“Dirt town. Dirt and hurt – that’s what others would remember about our town.“

What is it about small town mysteries that remains so endlessly fascinating?

Durton, or Dirt Town as the locals call it, is the kind of place you can’t wait to leave behind. It’s dirty and dusty. It’s isolated and claustrophobic. It’s one of those places where seemingly everyone seems to know everyone else’s business. Although that doesn’t necessarily mean they will interfere with any shenanigans. What happens behind closed doors and all of that …

One hot afternoon, Esther Bianchi doesn’t make it home from school. Dirt Town is in disbelief. This kind of thing doesn’t happen in their community. Detective Sergeant Michaels is called in to help in the search for Esther. She knows more than anyone how, in a split moment, someone could do something they never thought they’d do. Esther’s friend Ronnie desperately wants to find her BFF but might just end up putting herself in danger. And Lewis knows something that could possibly help but telling someone might force him to reveal a secret of his own. A secret he wants to hold on to with all his might.

The Dirt Town community might be small but there is a lot happening. The town residents may think they know everything, but a multitude of secrets lurk underneath the surface, many of which will be revealed when the search for what happened to Esther gets underway. None of it is very pretty.

‘Dirt Town‘ is a slow-burning and character-driven mystery with the most delightful atmosphere oozing from its pages. It reminded me a bit of Jane Harper’s novels or even Chris Whitaker. Few do that isolated and claustrophobic vibe so well but it seems we might now need to add Hayley Scrivenor to the list. The characters are realistic, multi-layered and complex. All dealing with a variety of issues, yet mostly just trying to survive in a town that offers so incredibly little. For many of the residents there’s such sorrow, sadness and misery and yet, ‘Dirt Town‘ is home. It is what it is.

Don’t let the scenario of the missing child put you off. I know we’ve all been there and done that and really, how many different ways can you tackle this topic. But Hayley Scrivenor goes about things so differently that ‘Dirt Town‘ becomes quite refreshing and original. There are various points-of-view, each offering a unique insight into what’s going on. Some picking up where others left off, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

If I’m going to be nit-picky, I did have one wee niggle regarding DS Michaels. Yes, she’s done a thing (can’t mention it, too spoiler-ish) but there is a time and a place for everything. Personally, it is quite off-putting to me when a Detective on a job is thinking about a former girlfriend in the middle of interviews. It really annoyed me.

However, as a whole, I very much enjoyed ‘Dirt Town‘. It’s an impressive debut. Hayley Scrivenor is definitely an author to watch and a fabulous addition to the Australian crime writer community.

A thoroughly good read. Interesting insights into a small Australian town and how key individuals take the disappearance and subsequent murder of a young schoolgirl. Lots of twists and turns keep you guessing. Interesting charcters keep you entertained

EXCERPT: My best friend wore her name, Esther, like a queen wearing her crown at a jaunty angle. She only ever called me Ronnie. I didn't fit the grown woman name I'd been given. The glamorous syllables of Ve-ron-i-ca had nothing to do with me. We were twelve years old when she went missing. I was bossy and solid, shorter than Esther but determined to dictate the terms of our play, the kid who would assign roles when we pretended to be Power Rangers at recess, stomping off in a huff if other kids had their own ideas. But a lot of the time I wasn't getting my own way with Esther so much as saying out loud what she'd already decided she wanted to do. She would hurtle into a room, tongue sticking out, and leap so she landed with her knees bent and legs wide apart. She'd roll her eyes into the back of her head and say, 'Rah!' at peak volume, before streaking out of the room again. I needed things from people, and Esther didn't, not really, and I think that's why I was drawn to her.

ABOUT 'DIRT TOWN': On a sweltering Friday afternoon in Durton, best friends Ronnie and Esther leave school together. Esther never makes it home.

Ronnie's going to find her, she has a plan. Lewis will help. Their friend can't be gone, Ronnie won't believe it.

Detective Sergeant Sarah Michaels can believe it, she has seen what people are capable of. She knows more than anyone how, in a moment of weakness, a person can be driven to do something they never thought possible.

Lewis can believe it too. But he can't reveal what he saw that afternoon at the creek without exposing his own secret.

Five days later, Esther's buried body is discovered.

What do we owe the girl who isn't there?

MY THOUGHTS: Durton, or Dirt Town as it's known by the locals. The kind of town you can't wait to leave behind as a teenager. The kind of town you come running home to when life goes wrong. The kind of town where everyone thinks they know you and know your business. Where lives are intertwined. An irritant. A solace. But behind closed doors . . .

Dirt Town is a slow burn, character driven mystery. The story is told through the collective voices of the children of Durton, WE; Ronnie, Esther's best friend; Detective Sergeant Sarah Michaels, the investigating officer on the case; Lewis, who sits with Ronnie and Esther at lunch to avoid being bullied by the other boys; and Constance, Esther's mother.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.” - Charles Dickens could easily have been writing about Durton, about the time when Esther Bianchi went missing. The town buzzed with a suppressed excitement at the horror of it all and kept their children close. Rumours abound. Accusations are made. Things are said that can never be unsaid. Innocuous events take on a new meaning. And no one will stand up in defence of anyone else in case they are tarred with the same brush.

Scrivenor has put a small outback town under a microscope. The results are more than interesting. This read gripped me, although it is not at all suspenseful. The characters filled my head, clamouring for attention. I shed tears for Ronnie's devastation, her determination to do right by her missing friend, and for Lewis's isolation.

The revelation is perfect. There's no dramatics, no fanfare. It just is.

It's hard to believe this beautifully executed novel is a debut. I will be following this author with great interest.

⭐⭐⭐⭐.4

#DirtTown #NetGalley

I: @hayley.scrivenor @macmillanaus @panmacmillanuk

T: #HayleyScrivenor @MacmillanAus @PanMacmillan

#australianfiction #contemporaryfiction #detectivefiction #friendship #mystery #sliceoflife #smalltownfiction

THE AUTHOR: Hayley Scrivenor is a former Director of Wollongong Writers Festival. Originally from a small country town, Hayley now lives and writes on Dharawal country and has a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Wollongong on the south coast of New South Wales. Dirt Town is her first novel.

DISCLOSURE: Thank you to Pan Macmillan via Netgalley for providing a digital ARC of Dirt Town by Hayley Scrivenor for review. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own personal opinions.

For an explanation of my rating system please refer to my Goodreads.com profile page or the about page on sandysbookaday.wordpress.com

This review is also published on Twitter, Amazon, Instagram and my webpage

Dirt Town is the story of twelve-year-old Esther who goes missing on her way home from school in the small, rural, Australian town of Durton. Immediately you may think ‘here we go again, such an over used subject in this genre’ and you would be right! But Hayley Scrivenor has brought a refreshing and unique voice to the child missing scenario. It’s a slow burning mystery, but it’s the characters that make this book such an engrossing, but harrowing read.

Detective Sergeant Sarah Michaels and her partner are sent to the town to investigate Esther’s disappearance. Her disappearance is the catalyst that exposes the deep cracks running through the community. The investigation casts suspicion on friends and family. Instinctively.

The story is told from multiple perspectives, each has a distinctive and unique voice. Although this is essentially a crime thriller, it’s the fact Scrivenor immerses the reader in the lives of the people of Durton that makes this book stand out. There are short ‘We’ chapters, which are narrated from the collective points of view of the town’s children. They provide valuable insight into the effect the investigation has on the citizens of Dirt Town. It was interesting to see how relationships crumbled whilst others grew in the face of adversity.

I loved the bleak setting of Dirt Town. It’s claustrophobic and portrays perfectly the smallness and intensity of a rural community, whilst blending the natural and extreme environment of Australia into the story. There are some clever twists and the plot isn’t a predictable one, which is always a bonus. I found Dirt Town to be an impressive debut, with its well-developed characters, richly descriptive writing, and an intriguing plot.

Dirt Town is a book you won’t be able to put down. It’s the story of twelve year old Esther who goes missing on her way home from school. Amazing writing, one of the best books I’ve read this year. Hard to believe it’s the author’s debut novel.
Thank you to Netgalley and the author for the opportunity to read and review this book.

Dirt Town is a solid, slowburning mystery in the vein of Jane Harper and, as such and fairly predictably, I loved it. This is a book I read in a single sitting, unable to put it down for any length of time because I wanted to know what happened.

The story takes place in a hot, claustrophobic small town, after the disappearance of a young girl. Detective Sergeant Sarah Michaels is called in to help with the search, and what she finds is a bunch of secrets to uncover, and a fair bit more than they bargained for.

First things first, this is the kind of book that flings you into the setting. I said it was Jane Harper-esque for this very reason: it reminds me of The Lost Man in the way the surroundings suck you in and make you feel as though you’re right there alongside the characters. Really, the setting is, in itself, almost another character, it feels so real and so tangible to the reader.

And the care in crafting that setting also extends to the characters. Each and every one of them feels distinct and realistic. You could see these being people you might pass by on the street. Their narratives feel distinguishable too: there was never a point where I was confused as to whose POV I was in (which was a real risk given this book has a fair number of them). Much like everything else, they leapt off the page.

It’s the characters and setting that really drive this book, since it’s a slowburning one. A lot of the POVs overlap, so sometimes it feels as though you take two steps forward then one step back. But that doesn’t matter when the characters are so compelling (also a lot of the time it helped you understand the characters better, so I wasn’t really complaining about it). By the end, you’re in it more for the characters, and closure for them, than the mystery itself.

Overall, this is a book I’d highly recommend to have on your radar. It’s the perfect read to while away the hours on a summer’s day.

A very slow burner but worth sticking with as the reader gradually gets to know the main characters and plays whodunit.
As with many Australian thrillers, the landscape and environment are like a character in themselves and the author portrays the claustrophobia of a small town very well and the feeling that its best days are behind it.
I wasn't sure about the narrative chorus of WE to begin with, but warmed to it by the end and the slightly distanced every child view of the events that were occurring in the town.
thank you to netgalley and Pan Macmillan for an advance copy of this book

In the last 12 months I've read some truly evocative Australian fiction. Chris Hammer & Jane Harper spring easily to mind. Dirt Town does not have the same generosity or the same feeling of being genuine. Even the title feels like it's trying too hard when the author explains it. Please note, I am not tagging the book nor the author in this review.

DT has too many characters, none of them likeable. Not a single one has a redeeming feature.

DT is also incredibly slow. At 69% all the reader knows is that a girl is missing, the characters are vile & DS Sarah Matthews is a predator. I find her a deeply disturbing character. Her partner is s dopey wanker. He's a complete non entity who wouldn't change the story if he wasnt there. Actually, there's at least 3 other characters who are surplus to requirement.

The storytelling is choppy & the writing style is immature. The amount of repetition is alarming because an editor should have picked this up. I lost count how many times we were told one character is a Syrian drag king who likes mimic Australian "characters".

There's no sense of place or Aussie-ness. DT could literally be transferred to any out of the way place & it wouldn't cause a problem. I feel there is a definite lack of commitment to making readers believe this is rural or outback Australia.

I knew who the murderer was at 77% and only finished reading because I wanted to know how. Another disappointment. DT is another example of no clues, big reveal. So many writers think they're Agatha Christie & they're really not.

Not one character has any agency. They are all passive - everything happens to them not because of them. By the time the story wraps up, with all its unbelievable contrivances, you'll either be glad or have given up before hand.

Overall, there's very little plot, there are no twists & I hope this is a standalone novel. I would not recommend this to any reader who spends a lot of time in fictional crime novels.

The story starts with a body being found and then goes back to where a young girl disappears on her way home from school. The state police dispatch one of their specialist missing persons teams and they start to investigate. The story is told from the perspective of Esther's (the missing girl) best friend, Ronnie, another friend, Lewis, Sarah, one of the police officers, and collective WE amongst others. Because of this the story does overlap and takes a while to get used to the jumping timelines. However that doesn't detract from what is a good story.
The writer conveys the urgency of the investigation and the desperation of people in the town of Durton, nicknamed Dirt Town by themselves.. Everyone has secrets, even the children, that they don't want washed in public. But how much does this hinder the investigation and would telling the secrets make any difference to the outcome?

In Durton in rural NSW, a man has just dug up something wrapped in plastic. Four days earlier Esther Bianchi had disappeared so is this her body? To find this out, and the circumstances surrounding her disappearance, we have to go back four days, but in small, impoverished towns like ‘Dirt Town’, as the children and most everyone else calls it, there are always secrets that go back much further. Back as much as twenty odd years, perhaps, to a possible rape. When the investigation team of DS Sarah Michaels and DC Wayne Smith arrive from Sydney (about 350 miles away) they find a number of suspicious characters but no obvious suspects. What is clear is that those old, and not so old, secrets are creating cracks in the community. Constance, Esther’s mother, leans heavily for support on her only real friend Shel, especially when her husband is arrested. While the adults are all conflicted in various way, the children of the town, especially best friends Veronica (Ronnie) and Lewis, have their own worries, but also their own views. As we proceed through the four days covered by the investigation the clues pile up but other crimes are also unearthed. So, is Esther actually dead, or has she been abducted, or just run away? If she is dead, then who is the killer, and why was she killed?
The story is told from multiple viewpoints, particularly those of Sarah, Ronnie and to a lesser extent Lewis and Constance. However, the role of omniscient narrator is taken by “We” a kind of gestalt of the children of the town, past and present, who see everything, contextualise everything. This is an unusual, quite possibly unique strategy. As to the plot, this is a police procedural and unfolds in a predictable fashion. Where it stands above others is in the cleverness of the misdirections; the tale twists and turns with a suppleness which slip’s under the reader’s awareness, nothing looks unlikely, nothing looks illogical. There is no sense that events have been engineered to lead you in a particular direction. The solution is totally apt. I was less happy with the epilogue section where all of the loose ends for all of the characters are tied up, which seemed to me to give too much detail. This may be because I read essentially to resolve mysteries, but this novel is really about the narrow internecine confines of towns like this, with the mystery format used as a dissection tool.
I would like to thank NetGalley, the publishers and the author for providing me with a draft proof copy for the purpose of this review.

Thanks to NetGalley and PanMacmillan for ARC.

12 year old Esther Bianchi disappears, seemingly without a trace while walking home from school in a small town in rural Australia. The local rumour mill is in overdrive, among adults and children alike. Everyone has things they'd rather not tell the cops brought in from outside to investigate whether this is linked to another disappearance.
Detective Sarah Michaels is confronted by her own response to the town and its inhabitants, and the attempts of the local police to focus on some aspects of the enquiry over others.
This is a beautifully written novel, with and understanding of sense of place and how the harsh landscape shapes the people who live in it.

The sections from the point of view of the children and the final revelation of what happened to Esther that day will take your breath away and break your heart.

This is a real slow burner of a mystery but well worth the read. Set in a small town in rural Australia, the town is rocked when a young girl disappears. The police investigation uncovers a horde of lies and secrets among the well developed characters. The book is told from multiple perspectives, which worked very well, apart from the narrator "We", which confused me slightly. I liked the descriptive scene setting and the character of Ronnie, but not so much the child and animal abuse. It is, however, well worth reading and I would recommend it. Thanks to Net Galley for my ARC.

There is a lot of Australian rural crime around at the moment. While Jane Harper’s The Dry far from started the trend it certainly set a benchmark which many authors have tried to meet. The latest into the genre is Hayley Scrivenor who brings a slightly classical approach to her rural crime debut Dirt Town.
Dirt Town opens at the end of 2001, with the discovery of a body, eleven year-old Esther Bianci, buried in a shallow grave on a property outside of the town of Durton. This opening chapter is headed “We” and it is narrated by Scrivenor’s version of a Greek Chorus, the collective consciousness of the children of the town (and the ones who coined the nickname Dirt Town for their home). But the majority of the narrative, which immediately drops back five days, the day that Esther disappeared, is narrated through a range of point of view characters – Esther’s friends Ronnie and Lewis, her mother Constance and the lead investigator of the case Detective Sergeant Sarah Michaels.
So many Australian rural crime stories, including two of this year’s other debuts – Maryanne Cuskelly’s The Cane and Shelly Burr’s Wake – revolve around missing children. Many are set in the past and include child point of view characters (The Cane, again, but also Greg Woodland’s debut The Night Whistler among others) and in doing so deal with issues of sexual violence, domestic violence, toxic masculinity and the treatment of sexual identity. And they mostly use the crime as a triggering event to bring up long held secrets and tensions. All of which makes it difficult for a debut like Dirt Town to stand out from the pack.
But Dirt Town does manage to hold its own which is why it was shortlisted for Penguin Literary Prize and won the Kill Your Darlings Unpublished Manuscript Award. Scrivenor delivers a deeply effective story set in a well realised community in a recognisable time (hard to believe it was only twenty years ago). The use of the chorus, in particular gives a communal perspective of what people knew, what they suspected and what they ignored. And the resolution is both surprising and devastating.

5/5 - Excellent

An atmospheric, gritty and quite outstanding mystery set in Australia.

The story focuses on the search for a young missing girl, drawing an investigation onto the local community from outside cop Sarah.

Intriguing, compelling and very easy to read, this slow burner is a story of community , trust, love, friends and family and has a cast that you can’t help but become involved in and hope for.

The sensitive moments are written so so well and the finale when it arrives just felt so right and unexpected.

It’s quite superb, up there with the best Australian fiction I’ve read, and a book of the year contender for me

Hayley Scrivenor's atmospheric Aussie crime debut revolves around 12 year old Esther Bianchi who disappears on her way home from school in the small town of Durton, aka Dirt Town, and the repercussions on the community, its families and children. Specialist Missing Persons police officers, DS Sarah Michaels, still obsessing over the breakdown of her relationship with Amira, and DC Wayne Smith arrive, organising line searches with local volunteers, using divers to check the dam, and deploying the dog team. Esther's mother, Constance, married to the very good looking Steven, is plunged into the depths of despair and desperation. The story is related through the perspectives of a number of people and children, it includes a type of Greek chorus from the children, relaying information and an awareness of the undercurrents of darkness and cruelties that run through the town.

Veronica 'Ronnie' Thompson is Esther's best friend and biggest cheerleader, for her Esther was magical, she loves the way Estie could do voices, jumping around and squirming until she had Ronnie bursting into raucous crazy laughter. Estie means everything to her, she had the ability to make Ronnie feel more than she was. Being raised by her single mother, Evelyn, Ronnie idolises Steven as a father figure, certain he would never harm Estie. Knowing Estie so well, Ronnie thinks she is the person to find her, unable to comprehend a world in which Estie does not return. Young Lewis Kennard faces troubling family circumstances that revolve around his father, Clint, he is a boy with secrets, secrets that prevent him from revealing what he saw at the creek on the afternoon Estie disappeared. As time goes by and the police work their way through potential suspects, it becomes increasingly unlikely that Estie will be found alive.

Scrivenor weaves a riveting story of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and of how anyone, even good people, can so easily make mistakes whilst facing a challenging set of circumstances. Dirt Town is a place of secrets that begin to surface as Sarah investigates, Esther going missing portrays how a town and community simultaneously comes together and splinters apart. For the children, it means explicitly acknowledging that bad things happen, a loss of childhood innocence and freedom, but they and Esther are unquestionably Dirt Town children. The author provides information about what happens in the future with a number of characters, I was particularly happy to learn that life turns out to be more than okay for Lewis. This is a great Aussie mystery that I recommend highly. Many thanks to the publisher for an ARC.

I love reading Aussie noir: the familiarity of the heat, the particular foods, the accent, the mystery, the small-town small-mindedness that authors like Scrivenor capture so well. I really enjoyed the multi-narrators and reading things from the different perspectives, not all of whom are entirely reliable.
Because the story itself is about a young girl who goes missing though and we know that things are likely not going to end well for her, there's a pall of sadness that hangs over the book. I personally find it more sad than mysterious when such a young person is the victim.
I completely understand the comparisons made to Jane Harper's The Dry and would certainly read more by this author. I found the subject matter here difficult and the story was in parts a little slow, but overall this was an accomplished first novel and I will be reading more by this author!
Many thanks to NetGalley, the publishers and the author for a copy of this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This incredibly slow-burn mystery will keep you gripped until the end. I couldn't put this one down!

When 12-year-old Esther disappears on her journey back home from school small town in Australia. The case is picked up by DS Michaels who will stop at nothing to discover what has happened however along the way, secrets from her past come back to haunt her.

It's an extremely encouraging and excellent debut from Hayley Scrivenor and can't wait to see what she brings in the future.

There will be the inevitable comparisons with Jane Harper - it is a book about a detective in Australia - and Hayley Scrivenor deserves comparing to such a brilliant author. This book is a gripping read; the characters are intriguing, the plot extremely well crafted, the small town descriptions thoroughly immersing, I loved this book - it is a page turner, one that I was keen to wake up early this morning in order to finish before work - and that doesn't happen very often!

I look forward to reading more from Hayley Scrivenor!

Thank you for the early access to this novel. I read this in two sittings as I just did not want to put it down. I loved it! I am a big fan of Jane Harper and this read very similarly to their works. I would never have guessed this was a debut! It’s not very often that I can picture surroundings and people whilst reading but I did with this book. I enjoyed reading from different character perspectives and loved the descriptions of Dirt Town. The story is quite sad but extremely engaging. I do think some trigger warnings would be helpful as this book is dark in places. Overall I thought it was great and the pacing spot on! Definitely recommend!

I chose to read and review a free eARC of Dirt Town but that has in no way influenced my review.

I am a HUGE fan of Australian crime fiction. I want to read it all, and there are lots of really exciting, interesting writers making their mark on the genre at the moment. So when I saw Scrivenor's debut was being published, I jumped at the chance to read it. And oh my goodness, what a riveting, emotional ride it was. Definitely an author to watch!

Twelve-year-old Esther Bianchi and Ronnie Thompson are best friends. They live in Durton - or Dirt Town or Dirt and Hurt to the locals - which is a bit boring but OK. One day after school Esther goes missing. The whole town turns out to look for her but they're all aware that their neighbour, their friend could have been the one to abduct the girl. Detective Sergeant Sarah Michaels is tasked with finding Esther but the investigation falters at every turn. Someone in Durton knows what's happened to Esther. Someone in the small, close-knit community knows the truth...

Gorgeously dark, evocative and utterly compelling, I thoroughly enjoyed this superb slow burn mystery with its true to life characters, bleak setting and intriguing plot. I adored the voices the author gave the younger characters. They felt so true and real to me that my heart broke for these poor kids whose friend was missing. The emotion, the naivety was all conveyed so beautifully. The other character I adored was Detective Sergeant Sarah Michaels who is guilt-ridden following the end of her recent relationship. Her actions play on her mind constantly and I loved how that made the character more human. Sarah is very well-written and I do secretly hope that this is only the start for her and we get to see her feature in future books.

The plot is an intriguing slow burn of a read which I savoured every moment of. I didn't feel the need to sprint my way through Dirt Town at all. I wanted to enjoy every word, every description of this dead end rural Australian town and savour the interactions between the characters as the mystery slowly but steadily unfurled. I wasn't able to predict whodunit but it was a very satisfying, very surprising reveal.

Would I recommend this book? I would, yes. Dirt Town is a very atmospheric, incredibly readable tale which I enjoyed every dark and desolate moment of. The setting is exactly the kind of setting I want in my crime fiction novels - a small town on its last legs. I loved the vivid descriptions the author uses to set the scene, putting the reader right there in the middle of things. But the characters were EVERYTHING. Multi-layered, completely believable and totally unforgettable. It's hard to believe Dirt Town is a debut and I'm excited to see what Scrivenor delivers next. Highly recommended.

I chose to read and review a free eARC of Dirt Town. The above review is my own unbiased opinion.