Australian outback noir — crime fiction set everywhere from dry and dusty farming communities to sleepy seaside towns — has become a global publishing sensation.
Novels like Candice Fox's Crimson Lake (the inspiration for ABC TV series Troppo), Jane Harper's The Dry (adapted for the screen in 2020), and Chris Hammer's Scrublands (now a four-part TV series) are among those topping national and international bestseller lists.
So what makes regional Australia such an appealing setting for crime fiction? And why are Australian audiences so eager to devour the tales?
What is outback noir?
The recent wave of outback noir — also known as rural or bush noir — can be traced back to 2016 with the publication of The Dry, a crime fiction novel by British expat Jane Harper.
Set in a drought-stricken country town, The Dry won a raft of awards, sold millions of copies, and helped spawn a literary subgenre.
The use of the phrase "noir" to describe these stories stems from the desire of local publishing houses to emulate the success of similar subgenres, such as Nordic noir and tartan noir — crime fiction set in Scandinavia and Scotland, respectively.
Outback noir swaps the anonymity of the city for close-knit regional communities where everyone knows everyone else's business.
A small town is a "narrow world" that seems to promise readers that the killer is someone they've already encountered in the story, Aoife Clifford, author of When We Fall, an outback noir novel set in a Victorian seaside town, told ABC RN's The Book Show.
The setting is key — think gothic landscapes of baked, brown paddocks or rugged coastlines battered by wild seas.
Outback noir, and crime fiction more broadly, reflects the prevailing social issues of the day, says Sue Turnbull, crime fiction expert and senior professor of communication and media at the University of Wollongong.
"Crime writers are, in general, very clued into social shifts, social changes [and] social concerns, and that tends to come out in the books," Professor Turnbull says.
For example, climate change is a prominent theme to have emerged in crime fiction in recent years, reflecting society's increased awareness of the issue.
Journalist-turned-crime-fiction-author Chris Hammer, whose 2018 novel Scrublands explores drought and social isolation, says climate change is a pressing issue in regional Australia.
"There's the sense that the bush is fragile with the advent of climate change, bushfires, droughts, floods … [and] the people there are under pressure, and it helps explain why people commit crimes," Hammer, who recently published his sixth novel The Seven, told ABC RN.
"It's almost subliminally soaked into our national psyche that the bush is changing."
Clifford's When We Fall also explores climate change, as well as other social issues including police corruption, property development, aged care and forced adoption.
In the novel, When We Fall is the name of an exhibition at the local museum. This was inspired by Without Consent, a real-life exhibition by the National Archives of Australia examining the nation's historic forced adoption policy between 1950 and 1975.
"There wouldn't be a town or any family that wouldn't have some connection to [forced adoption] in some way. They'd either know someone, or it would be part of their family story," says Clifford, whose third novel, It Takes A Town, is due out in 2024.
Novelist Garry Disher, who completed a PhD in Australian rural noir, believes crime fiction tells us about the world in which we live.
"A lot of literary fiction has let us down in that regard. It might be full of gorgeous prose and fascinating characters and interesting themes, but not really tell us much about the world," he says.
In contrast, "good crime novels with contemporary settings can reflect prevailing social tensions".
Indigenous voices in outback noir
While the "outback noir" tag is a recent innovation, there is nothing new about setting crime fiction in the bush.
The 19th century saw the publication of tales of escaped convicts, bushrangers and crimes carried out on the goldfields.
Early settler crime fiction reflected the racist attitudes of the time in its treatment of First Nations people and cultures.
"Indigenous people … only appeared as lurking threats or helpful trackers," Stephen Knight, author of Australian Crime Fiction: A 200-Year History, wrote in The Conversation in 2018.
Arthur Upfield's eponymously titled 29-book series about an Aboriginal detective named Bony, published between 1929 and 1966, enjoyed popular success in the 20th century. But some experts have argued that Bony embodied the "noble savage" stereotype and showed little empathy for other Aboriginal people.
But it's a literary history set to shift.
Julie Janson is a Burruberongal woman of the Darug nation and a playwright, novelist and poet.
She's also the author of the 2023 Miles Franklin Award longlisted book Madukka: The River Serpent, an outback crime novel told from the perspective of an Aboriginal woman in her 50s.
The lead character Aunty June, a freshwater Gamilaraay Aboriginal woman, has recently completed her Certificate III in Investigative Services and opened a private detective agency in Wilga, a town on the Darling River in Ngiyampaa country.
Her clients — generally disgruntled women who, Janson writes, want to "track cheating husbands or men who had run off" — pay her in kangaroo legs rather than cash.
It's a world where bikies cook up meth in illicit labs in the bush, Big Cotton steals water from a dying river, and racism is part of everyday life.
Two crimes drive the novel: the disappearance of June's cousin Thommo, an environmental activist, and the destruction of the Darling River.
Through June, a crime-fighting character inspired by the Aunties who have played a central role in Janson's life, Janson expresses the grief of First Nations people over the violence of colonialism, the degradation of Country and the loss of traditional ways of living in a distinctly Aboriginal voice.
"I always put Aboriginal women at the centre of my plays or novels. To me, it's … like restorative justice — we need to be centre stage," Janson says.
"I'm hoping that I start off a whole movement of Indigenous writers writing crime fiction because the whole of Australia is a crime scene in terms of colonialism.
"You don't have to go far to find a massacre site."
Tune in to ABC RN at 10am Mondays for The Book Show and 10am Saturdays for The Bookshelf.
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2023-12-25 18:00:00Z
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