"A superb crime debut" - review of WHEN THE DEEP, DARK BUSH SWALLOWS YOU WHOLE

WHEN THE DEEP DARK BUSH SWALLOWS YOU WHOLE by Geoff Parkes

 (Penguin, 2025)

Reviewed by Craig Sisterson

It’s January 1983. During his university summer break, Ryan Bradley returns to the remote town of Nashville in New Zealand’s rugged King Country.

It’s a bittersweet he’s working long, punishing hours as a woolpresser, he needs to sell his late mother’s house, and he’s increasingly feeling like an outcast in his childhood town.

But mostly he’s haunted by memories of Sanna Sovernen, a Finnish backpacker and his secret lover, who worked with him in the shearing shed the summer before - then vanished without trace.

Now Sanna’s sister Emilia has arrived from Finland, determined to get answers - and as he’s the workmate who reported Sanna missing, she wants Ryan’s help. Because Emilia knows her sister was not the first female traveller in the area to disappear...

Stolen nights on a pile of jute sacks in the corner of a creaky woolshed may not be the epitome of romance, but for law student Ryan and Finnish backpacker Sanna, they’re highlights of a 1980s summer of tough labour on a shearing gang in the rugged King Country of rural New Zealand.

But that’s a secret Ryan kept from police when Sanna vanished from the side of the road, while he was in a bar fight in the local Nashville pub. Then Sanna’s abrupt sister Emilia comes to their small town the following summer, unafraid to stir things up by digging into local secrets and suspects the police wrote off; because it must have been an outsider, right?

Geoff Parkes, a Kiwi sports columnist in Melbourne, crafts a rich sense of time and place in When the Deep Dark Bush Swallows You Whole, a superb crime debut that’s deftly written and built on a shuffling lineup of character perspectives, rather than a singular investigator or protagonist.

From Emilia and Ryan to various locals, and Sanna herself, readers get a growing sense of the King Country town, those who work and live there, and what really happened on that tragic night.

Suspects, red herrings, and strong writing aplenty; a very good first bow.

[This review was first published in the Spring 2025 issue of Deadly Pleasures magazine in the USA]

Craig Sisterson is a lawyer turned writer, editor, podcast host, awards judge, and event chair. He's the founder of the Ngaio Marsh Awards, co-founder of Rotorua Noir, author of Macavity and HRF Keating Award-shortlisted non-fiction work SOUTHERN CROSS CRIME, editor of the DARK DEEDS DOWN UNDER anthology series, and writes about books for magazines and newspapers in several countries.