Broke Road by Matthew Spencer – Our Review

Our Review…

If you are looking for a police procedural that makes you feel like you are part of the investigating team, Broke Road is for you. Lots of crime fiction muddies the waters with sub-plots, usually to do with the lead detective, their family, their vices or their compromised reputation, but Spencer ignores unnecessary backstory. His lead detective, Rose Riley is already familiar to his readers from his debut novel, Black River (though this book is equally enjoyable as a stand-alone). Riley is a methodical, almost obsessed investigator, who builds evidence slowly but meticulously to close in on the killer.

When a young woman is found dead in her townhouse in the Red Creek, a dot on the map in the Hunter Valley, Riley and her colleague, Priya Patel are called in from Western Sydney to investigate. There is no sign of forced entry and few visible marks on the body. As they begin their investigations, Riley and Patel are drawn into a web of local intrigue where developers vie with wine growers and generational landholders – all of them operating in the shadow of the huge coal mines that still dominate the valley. It’s only through painstaking police work and Riley’s willingness to broaden her investigations beyond the valley – that she makes the connection with two other cold cases.

Matthew Spencer is a former journalist with extensive connections in forensics and homicide – and it shows. Broke Road reads like true crime, though it is fictional. Spencer doesn’t sensationalise the crime, nor does he present a seamless investigation where everything inevitably falls into place like a jigsaw. He explores the dead ends, the false leads and the petty parochialism that can throw investigators off the scent. None of these feel like red herrings, but rather the reality of the day-to-day slog of real police work. It’s not neat, but life never is.

Broke Road is a superior crime novel, beautifully constructed and executed by a rising star in crime fiction.

Review by Mark Smith – author and friend @ Great Escape Books