'The Sunken Road is set in a distinctive region of South Australia, the mid-north. It's wheat and wool country about two to three hours drive north of Adelaide. I grew up there and it's long exerted a pull on my imagination. You could say that I've tried to write this book for the past twenty years.' (Garry Disher)
A South Australian saga of the land and its people, the novel gives away its intricate secrets little by little as the author takes the reader on a fascinating literary journey. History - perceived as fragmentary, circular and subjective rather than unitary, linear and objective - reflects in the life of a land and, in particular, of a woman named Anna Tolley. The Sunken Road is thus a bildungsroman as well as an experimental narrative - elegant, surprising and well-sustained up to the end.
The Bamboo Flute, Garry Disher's first book for children, is the story of a sensitive young boy whose intense colourful inner life strives to compensate the ugliness of the 1930s Great Depression in Southern Australia. Paul finds comfort with one of the loathed and feared men who roam the country in search for work. A modern representation of the Pied Piper, Eric the Red brings music in Paul's life, and with it come the love and understanding of the teacher, Margaret - his loved one - and his own parents.
Readers reach for a thriller expecting to find, among other gratifications, that well-dosed mixture of 'invention plus convention', in what they hope to be escapist entertainment. Disher's latest Wyatt novel offers all that but ... conventions are upset, which is paradoxically part of the expected invention. On reading about a yacht, jewels, a nephew appearing out of the blue, plus romance, the Wyatt fans might wonder whether this is a Wyatt novel or a Hollywood style thriller. But the yacht is damaged, the nephew dies, and the straight cop Liz Redding engages in a surprising love affair with ... tough old-style crimWyatt.
The last paragraph suggests some possible threads for future story developments, and thus the reader can put down this book conscious of a promise and a bond - the Wyatt series will go on.
A checklist for Wyatt novels: Kickback (1991); Paydirt (1992); Deathdeal (1993); Crosskill (1994); Port Vila Blues (1996); The Fallout (1997).
'You ask about how I put Straight, Bent and Barbara Vine together. [...] I realised that I'd been writing three types of crime short stories - 'straight' or traditional ones such as whodunits, police procedurals and Wyatt thrillers; stories that mocked or played around with the conventions of the genre (ie, 'bent' stories); and stories rather like those written by Barbara Vine - psychological mysteries, in which ordinary characters are the victims of crimes or forced into committing crimes or suffer the consequences of crimes.' (Garry Disher)
An insurance investigation, Wyatt thrillers (both 'straight' and 'bent' in a postmodern fashion), crimes in Australia and Venice, crime from the inside, whodunit and mystery ... Garry Disher swiftly moves across sub-genres offering the reader quality entertainment reading.