Chris Hammer – Judefire33

A HUGE welcome to this weeks #Guest #Author #ChrisHammer @hammerNow author of #DeadMansCreek published by @Wildfirebks on 05.01.2023

JW; I’d like to start by asking, have you always wanted to be a writer? And where did the idea for Dead Man’s Creek come from?

CH: I thought I wanted to be a writer when I was at university, but quickly shelved the idea as preposterous. And it was: I simply wasn’t very good at it. And I had the attention span of a gnat. It was only much later, after decades of journalism and a couple of non-fiction books, that I finally felt I had the ability to write credible fiction.

The idea for Dead Man’s Creek came from its setting in the forest – the Barmah-Millewa forest – which is a real place in Australia. It’s highly changeable – some years it’s drought-stricken and fire-prone, other years it’s flooded, massive wetlands. It’s a great place to set a crime novel.

JW: How much research did you have to do for Dead Man’s Creek, did you visit any of the settings in the novel? Play with explosives?!

CH: I visited the forest in the summer of 2008-09 at the height of the worst drought since European settlement, when it was feared the forest was dying. (I was researching a non-fiction book, The River). Then I revisited it in late 2021 when the forest was flooding.

On that first trip, I met an old man named Tim Mannion, who was a local amateur historian. Tim told me about being a kid in the forest during the second world war. His story provided the seed for Jimmy in the book.

Researching the seventies was really fun – what music was current in 1973, what people smoked and drank, what the fashions were, etc.

I didn’t play with explosives.

JW; Who would you like to see playing the parts of Nell Buchana and Ivan Lucic when Dead Man’s creek is turned into a Movie!

CH; Not sure. Possibly some unknown Australian actors who could make the parts their own.

JW; As a child growing up, were you an avid reader, or was television your thing? Do you have a favorite childhood book or television program?

CH; I was definitely more of a reader than a television watcher, although I was also sporty and spent a lot of time out of doors, so I wouldn’t describe myself as being overly bookish.

JW; If you could go back in time, to one historical event, to witness it, what would it be and why?

CH; At the end of the last ice age, when the land bridge between Australia and Papua New Guinea was breached and the Indian and Pacific Oceans joined. It must have been truly spectacular. The thing is, it was only about 8,000 years ago, and there were people there watching it – we know that from the oral histories of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders.

JW; What is your favorite book or books that you have read so far in 2022, and why?

CH; There were some really impressive Australian crime debuts: Wake by Shelley Burr and Dirt Town by Hayley Scrivenor come to mind – both ‘outback noir’. I also enjoyed the playfulness and meta-fun in Sullari Gentill’s Woman in the Library and Benjamin Stevenson’s Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone. All four are published in the UK

JW; What is something you are passionate about aside from writing?

CH; Coffee. Food. Bushwalking. Writing music (badly).

JW; If you were to be marooned on a desert island what 3 items would you take?

CH; A guitar. A telescope. A still.

JW; Do you have a hidden talent?

CH; If I do, it’s very well hidden.

JW; Are you currently writing another book, and when will it be released?

CH; Yes, trying, to be released in Australia in October 2023 and in the UK in January 2024. At least that’s the plan.

Chris Hammer was a journalist for more than thirty years, dividing his career between covering Australian federal politics and international affairs. For many years he was a roving foreign correspondent for SBS TV’s flagship current affairs program Dateline. He has reported from more than thirty countries on six continents. Chris’s non-fiction book, The River, published in 2010 to critical acclaim, was the recipient of the ACT Book of the Year Award and was shortlisted for the Walkley Book Award. Scrublands, his first novel, was published in 2018 and was shortlisted for the CWA John Creasey Debut Dagger Award, Best Debut Fiction at the Indie Book Awards, and Best General Fiction at the ABIA Awards. It has also been longlisted for the Ned Kelly Best Crime Novel of the Year. Scrublands was optioned for television by Easy Tiger (a FremantleMedia company). Chris has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Charles Sturt University and a master’s degree in international relations from the Australian National University. He lives in Canberra with his wife, Dr Tomoko Akami. The couple has two children.

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My #Review of the outstanding new novel #DeadMansCreek by #ChrisHammer @hammerNow published by @Wildfirebks on 05.01.2023

Newly-minted homicide detective Nell Buchanan returns to her hometown, annoyed at being assigned a decades-old murder – a “file and forget”.

But this is no ordinary cold case, her arrival provoking an unwelcome and threatening response from the small-town community. As more bodies are discovered, and she begins to question how well she truly knows those closest to her, Nell realises that finding the truth could prove more difficult – and dangerous – than she’d ever expected.

The nearer Nell comes to uncovering the secrets of the past, the more treacherous her path becomes. Can she survive to root out the truth, and what price will she have to pay for it?

First, thank you so much to Zoe at Headline for sending me the lush Proof of Dead Mans Creek.

Dead Mans Creek is the second book in Detective Nell Buchanan and Detective Sergeant Ivan Lucic series, so if you want to read them in order, The first book is Opal Country.

Upon opening the book I find a map, this always makes me excited, I’m a real sucker for maps in books, and I did indeed come back to it many times whilst reading Dead Mans Creek.

I have to say having read all of Chris Hammer’s novels I think this might just be his most accomplished and perfect crime novel. The storyline is brilliant involving present-day investigations into a skeleton being found in a reservoir where an eco-terrorist has blown up a dam, and also moving back in time throughout Dead Mans Creek to slowly give us the events that have led up to the body being found. The story is complicated and gripping, Chris Hammer has such a great way of describing his characters and making them so realistic they just jump off the page.

The setting for Dead Mans Creek is the fictional Tulong and the Millewa – Barmah Forest, and the way Chris writes the description of the Forest and its wildlife, creeks, and grassy plains is so magical, it really bought the pages to life, and you can see what a beautiful place it is in your imagination. It is a real place that Chris has visited and this tells by his writing.

The plot is intricate and involves 50 years of family history, and again this is written so so well, it’s easy to follow again to my surprise at the end of Dead Mans Creek is a family tree, which I found really helpful.

I was totally immersed in the story of Dead Mans Creek, I love Nell Buchanan’s character and Ivan Lucic, in Dead Mans Creek, we see newly promoted homicide Detective, Nell Buchanan lead the investigations in her hometown, and it gets pretty risky, in the end, she uncovers old truths that have been kept secret for so many years, and have a rippling effect on several families.

I loved Dead Mans Creek, and I loved that there are references to Martin Scarsden, and Chris Hammer’s other series of novels. I was gripped from the first page and as with every book I read by Chris Hammer, I didn’t want it to end! The ending was brilliant and I really think that this is the most perfectly written crime novel.

I will be giving Dead Mans Creek 5 stars, it’s a must-read when it’s released in January 2023.