Dust, Michael Brissenden

It's not uncommon for crime fiction from any location to address societal issues up front, and DUST by journalist / author Michael Brissenden is doing exactly that - tackling drought, and the deprivation in rural communities that goes alongside that, as well as the rise of the Sovereign Citizen / Cooker communities, who are increasingly taking root in these areas.

DUST has, as it's central character, young Aaron Love. The son of a missing, but not much missed father, he's one of those fringe-dwelling kids that has looked after himself from a very young age, living / existing perhaps is a better word in a caravan park of the edge of Lake Heddon. An area and a community that's seen better days, since the lake dried up, and the major employers disappeared. When Aaron discovers the body of a journalist on the dried lake bed, it turns out he's been investigating the disappearance of Aaron's father Tobias, and his connections with a trucking company, Feingold. Sent to investigate this obvious murder, Martyn Kravets is a detective with demons of his own - the accidental shooting of his colleague being fresh in his mind, and the circumstances in which that happened always a chance to repeat.

So a lot of damaged people, in a profoundly damaged and neglected landscape, with drugs, and dust, and dirt as far as the eye can see. There's not a lot of hope on any side, yet somehow, young Aaron persists. He's a decent kid, despite his father being a violent, useless creature, and his love of this broken place, and some of the people around him shine through.

It would be possible, in the hands of a lesser author, for the clichéd characters here to get a bit much, or way too annoyingly predictable, yet there's real potential for connection and understanding here, supported by a plot which again, is heading into reasonably well ploughed furrows, yet remains twisty, compelling and all too believable.  I will admit that the sense of dust, and dirt and unrelenting heat rang a lot of bells, almost to the point of twitch developing with the years of drought we have experienced recently, all of which made the reading of this novel feel very real, and very immediate.

As did the plot built around some very dodgy illegal going's on, and the convenience of the cooker communities in covering that up, the flooding the zone with noise thing again. I've seen that idea explored in quite a few novels now, and it's an interesting take with resonance. The wildly polarised political and societal viewpoints provided in this novel were both realistic, and chilling. Summed up perhaps in one line that stayed with this reader:

Can’t help feeling like the world’s gone and shifted off its axis.

Never headed for happy endings all round, DUST resolves itself in a series of observations of a world in microcosm. Environmental collapse, political polarisation, opportunistic users and crooks, and people just trying to make a go of it with what very little they have in the face of some very determined abuses of power, money and people.