Review: THE GREAT DIVIDE

THE GREAT DIVIDE by LJM Owen (Echo Publishing, 2019)

Reviewed by Karen Chisholm

In the rural Tasmanian town of Dunton, the body of a former headmistress of a children’s home is discovered, revealing a tortured life and death.

Detective Jake Hunter, newly-arrived, searches for her killer among past residents of the home. He unearths pain, secrets and broken adults. Pushing aside memories of his own treacherous past, Jake focuses all his energy on the investigation.

Why are some of the children untraceable? What caused such damage among the survivors?

The identity of the murderer seems hidden from Jake by Dunton’s fog of prejudice and lies, until he is forced to confront not only the town’s history but his own nature… 

In THE GREAT DIVIDE, L.J.M. Owen has set what seems to be the first of an intended new series in the atmospheric location of a small Tasmanian town with plenty of past secrets just waiting to come back to haunt new and old residents alike.

Atmosphere is the word when it comes to describing THE GREAT DIVIDE. From deep fog, to mysterious old buildings, and damp and sinister feeling vineyards, there is much in this novel that's going to hook a reader's interest. Add the new cop in town, mainlander Detective Jake Hunter, an old family with plenty of inter-generational tension, and a gruesome murder near to the old 'bad girls home', and readers will soon be knee deep in secrets, lies, guilt and some very nasty past events. Enough to rock everyone, not least of all Jake Hunter himself.

Taking full advantage of the interest in Australian rural crime that's building at the moment, but moving that away from the heat, the drought, and the deprivation often used in recent novels, deep into the damp, oppressive darkness of a rural Tasmanian location provides all sorts of opportunities for Owen to use setting as a major character.

There's plenty of past history to infect current behaviour, there's locations that have used questionable practices for enough years to make you wonder whether locals have developed a fine line between ignore and condone, and then there's weather - nothing like pea-souper fogs and cold, rainy dark days to create just the right setting for old secrets to lurk about in.

The development of Jake Hunter as a central character has enormous potential as well, he's a good, solid sort of a cop, with enough of a past to be interesting, and to provide a nice echo to the idea that there's past to everything and everybody and it always affects the present.

Karen Chisholm is one of Australia's leading crime reviewers. She created Aust Crime Fiction in 2006, a terrific resource - please check it out. Karen also reviews for Newtown Review of Books, and is a Judge of the Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Novel. She kindly shares her reviews of crime and thriller novels written by New Zealanders on Crime Watch as well as on Aust Crime Fiction.