Why a Booktrail?
2000s: A cop exiled to the Australian backwaters finds more than he bargained for…
Bitter Wash Road
What you need to know before your trail
Constable Paul ‘Hirsch’ Hirschhausen is a whistle-blower. Formerly a promising metropolitan detective, now hated and despised, he’s been exiled to a one-cop station in South Australia’s wheatbelt. So when he heads up Bitter Wash Road to investigate gunfire and finds himself cut off without backup, there are two possibilities. Either he’s found the fugitive killers thought to be in the area. Or his ‘backup’ is about to put a bullet in him.
He’s wrong on both counts. But Tiverton – with its stagnant economy, entrenched racism and rural isolation – has more crime than one constable can handle. And when the next call-out takes him to the body of a sixteen-year-old girl, it’s clear that whether or not Hirsch finds her killer, his past may well catch up with him.
Locations
Reset- Australia - SA - Tiverton
- A: Tiverton 'village'
- B: Tiverton Creek
- Australia - SA - Redruth
- C: Redruth Gaol
- D: Redruth Methodist Church
- E: Burra Mine
Travel Guide
Travel to Tiverton South Australia BookTrail style with Bitter Wash Road
Constable Paul Hirschhausen (‘Hirsch’) has been banished to a one man police station in Tiverton, a small town north of Adelaide. This appears to be a real place that is so small it’s barely on the map and when it is, it’s classed as Yura.
Hirsh is sent here, exiled here, as it’s the perfect place for someone to find themselves alone and adrift from the world. He starts to work in this small place and finds that most of the locals are as anti-police as his boss. This book, Sergeant Kropp , is stationed at Redruth which which is close to Tiverton and is another small town. This is a tense drama of rural life from the point of view of an outsider.
The small country town feel is omnipresent throughout the novel and you can sense as well as feel it, see it and hear it. There’s the one man police station, dilapidated farms, dusty roads that seem to lead to nowhere. In the small settlement towns, the ‘everyone knows everyone’ barrier of silence is the biggest challenge to the police and the investigation. This is the focus of rural life it would seem.
In the middle of nowhere……
Booktrailer Review
Love gritty Australian Noir? Well you need this….
Read TheBookTrail’s full bookreview of Bitter Wash Road
BookTrail Boarding Pass: Bitter Wash Road
Destination/location: South Australia, Tiverton, Redruth Author/guide: Garry Disher Departure Time: 2000s
Back to ResultsWhere Next?
