The third novel in Chris Hammer's series featuring Detective Ivan Lucic and his plucky partner Nell Buchanan has recently been published. The Seven (2023) sees the partners investigating a homicide in Yuwonderie, a fictional town in the Riverina area of New South Wales.
A body is found in the canal that runs through the heart of Yuwonderie. Lucic and Buchanan drive down from their base in Dubbo to investigate. The victim is a local accountant, Athol Hasluck, who has died in mysterious circumstances. They quickly learn that Hasluck is from one of 'The Seven' - the seven families that built and established the town one hundred years earlier. These families created the irrigation scheme - a system of canals that bring water from the Murrumbidgee River into the town - central to the prosperity of the community. But the detectives soon discover that there are dark secrets beneath the facade presented by this planned community, and the more they uncover the more dangerous their investigation becomes.
The novel unfolds on three timeframes. The present, where Lucic and Buchanan are investigating Hasluck's death. Thirty years earlier, in 1993, when Davis Heartwood, one of the Seven families, begins researching the origins of the irrigation scheme for his thesis. And 1913, when a young Aboriginal woman named Bessie arrives in the area to work for one of the families and writes to her mother who lives on a mission. Over the course of the novel, the three timeframes are interwoven and reveal information essential to this story.
In the previous instalment of the series, Buchanan was the focus. In this novel, we learn more about Ivan Lucic and his past. We also have characters from previous Hammer novels - like Martin Scarsden from Scrublands - make appearances in this book. While it helps to have read the previous Lucic novels, The Seven can be read as a standalone book.
Once again, Hammer has called upon Aleksander J Potocnick to create a map of the fictional town. This is a handy reference when reading to help understand the topography of the landscape and the proximity of various locations.
I really enjoyed this novel. It is a gripping murder mystery, with interesting characters and a clear sense of place. I hope that Hammer continues to write this series, as I want more Ivan and Nell!
My reviews of other Chris Hammer novels are available on this blog:
Scrublands (2018);
Silver (2019);
Trust (2020);
Treasure and Dirt (2021) and
The Tilt (2022). For readers outside Australia, the Lucic/Buchanan novels are published under different titles - look for O
pal Country (Treasure and Dirt), Dead Man's Creek (The Tilt) and
Cover the Bones (The Seven) instead.
