Crows Nest (Nikki Mottram, UQP)

Crows Nest is the absorbing debut crime thriller by Nikki Mottram. Following the breakdown of her marriage, social worker Dana Gibson takes a job interstate, fleeing north to Toowoomba. While there, she must face her own grief while becoming entangled in the shocking murder of one of her clients. Dana’s obsession with finding out what happened pits her against local law enforcement, her colleagues and some unsavoury townspeople, forcing her and those she’s become close to into increasingly dangerous situations. The novel is engrossing and deftly plotted. However, references to the time setting of 1996 seem, at times, shoe-horned in. For example, the Port Arthur Massacre, which had a huge impact on Australian gun ownership and reform, is alluded to in the beginning, but never comes up again—in a novel that involves guns and gun violence. The casual peppering of 90s references stalls the flow of the story as the reader is forced to remember it’s 1996, not 2022, which jars with the characters’ frequent use of mobile phones and the internet. That aside, with small-town secrets hiding behind a mild-mannered veneer, Crows Nest thrums with menace and intrigue from beginning to end. Fans of J M Green, Chris Hammer and Candice Fox will devour this new voice in Australian crime fiction in a single sitting, then wait with bated breath to see what happens next—the second novel in the Dana Gibson series is due to be released in 2024.

Kate Frawley is a librarian in training and a former bookseller. Books+Publishing is Australia’s number-one source of pre-publication book reviews.

Category: Reviews