Redbelly Crossing, Candice Fox

Inter-generational trauma is explored with explosive impact in Candice Fox's latest novel REDBELLY CROSSING.

When a young woman is found stabbed to death in an upstairs bedroom of a busy pub in the small country town of Redbelly Crossing, it brings together two brothers Russell and Evan Powder. Both cops, Evan is more local to the scene, lower ranked, with a professional past in which he's made a grave error.

Russell is the older brother, parachuted in from the city, he's there because he's also screwed up more recently and has been sent to the back of beyond as a sort of punishment. He's higher in rank than his brother from whom he's been estranged, and barely been able to be civil to, for a long time.

Included in this mix is the brother's father – an ex-cop himself, he was a violent single father with frankly psychopathic tendencies revealed as the story unfurls. He's an awful man, who increasingly makes you wonder how either of these two brothers survived, and went onto have families of their own.

Unsurprisingly those families are also screwed up, with Russell having been married, with a young daughter, before finally having to admit to himself, and his family, that he's a gay man. A gay man who had never cheated on his wife while they were married, has a “Prick Switch” he is very fond of flipping against his work colleagues, and an attitude problem. This investigation is also at the worst possible time, a week taken off work to try to reconnect with his now young adult daughter, upended into a house boat in the middle of a paddock in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of a baffling investigation that goes nowhere fast. Although in a strange way it's the making of his relationship with daughter Bridie, a resourceful and resilient young woman whose main interest in life is the rescue of stranded and endangered wildlife.

Because this family has made a competition out of being dysfunctional, Evan is at the centre of a whole storm of trouble at home of his own. A good relationship with his wife is strained by his absence at this time, with their frankly unsettling son's birthday celebrations in full swing, and Evan away on this case at the behest / bullying of his deeply disturbing father, his wife's not best pleased. Mind you that's the tip of the iceberg that's about to tip over into melt that threatens to wash them away when the young man leering the victim at the bar just before she died bears a striking resemblance to Evan's son – the boy who swore he was at home the whole time.

What starts out as a very complicated case – not the least reason being why somebody would have stabbed a young woman to death and how they did it with nobody noticing their movements on the busiest night of the week in the pub - gets even more complicated when Evan realises his son could be in a heap of trouble here, and starts actively covering up things. As that happens more and more truths come to light about the brother's own childhoods, and a history of the unsolved killings and rape of women in the area.

Sounds dire, and the book should come with some very pointed trigger warnings. About men and boys behaving appallingly and being allowed to get away with it – frankly the son Chris comes across as somebody who needs less cover up and more glaring spotlights for a start. Russell's attitude is abusive and reeking of attitude, albeit maybe with reasons but not excuses for it. Evan's minor superpower seems to be stupid decisions, maybe triggered by panic. Either way both the brothers are classic cases of severe PTSD, and it looks like the damage goes both ways up and down the male line.

All of which sounds confrontational and it is, but Fox is a good author, and whilst there is so much to find discomforting and just plain wrong about the subjects explored in this novel, the touch is careful, the atmosphere tense, the pace rapid and there are consequences. Be aware though, the Who Done It is a) pretty obvious and b) revealed reasonably early on but REDBELLY CROSSING doesn't feel like it was ever pretending to be a traditional mystery in that way, rather it was always about the exploration of consequences. For damage inflicted, and that which you inflict on others. And how or who can get their act together and survive all that which is much more of a mystery than why it happened, and ultimately, if, intergenerational trauma can ever be stopped.

(Worth reading the author's note at the back of the novel as well which gives an insight into the thinking behind this fictional story).