With Vanish, the third novel in her Lane Holland series, Burr mixes it up yet again, which appeals to me because my main reason for not liking genre fiction is that it can be formulaic. I know this is why many like it, and I understand that need for comforting reading. It’s just not my need.

So, a brief recap. In Wake (my review), we are introduced to a private investigator, Lane Holland, who arrives in a remote, outback, fictional town to investigate an old missing persons case. He’s keen and caring, but he also has his own agenda – and the resolution is shocking. The next book, Ripper aka Murder town (my review), is set in a different country town. It initially looked like something different, as Lane is in prison from Wake‘s fallout, but it soon becomes a dual investigation story that coalesces when it turns into both a murder and a missing persons case.

And now, book 3. It seems you really can’t keep a good PI down, even if he is in prison! Vanish is set a few years later. Lane is still in prison but, because of prison governor Carver’s vested interest, he soon manages to get himself on a pre-parole release program in order to continue the unsolved investigation from Ripper. If you’ve read Ripper you’ll know what that is, and if you haven’t, it becomes clear very soon. My point, though, is that once again Burr has produced a highly readable crime novel that manages to be a bit different from the preceding book, while retaining enough familiarity for those invested in her characters and worldview. It’s a fine balance that Burr has trodden nicely.

Like its predecessors, Vanish belongs to the rural noir sub-genre, and is consequently, noir-ish – or Australian Gothic – in tone. It features characters we have met in the previous novels, including Lane Holland, his sister Lynnie, and his first client Mina McCreery. Further, its plot centres again on a missing person. In Vanish, however, there’s more than one missing person. A serial missing persons case!

Some stay. Some leave. Some disappear.

“Some stay. Some leave. Some disappear” appears above the title in the book’s first Australian edition (as you can see in the cover pic above). What it references is the main setting of the novel – a farm near Hume Weir, southeast of Albury, an area Burr knows well. At the novel’s opening, Lane has tracked down several missing people as having visited this farm, then disappearing from view – hence the tag line. What is this farm, and why have some people disappeared? Lane wants to find out and Carver, with his daughter still missing, is happy to help him do so.

Consequently, with ankle bracelet, a prison guard minder, and an agreement for him to work at the farm, Lane arrives – but not without a mysterious-sounding death having just happened on the road in. This, of course, captures Lane’s attention – and we’re off.

Now Lane is, of course, your suspicious type. He takes nothing at face value, and he closely observes all that’s going on around him. There’s something about this farm that doesn’t feel right. Is it a community of like-minded people who want to escape their old lives and live more simply, growing their own food and reducing their energy impact on the world? Or is it a cult? How genuine is the owner Sam Karpathy, not to mention his recently deceased father? What do the people in the nearby township know, and why do they seem evasive when Lane tries to find out? And, why is a certain person from a previous novel there too?

Oh, and who is the trapped, sick, or injured person whose story is told in short italicised sections interspersed with the main narrative? (It added to the intrigue, and I didn’t guess it at all.)

As in her previous novel, Burr’s builds her crime story around wider issues. In Ripper for example it was “dark tourism”. Here, it is the idea of people wishing to live eco-minded, sustainable lives. So, as the investigation progresses, Burr also interrogates what this sort of life means in terms of whether or not you compromise and why, whether you stockpile for an end-of-world scenario, whether you eschew western medicine, and so on. These are questions Lane considers as he tries to understand the community he is living in. And it starts with the controlling Karpathy.

Lane, as he needs to be, is a trustworthy narrator for us. The novel is told third person, through his eyes, and he brings us along with him, sharing his thoughts and explaining his processes. His awareness of body language and his experience of human behaviour guide his actions. I loved those details. There’s risk and tension, some creeping around the farm at night, a locked room, magic mushrooms, and more. I didn’t find it edge-of-the-seat suspenseful, but I don’t like that anyhow, so the level of stress was just about right for me. The plot builds slowly, sending us off in various directions, and keeping us uncertain as we consider what Lane sees and questions. Is Karpathy, for example, coercive or simply wanting to keep control of a dream he is vested in. The denouement, when it comes, unfolds quickly, and at just the right time.

I enjoyed the read. I have been invested in Lane from the beginning, and he continued to interest me in this book. He’s conscientious, intelligent and decent, but, appealingly, is not always sure of himself, particularly when it comes to relationships. Also, Burr evokes place well. The farm, which is set in mountains just far enough from a little town to feel isolated, feels believable, as do the natural disasters – flood and bushfire – which threaten it.

My only question now is, will we see more of Lane? As a convicted felon he will not be able to renew his investigator licence. There is a hint at the end that there might be a way around it. Time will tell, but if you are a Lane Holland fan, I think you can have hope.

Shelley Burr
Vanish
Sydney: Hachette Australia, 2023
384pp.
ISBN: 9780733652158

(Review copy – an uncorrected book proof, hence no quotes – courtesy Hachette Australia)

When I started reading Ripper, Shelley Burr’s follow-up novel to her bestselling award-winning debut novel Wake (my review), I thought about crime novels, about how they are often written in series and how I am not a big series fan. Ripper looked to me like a stand-alone novel – and it is, somewhat! I say somewhat, because a few chapters in we come across one Lane Holland.

The plot thickens…

Lane Holland, I thought. I know that name. Sure enough, Lane Holland is the private investigator protagonist of the aforementioned Wake. However, he is not the prime investigator in this novel, because he is in prison as a result of his previous investigation. (You’ll need to read Wake to find out more!) The result is an intriguing crime novel in which we have our prime, self-appointed amateur investigator, Gemma, plus the police working away in the background, and Lane who is pulled into the investigation by his prison governor, Patton Carver. Yes, you’ve guessed right, the plot thickens – except I haven’t really told you about the plot yet.

Ripper is set in a fictional town called Rainier, which, as Burr confirms in her acknowledgements, is partly based on the town of Tarcutta. Seventeen years before the novel opens, three murders had occurred in this little country town, the last one outside the door of Gemma’s little teashop. She – and the town – have never fully recovered from these events. The town has stagnated under its black reputation, and Gemma herself suffers PTSD from what she had experienced. Now a tour company has arrived wanting to run a true crime or dark tourism walking tour of the Rainier Ripper’s murderous path, but Rainier’s residents have mixed feelings about the idea. On the eve of the trial tour aimed at garnering their support, the tour operator is killed in what looks like a copycat murder. It has to be copycat because the Rainier Ripper is in prison, the same prison as Lane Holland. As I said, the plot thickens, and part of the thickening springs from why prison governor Carver is interested.

Once again, I enjoyed Burr’s story, because once again it is more than a crime story, exploring issues like the impact on a small town of having a reputation for violence, the impact on people who have been close to a violent crime, the idea of dark tourism, and the murky world of police investigations and the ways in which confessions are elicited. I am not an expert but Burr’s research into the relevant issues, including prison life, felt thorough but lightly applied.

I also enjoyed Burr’s characterisation. Gemma and Lane are well-evoked. Other characters are necessarily more sketchy, but they are individualised enough to lift them above pure stereotype, to make them feel true. There is an engaging exploration, through Gemma’s daughter and her friends, of how teenagers cope with a complex adult world. There are some truly “tangled” family relationships in the town. There is some diversity, including a non-binary teen and a Wiradjuri woman, which Burr introduces without trying to appropriate other experiences. There are farmers, business people, pub owners, and doctors whose lives are entwined through marriage and murders. It’s a lot to convey, and there are plenty of names, but I rarely got lost!

Ripper has some similarities with Wake, in addition to also belonging to the rural noir sub-genre. It’s told through roughly alternating third person voices (Gemma and Lane); the protagonist is privately investigating; and it deals with a cold case, which involves a missing person. But it is significantly different, too, including the fact that Gemma is an amateur unlike Wake‘s Lane, and that it is set in a different place with different issues to confront. This means that it is not formulaic, which keeps us readers on our toes. We can’t assume anything about where Burr is going.

Now, I am not a big plot-follower, by which I mean I don’t put serious brainpower into trying to work out who dunnit. Rather, I read crime like I read most books, that is, with a focus on the characters and the issues being explored. But of course, I can’t help following the actual plot, particularly when the characters have engaged me and I want them to fare well. In Ripper, I worked out one of the plot twists, but it had several – like those Christie and Christie-like TV shows I watch – and they left me for dead. They did make sense, though, which is the important thing.

On the basis of her manuscript for Wake, Burr won a two-book deal with Hachette, and Ripper is the second book. I do hope she is offered more book deals because, while there is absolute closure on this book’s crimes, there is also a clear hint at the end about where a next book might go – and I’m intrigued. Burr is a clever writer, with her wits about her. Ripper’s readers will guess the main investigation Burr plans for her next novel, but what will the context be this time? What will be the issues? Time will hopefully tell.

Shelley Burr
Ripper
Sydney: Hachette Australia, 2023
346pp.
ISBN: 9780733647857

(Review copy courtesy Hachette Australia)