After the Flood

Journalist Martin Scarsden is back as the protagonist in Chris Hammer's latest Aussie-noir crime novel, Legacy (2025).

Scarsden is on the run. There has been a threat on his life, so he has fled his home and is on the run. He is hiding out in the outback border town of Port Paroo, population 12, about as far as you can get from anywhere. The phone lines are down so Martin has no internet, and the floods are coming which will block the roads out of town. Martin hangs out at the town's only pub and tries to be incognito. Here he learns of a local feud over water rights between two long-established families in the area - the Carmichaels of Longchamp Downs and the Stantons of Tavelly Station - and wonders if there might be a story in it.

North of Port Paroo, ghostwriter Ekaterina Boland has arrived at Longchamp Downs. The elderly Claybourne Carmichael wants her to write his family's history and connection to this land so it is recorded for his son and future generations. Clay is planning to sell up and move on from this beautiful but inhospitable landscape. Trudging through old diaries of Clay's forebears, Boland comes across an ancient intrigue which may provide her with a redeeming book. 

Hammer juggles a lot of subplots in Legacy but he is such a gifted writer that he can effortlessly keep many plates spinning at once. He knows how to pace a story, and through his use of compelling cliff-hanging chapters, the reader is immediately immersed in the tale. I also love the way Hammer includes a helpful map of the locale in each book, created by Aleksander J Potocnik. 

The real hero of Legacy is the landscape. Hammer is able to accurately depict the parched earth desperate for rain and the slow arrival of the floodwaters. Even if you have never been to the outback, the reader can understand the dryness and the distance of these far-flung places. You'll be swatting flies and craving shade alongside Scarsden. 

I have read all of Hammer's novels and reviewed them on this blog. Books in the Martin Scarsden series are Scrublands (2018), Silver (2019) and Trust (2020). You do not have to read them in order but you will get more out of Legacy if you are familiar with what happened in earlier novels. Legacy is an excellent addition to this series. 

I was delighted to see Nell Buchanan and Ivan Lucic make a brief appearance in Legacy. I actually prefer the Lucic/Buchanan series Treasure and Dirt (2021), The Tilt (2022), The Seven (2023) and The Valley (2024). In fact, Hammer's last four novels have been with this pair, so I was suprised when he did another Scarsden book.