Canticle Creek

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Hyland frames his plot and murder mystery well, issuing his readers with plenty of plot stops, turns, detours, secrets, codes, suspects to consider and disputes to settle. My response rate went up and down with this one, but I think Canticle Creek would be ideal for seasoned readers of Australian crime noir. Award winning Australian author Adrian Hyland makes a return to the publishing scene with Canticle Creek, an evocative and tense crime fiction novel. Kenji Takada, a Japanese artist, was just passing through when he came across Canticle Creek, captivated he painted it and decided to put down roots and stay. Here he captures the landscape and leaves his own mark on the area. His daughter and granddaughter are the continuing strong influence on the area. The rural crime fiction wave continues with this brilliant new arid drama.’ - Australian Women's Weekly

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Jesse Redpath is a cop from the Territory. She helps a young Adam when he does something illegal by offering him a second chance; helping her dad and working in the local roadhouse. A week later, Adam runs away and Jesse doesn’t think about him again except to send a warrant. Case Study will fascinate anyone with an interest in the radical psychiatry that went hand in glove with ’60s counterculture. It’s a disorienting, darkly funny novel, constructing a tale about the labyrinth of identity within the game-like frame of metafiction. An author becomes obsessed with writing about an enfant terrible of psychiatry, one Collins Braithwaite, and stumbles across notebooks from a peculiar case. A young woman calling herself Rebecca presents for treatment as one of Braithwaite’s clients, but she is really gunning for the charismatic shrink himself. Rebecca is convinced her sister, Veronica, a former patient who committed suicide, was driven over the edge by him. Determined to bring him down, she initiates a game of cat-and-mouse between therapist and client – one that hangs on the monkey bars of literary and psychiatric satire before falling onto sharper philosophical ground. I enjoyed the characters and their dialect. While at times it took a moment to understand – I loved the speech patterns and local habits.When Jess keeps Adam out of juvenile prison, she hopes it will give him a second chance and give him the opportunity to fulfill his artistic challenge. Canticle Creek is a gripping murder mystery, just a brief examination of the crime scene is enough to convince Jesse that the police, who believe Adam killed his girlfriend, Daisy, and died when his car left the road as he attempted to flee, are wrong. Looking for an alternative narrative, Jesse puts several of the locals, and a Melbourne mobster, offside as she noses around the small community. They decide to go, in spite of the fact both are uncomfortable in big crowds. No wonder. (I love all these hyphenated descriptions.) To some Australia retains the image of harsh man’s world, but here it is strong, determined women who make the difference. Jesse, Nadia, and Possum follow Daisy’s lead and are more perceptive to what is going on and when it really matters possess the necessary courage. Brute strength is not always the answer, sometimes you need to listen to the message and act upon it before time ultimately runs out. an entertaining and engrossing novel. Hyland has written the ideal story for a long, hot summer, where fire always seems a possibility.’ ― The Canberra Times

Canticle Creek by Adrian Hyland — Readings Books Review: Canticle Creek by Adrian Hyland — Readings Books

A common story seen within this genre, predictable plot lines, however still enjoyable. There wasn’t much character development, and there was a lot of predictability. So she leaves the Territories for Melbourne on a period of leave to investigate. Trying to find out why Daisy was killed, and by whom, brings danger to Jesse and all who are trying to help her. The final scenes where the rogue fires are threatening to engulf both evidence and investigators was just amazing. I caught a glint of reflected light. Reflected on what? Metal? Glass? I sensed its length, aim, intent. Its threat. Like Christie Looms' cat, I could feel somebody watching me. Worse — they were lining us up. This story follows Jessie questioning the local police's conclusion and persuading them, with her assistance , to investigate further. Things got very fraught, the heat was getting to everyone, fire a constant danger, the fear was almost palpable. As more and more suspects were uncovered and more and more reasons for the murders, things became dangerous, Jesse was to need all her skills. I enjoy Hyland’s writing and his people. It’s interesting that his main characters are tough youngish women. They still fancy a good bloke, but he leaves the bedroom scenes to our imagination. This isn’t what I call a “straw hat rural romance (the books with the girl in a straw hat on the cover). It’s a proper mystery, with action and some violence.Jesse a Police officer in a small Australian town tries to help a young man to keep out of trouble. I quite enjoyed this Aussie crime novel. I found the lead character, Jesse, a likeable and intelligent character. When Jesse hears that Adam is dead and allegedly killed a woman, she and her dad head to Canticle Creek to find out more because they knew Adam and can't believe that he would commit murder. There they meet some intriguing characters including artists, welcoming families, aggressive loggers and ex drug addicts. With some very tense scenes, Jesse is determined to find out what really happened in relation to Adam's death, and someone else out there is equally determined that she doesn't... When Jesse heard through her boss that Adam had been found not far from Melbourne in Victoria, she wasn’t prepared to hear he was dead. She also wasn’t prepared to hear he’d murdered a woman and had crashed a stolen car into a tree while fleeing the town. Jesse was certain the Adam she knew wouldn’t have a bar of killing, so she and her dad headed for Melbourne, then a small town about an hour north-east of there, called Canticle Creek, to unofficially look into the deaths. A gripping murder mystery at it's heart, with a clever, deftly constructed and extremely believable plot, Hyland uses this opportunity to celebrate natural beauty in the experience of his characters, and through the eyes of the artists he's incorporated in his cast of well-constructed people. He has a particular skill when it comes to writing female viewpoints, from Jesse, through to Possum, the teenage friend of Daisy, and Possum's own family (with whom the Redpath's are staying). The observations and asides of these people build a picture of the location, and the characters within it in a very natural, Australian way, and he knows exactly how to convey dialogue, and cadence of speech amongst friends and strangers that just works. Then there's the depiction of fire in a drought ridden landscape that's terrifying and informative.

Canticle Creek by Adrian Hyland | Theresa Smith Book Review: Canticle Creek by Adrian Hyland | Theresa Smith

Hyland has mastered the architecture of noir – his sinister tale seethes with small-town atmosphere and satisfying twists, set against the dangers and harsh beauty of the Australian landscape.’ ― Sydney Morning Herald Things were going well it seemed, with Adam and Jesse’s father, they shared a common interest in art. It’s been a decade since I have read Adrian Hyland’s Gunshot Road and Diamond Dove yet both Australian crime novels remain favourites, so I jumped at the opportunity to read Canticle Creek. Canticle Creek was a hot bed of secrets amid the soaring heat of the summer sun. As Jesse made herself known to the local cops, she made some friends – and enemies - while investigating. Possum, a sixteen-year-old young woman who had more smarts than some adults Jesse had met, was intelligent and helpful. But what would they find in the small town of Canticle Creek?Fire is never far from people’s minds and lingers as a threat throughout the book until Hyland uses his knowledge and experience to bring its dangers vividly and viscerally to life. Jesse and Ben were devastated when they heard that Adam was dead, he had murdered a young girl and smashed a stollen car killing himself in the process..............this wasn't the Adam that they knew so they set off for the small town of Canticle Creek a short distance from Melbourne to investigate. I thought the mystery was quite original, and I loved most of the characters, especially Jesse and Possum. The only thing that was hard to swallow was that a police officer from another jurisdiction would be so well tolerated in the middle of a murder investigation. But as long as you can accept that, it's a fast-paced, satisfying ride. Another thing I really enjoyed was the incorporation of visual art and conservation in the storyline, giving Hyland's writing the opportunity to shine as he describes the paintings and the environment. This author has been on my radar for his Emily Tempest series, but this recent release (a standalone) is the first of his novels I've read. I'll be moving Diamond Dove up my TBR to read soon. Blazey Best was a great choice of narrator for this audiobook. 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.

Canticle Creek – Ultimo Press Canticle Creek – Ultimo Press

When Jesse sees an invitation to a National Gallery exhibition in Melbourne, she notices that two of the featured landscapes are one of her father’s and one by the late Kenji Takada. The title of Takada’s is ‘Canticle Creek’, the place Adam’s body was found. From the latest Scandinavian serial killer to Golden Age detective stories, we love our crime novels!Nash Baker was once a celebrated cop, but his career was ended 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. Though the case was pretty much closed, Jesse started doing some digging of her own and soon started to ruffle a few feathers with her snooping. I did enjoy this story very much, though I think at times the author got a bit carried away with technical jargon and “big word dropping” which I had no trouble understanding, but felt it was a bit unnecessary and over the top at times. It wasn’t until year 4 that Shane Jenek was made to feel that “people with penises should act differently from people with vaginas”. Instinctively, the young boy knew that he didn’t belong on either side of this divide. When he moved from Brisbane to Sydney in his late teens and discovered the drag-queen scene, he found a way to control the narrative of his life. For the first time since he was bullied by the alpha boys at school, he could give expression to his innate femininity while feeling powerful around straight men. Since his mainstream debut as Courtney Act on Australian Idol, Courtney has appeared on reality TV in the US and Britain and more recently on the ABC. Often funny and always frank, this memoir charts Jenek’s embrace of his gender fluidity: the process of “unbecoming who the world had told me to be” so that “I was finally able to become myself”.