Reviewed by Ian Hamilton
I suspect that Broke Road will sell well.
The primary reason for this view is that whodunits are enduringly popular with a wide range of readers and Broke Road is a very well-crafted example of the genre.
Matthew Spencer employs his journalistic skills to devise a clear and engaging plot. The reader is drawn into an unsolved, but not unsolvable, crime. He limits the body count to one, although other historical deaths do play a role in the mystery and its resolution. Cleverly, he drives the plot by having an astute and diligent detective team. In this case they are two women ( Rose Riley and Priya Patel) and one man (Rodrigues). Various other police officers are behind the scenes, most importantly Sergeant Beth Gatjens. Pleasingly these professionals have the will and determination to work together without territorial egos interfering with their tasks. Their ability to think together – hypothesise and test those hypotheses – makes them very good at their jobs and the reader has little doubt that the murderer of Penelope Armytage will be caught. As things turn out they find the perpetrator of two other murders as well and perhaps there are even more victims. The reader is required to weigh evidence and check for mis-directions. The last chapters tease us with a solution which may not be the solution.
One of the other things which Matthew Spencer has strongly achieved is the control of dialogue and description. His command of credible Australian vocabulary and speech rhythms gives the reader a strong sense of the familiar, especially if one is acquainted with the Hunter Valley. His use of colloquial terms and abbreviations is well controlled:
“Uniforms, ambos, then us,” Rodrigues said. “Now only forensics. The doc just turned up.” (p8)
His dialogue frequently employs vulgar slang, to which each reader may react differently. Most people will probably think it adds to the tone of authenticity.
The attention to detail gives the novel an almost cinematic feel and it could be transformed into a screen play readily. Perhaps that was always part of the plan. In any case, descriptions add to visualisation and anchor the story into its particular place. Descriptions of the mining town of Cessnock are particularly evocative:
“An old weatherboard cottage, the original copshop, had been preserved in the redevelopment and now sat ensconced in a Besser brick boundary wall.
The cottage’s yellow paling fence marked a second entrance to the upgraded facility along a concrete drive. The whole thing looked over a vista of car dealers: Nissan, Kia, Toyota, Jeep, Mahindra, a “prestige yard”, Hyundai. There was a Tyreplus for blowouts, and an auto parts and accessories shop. Cessnock was vehicle proud.” (p23)
There is a restraint being exercised here. He conveys a sense of social disadvantage (in contrast to the well-healed Sydney wine tourists) without slipping into condescension.
By thorough checking of evidence, especially dates, the detective team arrive at one, and then a second, conclusion about the identity of the criminal. The author also gives a satisfying, if rather abhorrent, explanation of the murderer’s motive. Typically of a whodunit, the reader is given enough information to make an educated guess about the name of the murderer but has to be wary of the dead-end clues.
Broke Road
[2025]
by Matthew Spencer
Allen and Unwin
ISBN: 978 176106 920 8
$34.99; 400pp