Aubrey Nye Hamilton Reviews: Dirt Town (Dirt Creek) by Hayley Scrivenor

Dirt Town by Hayley Scrivenor (Pan Macmillan, 2022) received the 2022 New Blood Dagger award from the Crime Writers Association earlier this month. The book was published in the U. S. under the name Dirt Creek. “Dirt Town” is what the children of Durton call their tiny impoverished town in rural Australia. While their village slowly loses economic viability, the residents grimly hold on, wondering how much longer they can survive there. The town is thrown into an overwhelming panic when 12-year-old Esther Bianchi does not come home from school one late November afternoon. Her family, neighbors, and best friend are questioned by the local police constable, then the citizens turn out to look for her. Detective Sergeant Sarah Michaels of the Australian Federal Police arrives during the evening to take charge of the search and investigation, which reveals more than just a missing child.

The story has multiple POVs: Sarah, Esther’s best friend Ronnie, one of their classmates named Lewis, Esther’s mother Constance, and a nebulous “We” that seems to be the collective consciousness of the children of the village. It takes place mostly at the end of November and beginning of December 2001, with a brief flashback here and there. Sarah and Ronnie are the primary narrators. Sarah is recovering from a failed romance; she replays key scenes from the relationship in her mind as she tries to focus on the task at hand. Ronnie is self-absorbed as children are and unaware of the larger world preoccupying the adults around her.

The writing is impressive. Sarah Michaels is a great character and I hope to see her again. The misery of an Australian summer is clear; everyone in Durton is suffering from the heat. The mindset of the children is captured exactly as I remember it. They see what is happening around them but they do not always understand it, and they tend to think they are more important to their world than they actually are.

The story goes beyond the disappearance of a child and addresses its impact on the town. This is the second book I have read this year that recognizes a major event like this leaves an indelible imprint on the people and the town where it occurred.

An intriguing debut but the changes in narrator and time are not always easy to follow. The “We” persona in particular is not successful from my perspective, although the author provides essential plot detail through it. I know breaks in time lines and more than one POV are the fashion in crime fiction but it disrupts the flow of the story for the reader.

Hayley Scrivenor is a former Director of Wollongong Writers Festival. She has a Ph.D. in creative writing from the University of Wollongong on the south coast of Australia. An earlier version of Dirt Creek was shortlisted for the Penguin Literary Prize and won The Kill Your Darlings Unpublished Manuscript Award. In 2023, it won a Lambda Literary Award and General Fiction Book of the Year at the Australian Book Industry Awards. Starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Booklist.

 

·         Publisher: ‎Flatiron Books (August 2, 2022)

·         Language: ‎English

·         Hardcover: ‎336 pages

·         ISBN-10: ‎1250834759

·         ISBN-13: ‎978-1250834751 

 

Aubrey Nye Hamilton ©2023

Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.