Press Reviews

• Karen Hardy

  The Age

  It's hard not to compare Chris Hammer's Scrublands to Jane Harper's acclaimed The Dry ... [It will] capture your imagination from the first page

• Sue Turnbull

  Sydney Morning Herald

  Scrublands is the epic novel about rural life in Australia that we need right now ... It sits right up there with the late Peter Temple's Broken Shore, Garry Disher's Bitterwash Road and Jane Harper's The Dry, even as it extends their focus and reach ... Remarkable

• Sarah Ward

  author of The Shrouded Path

  Set in the parched Australian landscape, Scrublands is a brilliantly plotted thriller which reveals a town full of brooding secrets. I couldn't put this compelling debut down

• AJ Finn

  A heatwave of a novel, scorching and powerful... Extraordinary

• Sarah Bailey

  Scrublands kidnapped me for 48 hours. I was hopelessly lost in the scorching Australian landscape, disoriented but completely immersed in the town and people of Riversend, as the heat crackled off the pages. I was devastated when it was time to go back to the real world. This book is a force of nature. A must-read for all crime fiction fans

• Paul Daley, writer and journalist

  Brilliant and unsettling, Scrublands stands at the junction of Snowtown and Wake in Fright, that place where Australia's mirage of bush tranquillity evaporates into our hidden fears

• Mark Brandi

  A superbly drawn, utterly compelling evocation of a small town riven by a shocking crime

• Tony Wright

  Hammer's portrait of a dying, drought-struck town numbed by a priest's unimaginable act of violence will capture you from the first explosive page and refuse to let go until the last. His remarkable writing takes you inside lives twisted by secrets festering beneath the melting heat of the inland, the scrub beyond waiting to burst into flame. Scrublands is the read of the year. Unforgettable

• Katharine Murphy

  Guardian Australia

  A compulsively page-turning thriller where the parched interior looms as large as the characters

• Bethanne Patrick

  Washington Post

  My pick for debut thriller of the month (and maybe of 2019) ... Beautifully written, this would make a terrific small-screen series

• Declan Hughes

  Irish Times

  Incendiary . . . A rattling good read, ambitious in scale and scope and delivering right up to the last, powerfully moving page

• Laura Wilson

  Guardian

  Well-rounded characters, masterful plotting and real breadth; this is an epic and immersive read

• Alison Flood

  Guardian 'Best Recent Thrillers'

  Extremely accomplished ... Deliciously noirish ... Set in the blistering heat of a remote Australian town ravaged by drought and threatened by bushfires, this is a complex, meaty, intelligent mystery ... Hammer's writing is so evocative the heat practically rises off the pages of Scrublands

• Joan Smith

  Sunday Times (Crime Book of the Month)

  Stunning ... Scrublands is that rare combination, a page-turner that stays long in the memory

• Mail On Sunday

  A dark and brilliant thriller, one that lingers in the mind

• Gytha Lodge

  author of She Lies in Wait

  Atmospheric, utterly gripping, and written with devastating beauty. Scrublands is as scorching as wildfire and as hard to look away from

• Ann Cleeves

  Classic Hammer, with the heat and the small town obsession with secrecy and past grievances. A crime novel that will stay with me for a long time.

• Lisa Hall

  A complex, twisty thriller, with nuanced characters and a winding plot all set in the oppressive Australian heat.

• Lisa Gray

  A clever and compelling small town mystery, with an evocative setting and a brilliant cast of characters. This slice of Australian noir sparkles like an opal in the blistering sun.

• Christopher Fowler

  Opal Country is a top-notch Aussie Noir with real heat coming off the pages.

• Heat

  A brilliantly atmospheric mystery.

• The Times

  This novel - tighter, tougher, tenser - is Hammer's best work yet.

• Irish Independent

  Chris Hammer is regarded as one of Australia's best new noir crime writers, and this immersive and lyrically written thriller copper-fastens this well-deserved reputation.

• Crime Fiction Lover

  Gold standard Outback noir [...] Chris Hammer's best writing to date.

• Peterborough Telegraph

  Nobody does Australian outback crime better. Hammer nails it again.

• Shots Magazine

  Opal Country is richly rewarding. Hammer is quite brilliant.

• Brown Flopsy's Book Burrow

  A fast-paced and thrilling read.

• The Sun

  Keeps you stuck to the story like an Outback miner's shirt to his back

• Woman's Own

  A sharp thriller

• South Africa Sunday Times

  A master of the crime genre