‘Shots fired on Bitter Wash Road…’

Hirsch is a whistle-blower. Formerly a promising metropolitan officer, now hated and despised. Exiled to a one-cop station in South Australia’s wheatbelt. Threats. Pistol cartridge in the mailbox.

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 the events that unfold turn out to be a lot more sinister.

Garry Disher has published almost fifty titles - fiction, children's books, anthologies, textbooks, the Wyatt thrillers and the Mornington Peninsula mysteries. He has won numerous awards, including the German Crime Prize (twice) and two Ned Kelly Best Crime Novel awards, for Chain of Evidence (2007) and Wyatt (2010). Garry lives on Victoria's Mornington Peninsula.

'Disher's writing is lean, cold and spare - right to the point and never a word too many. The story starts flat-out and never lets up.' Herald Sun

'Smooth, assured mastery.' New York Times Book Review

'Disher is a fine writer about place and also people.' Sue Turnbull, Sydney Morning Herald

'Exceptional crime fiction.' Courier-Mail

'Disher's writing is as lean and relentless as his hero. No one does dryly poetic evocations of paranoia and human folly more seductively.' Australian

'Disher writes so clearly about the physical environment, the social atmosphere, the impact of change and the interaction between the people...that it is easy to overlook the depths of analysis that he provides.' Australian Book Review

'Easily the equal of those by John Harvey, Ian Rankin and other leaders of this form of crime-writing.' Canberra Times

'Disher is definitely not to be missed.' Globe and Mail