When Jesse heard through her boss that Adam had been found not far from Melbourne in Victoria, she wasn’t prepared to hear he was dead. Jesse feels her only course of action is to visit Canticle Creek herself and try to put things right. Setting him up to live with her eccentric artist father, she's shocked and confused to find he vanished from there, only to die, supposedly fleeing the scene of a murder, in a small community in the hills outside Melbourne. Despite Lawson being a well-known local criminal, police officer Jesse had always believed there was more to Adam Lawson than petty crime. Trying to help likeable young tearaway Adam Lawson find a better future, Northern Territory police woman, Jesse Redpath convinced a judge to suspend his sentence provided he took a job at the local roadhouse and a room at her father’s house nearby.

There’s an authenticity to Hyland’s characters generally, both in the way they talk and act, that gives them substance. But Jesse meets plenty of contention from the local community and it becomes clear that there are secrets that some people of this town want to stay buried in the past.The observations and asides of these people build a picture of the location, and the characters within it in a very natural, Australian way, and he knows exactly how to convey dialogue, and cadence of speech amongst friends and strangers that just works.

When at home in the Northern Territory of Kulara, Redpath works with Danny Jakamarra, an Aboriginal Community Police Officer.She helps a young Adam when he does something illegal by offering him a second chance; helping her dad and working in the local roadhouse. As the temperature soars, and the ground bakes, the wilderness surrounding Canticle Creek becomes a powder keg waiting to explode.

There's plenty of threat, personal and community based, and there's a good supporting cast, as well as fabulous sense of a place.When Northern Territory cop, Constable Jesse Redpath, hears the news of Adam Lawson’s death she’s devastated. I liked that the local Canticle Creek police were willing to show her their case notes, listened to her concerns about the crime scene and were also open to checking out other evidence. With tensions reaching an all time high in this tiny rural Victorian community, Jesse is determined to expose the truth. With its sophisticated plot and well fleshed out characters, I raced through this one, reluctant to put it down, thinking about it all the while when I wasn’t reading it. The language that resonates with the bush, that understands it, hears it, can read it, is a a treasure to read.