Treasure and Dirt by Chris Hammer

Treasure and Dirt is the outback crime novel from Chris Hammer, the Australian author of Scrublands, and this is the tie-in edition for the ABC TV series.

In the opal-mining town of Finnigans Gap, a miner is found dead down his own shaft, crucified and left there. Sydney homicide detective Ivan Lucic is sent out to work it, with an inexperienced local officer, Nell Buchanan, alongside him. Finnigans Gap has ended police careers before, and it is not long before both of them are facing serious allegations of their own. The only way out is to find the killer, and the deeper they dig, the worse it gets.

It is the first Ivan Lucic and Nell Buchanan novel, and it reads perfectly well on its own. The six-part ABC series, filmed in Coober Pedy here in South Australia, stars Michael Dorman and Liv Hewson.

Outback crime for readers of Jane Harper and Garry Disher.

'Chris Hammer is a great writer, a leader in Australian noir.' Michael Connelly