Grasping the multitude of characters introduced in the early pages of Australian crime fiction writer Shelley Burr’s second novel, Murder Town, seems daunting at first—but stick with it, as Burr weaves a complex and ultimately satisfying slice of “outback noir.”
Primary players include Gemma Guillory, proprietor of a tea shop; her husband, Hugh, an embittered policeman still reeling from the spate of killings that shattered the sleepy burg of Rainier 15 years ago; numerous townspeople, including their daughter Violet; two of her friends, the pub owner, Christian Holst, and his fiancée, Ruth Tanner; plus an assortment of other personalities, some more prickly than others. And last but not at all least, Lane Holland, a PI who is currently in prison stemming from his involvement with a shooting at the conclusion of Burr’s debut, Wake. (He is the only character returning from that novel.)
Gemma’s little establishment was the final stop on the serial killer’s rampage, after which he was finally arrested. Now, an outsider entrepreneur named Lochlan Lewis wants to offer a Rainier “Ripper” tour and has come to the town to lay out his plans and gain local approval for his tour “script.” We also learn that he has a local, silent partner, one who plays a major role in the action later.
Prattles Lewis as he describes the interest in such tours and claims to lead them in Sydney and Melbourne: “… [and they] consistently book out. And Rainier offers something that I can’t give tour-goers there—immediacy. In Sydney I can take a tour to the precise spot of a razor gang killing, but half the time the site has been knocked down and rebuilt a dozen times over. I have to give my spiel outside a Liquorland. Here, the park, the church, the fountain, the tea shop are all perfectly preserved, almost exactly as they looked at the time.”
It all sounds reasonable to most of the townspeople. Unfortunately, soon after the meeting with the locals, “[a] figure hung from the fountain. Their legs were in the water, their torso hanging out, chest facing up. Their arms were completely lax, long white fingers brushing against the pavement. Their head dangled, the force of gravity tipping their chin up to expose the length of their throat. What was left of it.” The Rainier Ripper tour was a bust, in more ways than one—goodbye Lachlan Lewis. But why, and who?
Gemma nearly melts down with this graphic reminder of the past. There’s more. An unidentified body in Rainier is thought by the warden of the prison where Lane is incarcerated to possibly be his long-lost daughter, Matilda. He hatches a scheme to place Lane with the original Rainier Ripper’s medical unit to try to find out more about the body and confirm it was that of another victim. Burr weaves the stories together skillfully, and from here, it all gets quite complicated.
In an email interview, Burr talked about her desire to be a writer. “I’ve always loved to write, but for most of my life I was better at starting writing projects than finishing them. My first novel, Wake, was the first idea to grab me by the throat and hold on until I’d written all the way to the end. I love crime fiction. I love the puzzle aspect and the way the reader is invited to be part of the storytelling and try to solve the mystery along with the characters.”
But completing that first novel wasn’t a slam dunk. “With Wake, I started from wanting to tell the story of Mina McCreery, who grew up in the public eye after her sister’s unsolved disappearance captured the whole world’s attention. In the early stages of planning the novel, I considered that it could be a literary novel about grief, and I could downplay the mystery aspect. But it quickly became obvious that it was better suited to being a crime fiction novel. And in writing it, I found that I’m well suited to being a crime fiction writer.”
Burr worked in various governmental departments over the years, always thinking of what she wanted her real work to be. “While I was writing Wake, I worked in a support role for meat exports and biosecurity, and there would often be moments where I was reading or researching something for work, and it would spark an idea.”
She later worked for a governmental entity involved with recycling electronic waste. “The day I sold Wake to my publisher, I was touring a plastic recycling factory. The next day at work, I informed my manager about the offer, because I had to disclose it as a possible conflict of interest, and his immediate reaction was, ‘You’re not allowed to write a murder mystery set in a recycling plant.’ Which is a shame, because I’d been wandering around thinking, there are a lot of great places here to stash a body.” She added, “Basically, I know a lot of terrifying things about garbage.”
Burr’s childhood was spent rotating between Newcastle, on the coast, with her mother, and rural Victoria with her father on her grandparents’ property. “That time had a definite influence on the setting of Wake. I spent hours wandering the paddocks, and there were moments I would look around and realise I was the only person for kilometres in every direction.”
That deep rural environment truly reflects a hardscrabble existence. “Help is a long time arriving, and everything needs to be planned. Country people need to keep track of how much water is in the tank, how much food is in the pantry, what’s coming out of the garden, how much petrol does the car have. It enhances any threat, and I wanted to capture that tension.
“Newcastle and rural Victoria are very far apart, so we would spend eight hours in the car at every handover. That meant I saw a lot of Australia, what its small towns have in common and what makes each unique. That had a huge influence on Murder Town, which is set in the kind of small town that makes its living selling coffee and snacks to passing travellers.
“I’ve lived in big cities and I’ve lived in small towns. The place we live in now has a population of less than 50 (which is why I stay vague about where exactly it is!). There are certainly some big adjustments to living in such a small place.
“I’ve sent more ‘Whose cow is this on my lawn?’ texts to the group chat than I ever expected to. If you need the police, there are two of them in the next town over, and if you tangle with them, you’ll probably see them in the supermarket the next day. Everyone is connected to everyone else in at least two different ways. There are family feuds dating back a century that we have apparently taken a side in.
“Which is not to suggest I’m unhappy here. It’s been lonely, leaving behind the writing community I built up in Canberra, but there is a wonderful writer’s network, the Upper Murray Writers, and an annual festival, Write Around the Murray (the Murray is Australia’s largest river and forms the state border). I also find that there are more deliberate efforts to build community and create opportunities for people to come together and socialize here.”
As the story kicks into gear, Burr shuffles her large cast adroitly. A man shows up claiming to be the brother of the murder victim in front of Gemma’s tea shop 15 years ago. Gemma’s daughter and her friends come into play, as do numerous past romances and present couplings … it’s a heady brew, all in a backwater town in the middle of nowhere.
I asked Burr if she had read any of Ross Macdonald’s Lew Archer novels, because her work feels at times very much in his wheelhouse. From Macdonald’s biography by Tom Nolan, his themes delve deeply into “personal identity, the family secret, the family scapegoat, the childhood trauma; how men and women need and battle each other, how the buried past rises like a skeleton to confront the present.”
“I count myself lucky that I studied a crime fiction unit in high school. We looked at the history and conventions of the genre, which gave me a rigorous foundation to write from. The Big Sleep was an assigned text, so I looked at the work and influence of the ‘big three’ of golden age noir—Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett and Ross Macdonald.”
She must’ve been a very good student, because those family secrets and those skeletons from the past play a prominent role in Burr’s complex plotting.
With a few exceptions, the most read and thus well-known Australian crime fiction in the US essentially revolves around a universe containing the rural noir of Jane Harper and Chris Hammer, with a healthy side of Benjamin Stevenson. Distribution and publicity efforts for other writers from the continent are sparse, if at all.
Commented Burr, “Australia has a population roughly one-tenth of the US. For a small country we punch above our weight in crime fiction. I do think the UK has been quicker to notice that, but we’re creeping our way into the US market. It was absolutely Jane Harper who opened that door. Every Australian crime fiction writer owes her a drink. Chris kicked it open a little further, and I’ve definitely noticed more interest in my books as a result of Ben’s success. I’m excited to see what happens in the next few years. She added, “You’re definitely missing out if you haven’t picked up anything by Hayley Scrivenor, Jack Heath, J.P. Pomare or Dinuka McKenzie.
“There’s a common misconception in Australia that all local crime fiction is set in small country towns. I want to flick people in the nose when they say that and tell them that if they want more urban crime fiction, get to a bookshop and support the people writing it—Matthew Spencer, Mali Waugh, Kylie Orr and Sally Bothroyd would be my recommendations.
“Overseas, though, it’s definitely the outback setting that typifies Australian crime fiction. It makes sense—it offers readers an instant trip to somewhere very different, without the ten-to-twenty-hour plane ride.”
Lane Holland is the connecting thread in Burr’s two novels, and she leaves the reader thinking he’ll be the main protagonist in her next book. I asked Burr, what is it about Lane that has captured your writer’s heart?
“I’m at the copyediting stage with book three right now. It’s Lane’s turn to be the main character, as opposed to the supporting role he’s played in the first two stories.
“When I finished Wake, I was left with a very strong sense that the other characters were ready to step back and live their lives ‘off the page,’ while Lane still had a story to tell. That was reflected in reader feedback, too.
“When I was outlining Murder Town, I realized there was a part Lane could play. But I wasn’t sure if I was being self-indulgent and wanting to stay in a character voice I was comfortable with. For about a week there were two versions—one with his subplot and one without it. Now I can’t imagine Murder Town working without him; it would have been a completely different book.
“Lane is full of contradictions, which makes him interesting to write. He’s kind, and emotionally intelligent, and cares fiercely about the women in his life. He can also develop tunnel vision when he has a goal and is willing to manipulate people to get what he wants. He’s very smart but doesn’t always think things through and gets in his own way.”
In the acknowledgments in both books, Burr references the “traditional owners of the lands.” US readers may have only a cursory sense of the effect that colonization had on Australia, and I asked Burr to elaborate.
“There are so many stunning Aboriginal writers who have done a better job of explaining the impact of colonization better than I ever could, in both fiction and nonfiction. Tara June Winch, Melissa Lucashenko, Bruce Pascoe, Tony Birch, Claire Coleman. Not all of these writers have been published overseas, but sites like IndigenousX and Griffith Review make some writing accessible.
“The acknowledgment of country is a tradition here where at the beginning of an important gathering or meeting the speaker acknowledges which people’s land they’re standing on, if that is known (some are disputed). If a member of that group is present, they might agree to do a Welcome to Country instead. It’s an important reminder and formal rejection of the lie this country was built on, that the land was unoccupied when the First Fleet of convicts arrived. But a note at the back of my books is one action that’s only worthwhile in conjunction with more important work, at the ballot box and with the businesses, charities and community groups I support.”
