guest for a week, and questions and answers fly thick and fast. Fresh from being named the Ned Kelly best first fiction novel of the year winner at Melbourne Writers Festival, Adrian was frank and eloquent in his replies and has remained an active member of the list.
DIAMOND DOVE was given a rating of 5 by the members, a rare achievement in itself. The only other book to be given a rating of 5 was RAVEN BLACK by Ann Cleeves.

DIAMOND DOVE has been published in the US as MOONLIGHT DOWNS.

My review of DIAMOND DOVE:
Emily Tempest returns to Moonlight Downs, a scatter of corrugated iron hovels nine hours from Alice Springs out in the spinifex desert, 14 years after leaving to go to secondary school in Adelaide. The daughter of a local miner, Motor Jack, she is welcomed home by Lincoln Flinders, the head of the community. The Moonlight mob have only recently returned to their land themselves. The Moonlight mob are Emily's community by adoption - her mother was a Wantiya woman from the Gulf Country. Unmistakably aboriginal in appearance, Emily has not yet decided which world she belongs to - aboriginal or white. She meets up with Lincoln's daughter Hazel, her best friend in the past. The morning after Emily arrives, Lincoln is found dead, unmistakably murdered, and Emily finds it impossible to rest until she knows who killed him. Adrian Hyland's debut novel. Very polished writing and a feel of authenticity about the setting and customs. I came away feeling I had learnt quite a lot.

Australian Crime Fiction Snapshots

Check up on these interviews, the first in a series which is the result of a collaboration between Karen Chisholm (of the Aust Crime Fiction weblog), Damien Gay (of Crime DownUnder) and Perry Middlemiss (of Matilda).

Today's released interviews

• Matthew Freeman on Aust Crime Fiction
• Lucy Sussex on Matilda
• P. D. Martin on Aust Crime Fiction
• Adrian Hyland on Crime Down Under
• Marshall Browne on Matilda

Set in Australia

Just thought I'd bring some books set in Australia to your attention.

There is of course Adrian Hyland's DIAMOND DOVE, currently raising a storm in the US under the title of MOONLIGHT DOWNS.

Western Australian author Felicity Young has had two books published so far

A CERTAIN MALICE
Senior Sergeant Cam Fraser accepts an appointment to run the police station in a small country town in West Australia to get away from the trauma that he and his 15 year old daughter have experienced in the last 3 years. He was brought up in this town, but his expectations of a quiet life are shattered with the discovery of a charred body after a bushfire in the grounds of a local school. To complicate matters the police at the station are mainly young and inexperienced, apart from Vince against whom there have been many complaints by locals. And what are the school principal and her husband hiding? The story moves at a good pace and the plot is well woven. Young makes good use of the uniqueness of her Australian setting.
My rating 4.5

AN EASEFUL DEATH
Somebody is killing young women in Perth, Western Australia, and then, post-mortem, posing their painted bodies carefully in relatively public places. The first body is painted bronze, the second silver ... you get the picture. False clues are left stuck to the bodies, and each has AN EASEFUL DEATH written down one leg. This is the second novel by Felicity Young. It features D.S. Stevie Hooper newly seconded to the Serious Crime Squad in Perth. She is young, un-married with a young daughter, keen to do well, and working with a boss who is also a good friend. In this case Stevie is the liaison with the eminent profiler who is helping the squad with the case. Quotes from publications by the profiler appear as tag lines in each of the chapters (but I must confess, didn't always seem significant to me). The action of the book mainly seems to happen over a one week period and comes thick and fast. There are plenty of candidates offered for the serial killer and I must confess I punted for the wrong one! Felicity says her third book, HARUM SCARUM, also featuring Stevie Hooper, will be published in March 2008
My rating 4.6

One I really enjoyed was THE WHISPERING WALL by Patricia Carlon
60 year old Sarah Oatland has had a stroke and is laid out in her bed 'like a fish on a slab' having lost the ability to speak or move. And then the walls begin to talk. Sarah hears occupants of the house plan a murder and there is nothing she can do to tell anybody about it or to warn the victim. Or is there?… This is an ingenious story, an Australian classic that has weathered the test of time very well. The style is cosy, but there is also nail-biting tension.
My rating 4.8
Patricia carlon wrote her most popular books in the 1960s
http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/c/patricia-carlon/

Another you could look for is MALICIOUS INTENT by Kathryn Fox
Dr. Anya Crichton has recently struck out to work on her own as a freelance forensic pathologist. Work is a bit hard to find but she is gaining a reputation as a credible courtroom authority. She is not without friendsin the police, the New South Wales State Forensic Institute, and among the criminal barristers. Something about the apparent suicide of Clare Matthews doesn't sit quite right: the fact that, a nun, she disappeared shortly before she was due to take her vows, that she suicided by jumping off the Gap, that she was 6 weeks pregnant, and that she had strange fibres in her lungs. And now another case with similarities crops up: Fatima Deab overdoses on heroine after being missing for some days and her lungs contain the same fibres. Debut publication by Australian author. It is obvious to the reader that Kathryn Fox has a lot to say, lots of issues that she wants to make us aware of, and sometimes this novel takes on a bit of a didactic tone. But the plotting is so good, the tension so well built that by the end I could forgive her anything!
My rating 4.7
Kathryn Fox has 2 more books out now.
WITHOUT CONSENT
SKIN AND BONE
Her website is at http://www.kathrynfox.com/

Adrian Hyland

Debut author Adrian Hyland topped the oz_mystery_readers 2007 best reads list with DIAMOND DOVE with 5 people recommending it. The group discussed it in September when Adrian was the group's guest on Quiz an Author, an event when an author is invited to be an online guest for a week, and questions and answers fly thick and fast. Fresh from being named the Ned Kelly best first fiction novel of the year winner at Melbourne Writers Festival, Adrian was frank and eloquent in his replies and has remained an active member of the list.
DIAMOND DOVE was given a rating of 5 by the members, a rare achievement in itself. The only other book to be given a rating of 5 was RAVEN BLACK by Ann Cleeves.

DIAMOND DOVE has been published in the US as MOONLIGHT DOWNS and will be discussed on another list I belong to, 4_Mystery_Addicts, at the beginning of March.

My review of DIAMOND DOVE:
Emily Tempest returns to Moonlight Downs, a scatter of corrugated iron hovels nine hours from Alice Springs out in the spinifex desert, 14 years after leaving to go to secondary school in Adelaide. The daughter of a local miner, Motor Jack, she is welcomed home by Lincoln Flinders, the head of the community. The Moonlight mob have only recently returned to their land themselves. The Moonlight mob are Emily's community by adoption - her mother was a Wantiya woman from the Gulf Country. Unmistakably aboriginal in appearance, Emily has not yet decided which world she belongs to - aboriginal or white. She meets up with Lincoln's daughter Hazel, her best friend in the past. The morning after Emily arrives, Lincoln is found dead, unmistakably murdered, and Emily finds it impossible to rest until she knows who killed him. Adrian Hyland's debut novel. Very polished writing and a feel of authenticity about the setting and customs. I came away feeling I had learnt quite a lot.