There is always something fascinating about reading crime fiction set in a geographic area which you know well, in this case, the Australian state in which I live.

Back in the days when we thought hitching rides was relatively safe, Ingrid Mathers took a ride she will remember for the rest of her life.

32 years on Mark Ariti, an Adelaide Detective Sergeant, temporarily promoted to Acting Inspector, is asked to investigate what appears to be a cold case. A television personality has insisted that the police should thoroughly investigate a death death 30 years earlier which she is convinced was murder. Mark is the perfect choice because he knows one of the people who gave evidence back then when the case was fresh.

Mark Ariti agrees to take the case as he feels it may get him out of the career slump he is currently in. It take him north to Port York (fictitious town) and then up the Stuart Highway to Cutter's End, a fictitious ex-opal mining town.

What chance does Mark have of finding new evidence? None you would think, but that is not quite true.

An excellent read. Certainly an author to watch.

There is an extra bonus of Reading Group Questions at the end of the book, as well as some Author Q & A. ( )

Hard to review a book by a friend! Began well but got rather bogged down in the middle with the cold case going nowhere - unexpected twists at the end. Guessing there will be more books featuring the troubled Mark and maybe Jagdeep Kaur? ( )

First off, let me break all the "rules" of reviewing and say from the outset that I really enjoyed CUTTERS END.

Set in the South Australian outback town of Cutters End, this is a two timeline mystery, with the story harking back to the death of Michael Denby in the scrub off the Stuart Highway, 300km south of Cutters End on New Years Eve in 1989. Originally flagged as an accident, there's always been something not quite right about the investigation at the time, and the conclusions drawn. Not helped by the victim being a local hero - the man who saved a young girl and her mother from a devastating flood, that young girl going on to become a high profile television identity, and somebody with enough clout to kick off a re-investigation 32 years later.

Set within the vast distances and sparse population of the Australian outback, the idea that DS (Acting DI) Mark Ariti is recalled from long service leave to investigate this death makes a lot of sense. He's a remote town boy himself, but it's his close, personal connections to two of the witnesses that puts him front and centre in the personnel choice. His old school girlfriend, Ingrid Mathers, who is in the area at the time of the murder, and her best friend from school, Joanne, are witnesses. But it's not just them, it might be the middle of nowhere, but there are people around, strangers stand out, people notice things, the victim's character matters in this case, and Ariti's sure that Ingrid saw something - but not sure if she knows she did or not.

Alongside an absolutely spot on sense of place in CUTTERS END, are a cast of characters who are sometimes deeply flawed, dripping with life experience (good and bad) and not all they seem. All of the characters here work really well, the taciturn station head, the barmaids and pub owners, the local eccentric photographer, the determinedly cheerful local cop Jagdeep Kaur whose interactions with her frequently invisible boss are funny, and real. Her determination to chase down the small things, the details is admirable, but at the heart of the novel is Mark Ariti. Almost apathetic to start out he's a man with the obligatory complications at home (wife's affair / his affair with a colleague / tensions over child care in a double working household etc), enough problems to make him seem almost morose. This investigation, so far from home, and with so much time to reflect back to his teenage years is giving him a chance to work through the layers of his life, in the same way that the investigation starts to peel back the layers of small town secrets. It's not surprising that the "good bloke" narrative and who goes along with it and who knows otherwise is at the heart of this case.

Woven into what's ultimately a police procedural novel with a cold case perspective, is that exposure of social failings that this reader is particularly partial to in crime fiction. It comes as no surprise that the investigation into a man's accidental death starts to reveal the mysterious disappearances of a number of young women, in the same sort of area and timeframe. The fact that nobody bothered to get too excited about those sorts of cases has been reflected in a lot of true crime exposes I've been reading lately as well and you do have to wonder about a world in which people just disappear and some are deemed important enough to investigate and some aren't. There's some very telling lines about attitudes to that in this novel that really made me sit up and pay attention.

Ultimately, for this reader, CUTTERS END was a compelling mystery with a fantastic sense of place, and time, populated by some quintessential small outback town characters, with a complex investigator at the centre of it. Refreshingly, it's not trying hard to make you like Ariti, but it definitely expects you to admire his tenacity, and his determination, even when the final result isn't as by the book as some would have, it's definitely all about the administration of justice.

https://www.austcrimefiction.org/review/cutters-end-margaret-hickey ( )

When public pressure results in a thirty-two year old case being reopened, Acting Inspector Mark Ariti is recalled from long service leave and tasked with reinvestigating the death of Michael Denby on a lonely stretch of the Stuart Highway. Discovered by his fire damaged car with burns and a broken leg, the original finding was one of accidental death, and there is no real expectation Ariti will learn anything new after all this time. Re-interviewing witnesses certainly seems to be a dead end, but Ariti along with Senior Constable Jagdeep Kaur, stationed at Cutters End, stumble upon some information that paints the dead man in a new light and changes the direction of the investigation.

Though touted as a thriller, I feel Cutters End is better described as a police procedural. The prologue introduces some suspense with a harrowing scene, but there’s no real sense of urgency related to what may have really happened to Denby during the novel given he has been dead for several decades. There is an intriguing mystery though that unravels at a measured pace as Ariti and Kaur piece together disparate pieces of information and the reopened investigation prompts questions about a range of other suspected historical crimes.

I’d say a key theme examined by Hickey in Cutters End is the difference between the application of law and the administration of justice, particularly in regards to the poor response of police and courts to crimes against women, especially those involving sexual assault and domestic violence. This issue has relevance both in the present, as Ariti’s wife prosecutes an abusive husband, and the past, as Mark and Jagdeep learn about its secrets.

I’m not sure how I feel about Mark Ariti to be honest. Seemingly in the midst of a midlife crisis, with a failing marriage, an apathetic attitude towards his children, and shallow concerns about ageing, I felt he was quite a morose, self involved character. He is a dedicated investigator though, which I admired, and to be fair, he surprised me somewhat in the end.

Offering a well crafted mystery that takes place in an atmospheric rural Australian setting, Cutters End is a solid crime fiction debut from Margaret Hickey. ( )