The way it is now by Garry Disher

I am a fan of Garry Disher’s crime novels and was thrilled to read The Way it is Now, a stand-alone featuring Charlie Deravin, a police officer living in his family’s holiday house on the coast in Victoria. Charlie’s forced leave has left him with time to think about his life and in particular the disappearance of his mother twenty years earlier, believed murdered. His father, in the middle of a divorce, was a suspect, and his brother Liam believed that his father was guilty. When the skeletal remains of a child and an adult are found, Charlie’s inquiries lead him into danger.

Disher’s novels are always multi-layered, forcing the reader to pay attention not only to the crimes committed but to the personalities and emotions of the main characters. Charlie is burnt out. He has been suspended from his job because of his actions around a rape case when he believed that his superior officer was not doing his job properly. Over the course of his investigation into his mother’s murder, he gradually comes to realise truths about himself, his relationship with his ex-wife and his family and the new woman in his life, Anna. Disher also integrates a case revolving around rape culture in a football club and the effects of COVID on his father into the story.

The setting of a small coastal town where everyone knows everyone provides a great background to Charlie’s life and his attempts to solve the mystery of his mother’s death and that of the young boy who had previously been believed to have drowned . The surfers, the locals walking dogs on the beach and the mix of shacks and high-end houses will all be familiar to Australian readers.

This was a crime novel that I was unable to put down and after finishing found myself revisiting parts of the book as I thought about the suspects, Charlie’s emotional growth and the way the cases were resolved. It is highly recommended for lovers of quality Australian crime novels.

Themes: Murder, Police corruption, Missing persons.

Pat Pledger