Some more reading material attended to over recent weeks, including three 2025 novels, and a Blainey classic.
- Legacy by Chris Hammer [pub 2025];
- The Tyranny of Distance by Geoffrey Blainey [pub 1966];
- The Endless Sky by Di Morrissey [pub.2025];
- Pilbara by Judy Nunn [pub. 2025]
- A Gentleman in Moscow, by Amor Towles [pub. 2016].
25th February
A 2025 publication titled ‘Legacy’ by Chris Hammer, of 479 pages – this was the first of Hammer’s books I have read, with at least seven other novels having preceded this one, and if the mystery and fast-moving action of Legacy are a sample of his style, I have a bit of catching up to do!!
A novelist of detective fiction it seems and stories of crime and mystery essentially set in the Australian outback regions and/or the small town environment [the town main here has only 12 permanent residents] which are generally of a relatively isolated nature.
I was warned ‘after’ reading that Scammer often has a sequence book, and this one was apparently the 4th featuring the fictional investigative journalist Martin Scarsden – not to worry, it has come over as a stand-alone story in any case.
In basic outline – ‘Someone is targeting Martin Scarsden. They bomb his book launch and shoot up his hometown. Fleeing for his life, he learns that nowhere is safe, not even the outback. The killers are closing in, and it’s all he can do to survive. But who wants to kill him and why? Can he discover their deadly motives and turn the tables? In a dramatic finale, Martin finds his fate linked to the disgraced ex-wife of a football icon, a fugitive wanted for a decades-old murder, and two nineteenth-century explorers from a legendary expedition.
According to Goodreads, this is Martin Scarsden’s most perilous, challenging and intriguing assignment yet.
Anyway, it didn’t take this reader very long to get through the 479 pages of mysterious twists, scenarios, and unanswered questions, most of which are not released as in all good mysteries until near the end, and even then, we find a further unexpected and surprising turn of events.
With the novel set in the Australian outback, and with vivid descriptions of harsh drought conditions, the damaging effects of floodwaters from rains further north, even a frightening dust storm introduced at one stage – it not difficult to agree with the perception of one reviewer that ’I’m yet to find another author who paints the Australian landscape for the reader in such vivid, glorious detail. Hammer has a way with words that other authors can only dream of’ [Ann Cleeves from damppebbles.com].
Rod McLary, reviewing the book for the Queensland Reviewers Collective last year, has some interest reflections of the storyline, and I share his views here.
Chris Hammer is one of Australia’s finest – and one the most successful – crime writers. The setting for most of his novels is the Australian outback – a setting as harsh and unforgiving as the crimes which lie at the heart of his novels placing them securely within the sub-genre ‘outback noir’.
It is a feature of Chris Hammer’s novels that the outback and its terrain are so well described by him that their presence is a palpable one. The following is just one example: There is nothing green, not yet, but I can sense the promise. The air still smells of dust, but a new note has joined the outback fragrance. The reader is immediately transported 1000km to outback New South Wales to breathe the outback air. – The chief protagonist in Legacy is Martin Scarsden an investigative journalist and author who is now about to launch his latest book – a true-crime exposé entitled Melbourne Mobster: The Vivid Life and Violent Death of Enzo Marelli. When he is about to be introduced at the book launch in his hometown Port Silver, Scarsden and all the guests are ordered to immediately evacuate the building because of a bomb threat. Within minutes of the building emptying, there is an explosion and then a second one with ‘flames roaring and smoke pouring skywards’ And then two shots aimed at Martin. Clearly, he has offended a powerful person – perhaps the Mafia with whom Enzo Marelli had strong links.
What follows is a complex and entwined game of cat-and-mouse as Scarsden – with the support of his friend and ASIO officer Jack Goffing – attempts to remain at least one step ahead of his pursuers. Running alongside the primary narrative is a second one involving Ekaterina Boland – or Ecco – who has been engaged by a local grazier Clayborne Carmichael to ghostwrite his biography [biography because his name will not appear as author]. Carmichael and his adult children Vincent and Chloe figure significantly in the narrative as do Merriman Stanton and his son Roman. There is a longstanding feud between the Carmichaels and the Stantons over water rights which persists into this narrative as well as influencing the narrative.
Add to the mix sub-plots involving two members of the ill-fated Ludwig Leichhardt expedition, the possibility of a hidden goldmine, the fate of Carmichael’s daughter who has been missing for twenty years, and the role of the local hotelkeeper in these events, and you have an intriguing and captivating crime novel which is as good as any Chris Hammer has written to date.
The characters are engaging and three-dimensional and the backstories of the new characters are gradually revealed to the reader adding an element of personal interest to the core narrative of ‘who wants Martin Scarsden killed?’ To leaven the tension and Machiavellian intrigue is the emergence of a slow-burning romance between two of the characters which comes to fruition only when the dust is settled and the mysteries are solved.
As Ann Cleeves, mentioned above notes – Ironically, water is exactly what creates a lot of tension and bad feeling between the characters. The desperately dry, sun-baked outback. The graziers whose livelihood depends on the precious incoming flood to restore and feed their stock for the coming months. And the lengths those graziers will go to ensure they, and their land, get what they need’.
That environmental setting and the mix of historical relationships and the mysteries surrounding those relationships between the various characters, and ‘a number of well-penned twists and turns’, a make for a great piece of fast-moving detective reading.
6th March 2026
A book I had intended to read many years ago, but only just came across a copy earlier this year – ‘The Tyranny of Distance’ by Geoffrey Blainey, published back in 1966, of 365 pages, a Sun Book paperback.
First published in 1966, the book examines how Australia‘s geographical remoteness, particularly from Great Britain, has been central to shaping the country’s history and identity and will continue to shape its future. The long distance between Australia and the centre of the British Empire, along with the United States, made Australians unsure of their future economic prosperity. Blainey writes about how the tyranny had been mostly surmounted and may have even worked in Australia’s favour in some ways.
In one of the book’s early chapters, Blainey challenges the notion that Australia was colonised by the British in the 18th century solely to serve as a place of exile for convicts. Blainey’s assertion that broader strategic and commercial factors also influenced Britain’s decision to establish a penal settlement in New South Wales led to significant debate among Australian historians. The expression “the tyranny of distance” from the book’s title has become common parlance in Australia. Although Blainey is widely credited with coining the term in his 1966 work, the term appeared five years previously in the geographic research of William Bunge, who uses the term in quotation marks, indicating that the phrase may have had earlier usage.
Reflecting on the 50th anniversary of the book’s publication, historian Graeme Davison stated: “The Tyranny of Distance changed our map of the Australian past. It was a bestseller and a mind-changer… Few books on Australia have been as popular and influential.”. More recently, during the COVID-19 pandemic, a news article in the conservative magazine Quadrant cited the book in relation to how Australia’s relative isolation from China’s viral epicentre may have been favourable in containing the virus within Australia.
Rather than attempt to ‘reinvent the wheel’ so to speak, I’m quoting below from some of the various commentaries providing specific views of both Blainey and his book, which have been generally been sourced from Wikipedia and associated articles. I have read many books published over the decades attempting to interpret the history of Australia – I found this of particular interest because it approached the topic from an angle not generally covered in any particular detail by other authors who were perhaps attempting to provide a more broad-based view of the country’s development. As the book title suggests, Blainey approaches from a precise area of influence.
Geoffrey Blainey’s The Tyranny of Distance is among the most important books ever written about Australia. Through the lens of distance—distance to and distances within Australia—it explains much about our origins, our economy and society, as well as our triumphs and failures. Blainey is a brilliant historian and writer of rare talent who rewards the reader with insightful analysis and conclusions which overturn the conventional wisdom.
Sending ships half-way around the world was hardly the cheapest way to dispose of England’s convict burden. Blainey offers the view that the final push to settle New South Wales came as the Royal Navy saw in nearby Norfolk Island the means to diversity its source of pine (for masts) and flax (for sailcloth and cables).
Blainey resurrects the maritime heritage of Australia, which began as a series of ports for supply and safe haven but became an agrarian and urban nation forgetful of the ocean’s role as a conduit for its people, its food, its export markets, and news of the world. The great industry of the early years was whaling, which earned significant foreign exchange, spurred coastal settlements, and was ‘a free man’s calling in a country where most occupations had the taint of the broad arrow’. For one hundred and fifty years, the strong and reliable winds which could take ships out of the UK around the Cape of Good Hope to Australia and then home via Cape Horn shaped our enmeshment with the British Isles; as our largest market, as a source of forced or assisted migrants, and of political and social ideas. Fares from the UK to North America were always a much cheaper option for families, so single working men dominated migration to Australia, and thus was mateship born and eulogised.
Blainey is perceptive and lyrical when evoking and ennobling the life of the common worker, be it sailor, bullocky, farmer or even the convict road-builder displaying his ‘skill with pick and shovel and wheelbarrow’. He is grounded in the challenges of earning a crust on the frontier in an age where failure could mean starvation and death. His economic history is not grand aggregates but rather the sums done by the farmer, the merchant and the trader to ensure they could make a profit and survive. For a very long time the overwhelming consideration was the enormous cost of transporting product and input goods.
Similarly, he provides context for the decisions of early political leaders, shaped as they were by distance. Thus the divergence of railway gauges between states simply was of no importance when the ‘purpose of the railways was not to link the ports but to link each inland area with the nearest port’. On the other hand, the populist trend of colonial governments in the nineteenth century to ‘half-raise the drawbridge across the moat’, pocketing the revenues from land sales previously applied to subsidised immigration, meant nearly a century of slow population growth, societal stagnation, and the dominance of organised labour in political life. Grand development schemes failed for want of sufficient markets and/or local population, while colonial treasuries were burdened with debts that could barely be supported in the depressions of the 1890s and 1930s.
And now a couple of quick-read novels set in rural areas of outback Australia, by two of the country’s most popular female authors.
10th March, 2026
Another easily read over a couple of nights – ‘The Endless Sky’ by Di Morrissey , published in 2025, of 373 pages. Set mainly in the rugged red, rocky outback region of western Queensland, a wonderful depiction of the environment of that area, together with yet another light mystery novel from this prolific Australian author. This is her 31st novel, of which I’m just missing of her earlier stories I’ve not yet caught up with – her 2nd, 4th and 11th novels to be precise! Most of her novels have been inspired by a specific landscape, be that generally, but occasionally overseas. One particular aspect of her novels is so often driven by personal passions which she incorporates into her stories, this one being no exception. She’s described as a tireless and passionate advocate and activist for many causes, speaking out on issues of national and international importance
In ‘The Endless Sky’, the story is based around the search for archaeological evidence of Australia’s early history, in the remote regions of western Queensland, and the problems faced and encountered by such researchers through the development of such corporations, or the international theft of artifacts and their sale to wealthy collectors that museums etc are unable to financially compete against.
A broad general summary reveals that Top-rating TV presenter Nicole and her savvy producer and friend Stacie suddenly find themselves under the rule of a new boss … he’s arrogant, patronising and out to prove he’s in charge. Their challenge? To create a hit show revealing the hidden heart of outback Australia – a place few from the towns and cities have visited and even fewer people understand. What begins as a career-defining adventure quickly spirals into something far more dangerous and unexpected. In a land of craggy rocks and vast plains, whispered stories and a history as old as the dinosaurs, Nicole and Stacie uncover secrets – how other lives are lived, fossil treasures deep in the red earth, a possible murder and a blossoming love story. Beneath the endless sky this land reveals its magic – and its menace – as the two friends find more than they could ever have imagined.
From the Queensland Reviewers Collective, a little professional review by Wendy Lipke
Most people when setting out on a writing career are told to write about what they know and this is certainly true for Di Morrissey AM especially in her latest book, The Endless Sky.
Having had her own morning TV show and appeared in several episodes of the CBS TV series Hawaii Five-O, she is well placed to share with readers what is involved in preparing for and producing a TV show, which is what this book is about.
Di Morrissey is an environmentalist and activist, and all her novels are inspired by landscape with environmental, political and cultural issues woven into mass market popular fiction. Morrissey published her first book, Heart of the Dreaming, in 1991 and has produced one book a year since then except for a couple of occasions.
The Endless Sky, I found to be a little different in its format from most other books I have read recently. The Acknowledgement section is at the front of this novel following a dedication to a friend lost recently to cancer. The storyline is evident right from the start where in other books the reader is introduced to various characters who at first appear to have no connection, although the reader knows that they will all come together in the end.
TV presenter Nicole and producer friend, Stacie, set out to find inspiration for a new TV series. On their way they find the other key characters to this story. Both women are city people and as they head to the heart of Australia, they discover much information which could be used in their show. They just have to find a theme to link what they have found.
Away from the city they discover archaeological digs, laboratories, fabulous caves and the endless sky. However, they also find mysteries. What happened to the man who drove off into the night, and his car was later found smashed into a tree? They hear of a threat to this pristine part of Australia from big overseas corporations and there is also fossil theft.
Do these things all fit together? Can the information they have discovered be part of a TV program viewers would want to watch? Will they have the freedom to create this as they wish, or will personalities and vested interests derail any new programs?
This 388-page hard-covered novel contains much information that may be new to readers, like a textbook, but it is also a story of human feelings, relationships, both good and bad, environmental issues and the lengths some people will go to for riches. The outback, and the wonders it contains, are described in detail. When the women arrive in Brisbane, chasing new information, key landmarks in this city are also highlighted.
The dust jacket on the book depicts the endless sky above the deep orange of the landscape. Words on the back of the dust cover beautifully sum up the contents of this book. Beneath the endless sky this land reveals the magic – and its menace – as the two friends find more than they could ever have imagined.
In May 2017 Morrissey was inducted into the Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIA) Hall of Fame and given the Lloyd O’Neil Award for service to the Australian book industry. She was also made a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in the 2019 Queen’s Birthday Honours in recognition of her “significant service to literature as a novelist, and to conservation and the environment”.
This is an engaging storyline as well as a book with interesting information about towns and people away from the big cities. The inner workings of any big organisation also have their egos and jealousies. These are painted realistically within this story.
17 March 2026
Finished reading ‘Pilbara’ by Judy Nunn, published in 2025, of 484 pages. I read this one over a couple of days after deciding to have a break from something more serious [see my next review following]. Set initially in Yorkshire, UK, and then moving on to the late 1800s frontier country of the Pilbara, in Western Australia, this was a wonderful read by this prolific author, and I found myself again neglecting other tasks, rather than put the book down.
As always, I enjoyed the historical [if not fictional] nature of this story, and in particular the sharp contrasts illustrated with regard to society norms and expectations of legality and moral relationships between the two main locations . As the lead character in the book noted ‘Once again, justice has been served in Pilbara fashion, Charles thought. He still didn’t altogether approve, but there were times when he had to admit it really did work out for the best. And who can argue with that’ [page 449].
A brief synopsis, as generally used when promoting the book!
‘The Pilbara, late 1800s: Frontier country, the wild west of Australia – a lawless, violent place where treachery is a way of life.
Widower Charles Burton arrives in this forbidding corner of the world with his three young children. They’ve travelled half the globe, from the lush, rolling hills and dales of Yorkshire, on a mission to save their family’s sheep and cattle property. Rebuilding the fortunes of Burton Station will ask everything of Charles and his children, particularly his daughter, Victoria, who will at times threaten to bring about their downfall.
Here in the oldest landscape on earth, survival has always proved a battle. And when greed takes over, the battle only intensifies. Aboriginal people are robbed of their lands and their very way of life as every new arrival fights for the riches on offer – the grazing territory, the pearls and the gold. Amid all this brutality, the Burtons and their allies must fight to conquer the savagery that surrounds them.
From Yorkshire to Cossack in Western Australia, and London to Tahiti in French Polynesia, Pilbara is the tale of a family on a mission to restore the honour of its name’.
For many older Australian readers the name, Judy Nunn, will bring back memories of TV shows such as The Box, Sons and Daughters and Home and Away. Since those days Judy Nunn has become a prolific writer of historically based novels which foreground strong women. She was awarded the Order of Australia in 2015 in recognition of her achievements. In this, her latest novel, Pilbara, she takes her readers back to the 1800s and the early opening up of Australia to adventurers from across the globe.
Reviewing for the Queensland Reviewers Collective, Wendy Lipke, in presenting a more expansive description of the book, wrote:
The story begins with the arrival of Charles Burton and his three small children to the Port of Albany on the underside of the Australian map. The year is 1888 where Charles is to meet his uncle before travelling to the property in the Pilbara. However, the uncle is not there when they arrive, and they soon learn that they will have to travel to their destination on their own.
The story that follows is divided into three parts. The first setting is Yorkshire, England and the year is 1874. William Edward Burton is the 34th Squire of Pendleton in West Yorkshire. He lives with his young daughter Charlotte and as a responsible man, conscious of his position in life and intensely proud in his heritage, he has passed all these characteristics on to his young daughter.
His younger brother had gone to Australia to find his own future and ended up in the Pilbara which at the time was considered the real frontier in Australia or the ‘Godforsaken Wilderness’ (21). At the time this was a lawless, violent place where treachery was a way of life. It was a place where new arrivals fought for the riches on offer,
whether they be land, pearls or gold. Parts two and three of the book are set in the Pilbara with a return to Yorkshire at the latter part of the book. The Epilogue is set in Yorkshire 1903.
The characterisation is strong for all main players with a touch of mystery surrounding most of them, whether it be concerning the name they currently go by or parts of their personal history. The storyline is foremost, but the landscape also plays a large part in the story. The author has presented her information through descriptive text, dialogue and letters going back and forth between the two locations. These are presented in italics.
This 496-page epic is a tale of hardship, danger, strong family connections and keeping up appearances. Embracing the hardship of such an untamed land and the dangers for its inhabitants, the story is predominantly about humanity, a strong family bond, loyalty and doing what is believed to be right. Yet in parts it can be very raw. Honour and justice are two major themes throughout, whether in the Pilbara or back in Yorkshire.
Many events occurred in the Pilbara which took time to heal, but the area also allowed that to happen. The role of women and how the different genders were perceived and treated at that time in history, is evident throughout this novel’.
A wonderful opportunity to learn a little early Australian history in the remote outback regions, and enjoy a wonderful novel along the way. And note the characters of Charlotte and Charles – are they two, or one of the same – revealed to the reader, but not to most of those that they live and work with through the course of their time in the Pilbara, and the sea voyages there and back.
29th March, 2026
This book, recommended by my brother – ‘A Gentleman in Moscow’ by Amor Towles, published in 2016, of 462 pages – a rather fascinating look at life in and around Moscow over a number of decades following the Russian revolution, though basically written as a fictional novel.
The best way to describe the book in broad terms – ‘A Gentleman in Moscow’ concerns the story of Count Alexander Rostov. When, in 1922, he is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, the count is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life, and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel’s doors. Unexpectedly, his reduced circumstances provide him a doorway into a much larger world of emotional discovery.
This is not written as a history, although many facets of Russian developments during the decades during which Rostov is incarcerated in his ‘hotel accommodation’ are revealed throughout his story. Bill Gates wrote that ‘it is an amazing story because it manages to be a little bit of everything. There’s fantastical romance, politics, espionage, parenthood, and poetry. The book is technically historical fiction, but you’d be just as accurate calling it a thriller or a love story’.
In fact, some other comments by Gates’s commentary, wrote in 2019, give an excellent broad depiction of the scenario under which Rostov lived, which might encourage the doubtful reader. For eg, he noted that
“A Gentleman in Moscow is a fun, clever, and surprisingly upbeat look at Russian history through the eyes of one man. At the beginning of the book, Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov is sentenced to spend his life under house arrest in Moscow’s Metropol Hotel. It’s 1922, and the Bolsheviks have just taken power of the newly formed Soviet Union. The book follows the Count for the next thirty years as he makes the most of his life despite its limitations.
Although the book is fictional, the Metropol is a real hotel….. It’s the kind of place where you can’t help but picture what it was like at different points in time. The hotel is located across the street from the Kremlin and managed to survive the Bolshevik revolution and the rise and fall of the Soviet Union. That’s a lot of history for one building. Many scenes in the book never happened in real life (as far as I know), but they’re easy to imagine given the Metropol’s history. In one memorable chapter, Bolshevik officials decide that the hotel’s wine cellar is “counter to the ideals of the Revolution.” The hotel staff is forced to remove labels from more than 100,000 bottles, and the restaurant must sell all wine for the same price. The Count—who sees himself as a wine expert—is horrified.
Count Rostov is an observer frozen in time, watching these changes come and go. He felt to me like he was from a different era from the other characters in the book. Throughout all the political turmoil, he manages to survive because, well, he’s good at everything. He’s read seemingly every book and can identify any piece of music. When he’s forced to become a waiter at the hotel restaurant, he does it with this panache that is incredible. He knows his liquor better than anyone, and he’s not shy about sharing his opinions. The Count should be an insufferable character, but the whole thing works because he’s so charming. Towles has a talent for quirky details. Early-ish in the book, he says the Count “reviewed the menu in reverse order as was his habit, having learned from experience that giving consideration to appetizers before entrees can only lead to regret.” A description like that tells you so much about a character.
I’ve read a bunch of books about Lenin and Stalin. A Gentleman in Moscow gave me a new perspective on the era, even though it’s fictional. Towles keeps the focus on the Count, so most major historical events (like World War II) get little more than a passing mention. But I loved seeing how these events still shifted the world of the Metropol in ways big and small. It gives you a sense of how political turmoil affects everyone, not just those directly involved with it”.
While not a ‘quick read’ like the three novels mentioned previously, it was a book that retained my interest throughout, such interest of course accentuated by the ‘historical’ aspects revealed from time to time. While Rostov’s ‘residence’ in the hotel comes over as relatively comfortable and even ‘safe’, it is obvious that is not generally the case in the ‘outer’ regions of Moscow or the wider Russia in those times.
In a http://www.literaturelust.com post, reviewer Melissa Gouty noted in 2023 some reservations – Why would I want to read about a solitary man wandering around a hotel in Moscow?” I thought to myself. “The last thing I want to read about is a privileged guy living in a luxury hotel in a country I’m furious at right now.”
But, after reading the book = well, she wrote – But the book is about so much more than a rich man. It’s about being kind, compassionate, and curious in the worst of circumstances. It’s about building relationships, making families, and thriving instead of just surviving. A joy to read, A Gentleman in Moscow is filled with observations of humanity and profound life philosophies.
So there you have it – thank-you Robert for the recommendation!
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