Lyrebird (Jane Caro, A&U)

Walkley Award-winning journalist, social commentator and author Jane Caro (The Mother) returns to crime fiction for her second adult novel, The Lyrebird. The titular bird first appears in the prologue, when student ornithologist Jessica Weston films the male superb lyrebird’s mating dance and song in Burraga Swamp, New South Wales. To her horror, the lyrebird mimics the dying screams of an unknown woman. She is laughed out of the police station by all but the lowest ranked police detective, Megan Blaxland, and the lyrebird’s evidence is ignored for 20 years until a landslip reveals a woman’s skeleton in the swamp. Now a retired senior sergeant, Megan returns to the police force to close the cold case. Police enquiries expose a dark history of illegal brothels and human trafficking as bushfires close in on the investigators and suspects. The environmental threat gives the plot a needed urgency given that a small pool of suspects is identified mid-way through the novel. In the guise of a detective novel, Lyrebird is a keening cry of grief and outrage, asking: how can people do these things to each other? How can we do this to the planet? The lyrebird’s mimicry of human terror serves as both an exceptional narrative hook and a poignant symbol of nature bearing witness to humanity’s crimes. Recommended for readers who want crime fiction that confronts the real world, such as Martine Kropkowski’s Everywhere We Look and Louise Milligan’s Pheasants Nest.

Books+Publishing reviewer: Ilona Urquhart has a PhD in literary studies and currently works as a children’s and youth services librarian on the Bellarine Peninsula. She is Judge for the 2024–2025 CBCA Book of the Year Award, Younger Readers Category. Books+Publishing is Australia’s number-one source of pre-publication book reviews.

Books+Publishing pre-publication reviews are supported by the Copyright Agency Cultural Fund.

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