Gunshot Road

Starred review from March 22, 2010
Crisp, colorful prose distinguishes the outstanding second Emily Tempest investigation set in the Australian Outback from Ned Kelly Award–winner Hyland (after 2008's Moonlight Downs
). Tempest, a half-Aboriginal, half-white police officer, clashes with her superior in the official inquiry into the murder of prospector Albert Ozolins. She doesn't think eccentric John Vincent Petherbridge (aka “Wireless”) struck Ozolins a fatal blow to the throat with a geological hammer, despite Wireless's admitting he argued with the victim about Xeno's Paradox shortly beforehand. Instead, Emily suspects that the scientist's research into the snowball Earth theory, the hypothesis that the earth's surface may once have been entirely frozen over, may have given someone a motive to kill. Hyland doesn't spare his independent heroine some rough knocks. Readers who like their mysteries in exotic locales will hope this series has a long run.