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Touchstone
January 2019
On Sale: January 8, 2019
384 pages ISBN: 150119674X EAN: 9781501196744 Kindle: B07GNVG79K Hardcover / e-Book
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Other Editions Trade Size (reprint - January 2020)
Thriller
In the vein of The Dry and Before the
Fall, a town’s dark secrets come to light in the
aftermath of a young priest’s unthinkable last act in
this arresting and searing debut thriller. In Riversend, an isolated rural community afflicted by
an endless drought, a young priest does the unthinkable,
killing five parishioners before being taken down
himself. A year later, accompanied by his own demons from war-
time reporting, journalist Martin Scarsden arrives in
Riversend. His assignment is simple: describe how the
townspeople are coping as the anniversary of their
tragedy approaches. But as Martin meets the locals and
hears their version of events, he begins to realize that
the accepted wisdom—that the priest was a pedophile
whose imminent exposure was the catalyst for the
shooting, a theory established through an award-winning
investigation by Martin’s own newspaper—may be wrong. Just as Martin believes he’s making headway, a new
development rocks the town. The bodies of two German
backpackers—missing since the time of the church
shootings—are discovered in a dam in the scrublands,
deserted backwoods marked by forest fires. As the media
flocks to the scene, Martin finds himself thrown into a
whole new mystery. What was the real reason behind the priest’s shooting
spree? And how does it connect to the backpacker
murders, if at all? Martin struggles to uncover the
town’s dark secrets, putting his job, his mental state,
and his life at risk as more and more strange happenings
escalate around him. For fans of James Lee Burke, Jane Harper, and Robert
Crais, Scrublands is a compelling and original
crime novel that marks Chris Hammer as a stunning new
voice in the genre. A compulsively readable thriller of
the highest order, Scrublands never loosens its
grip, from its opening scene to the very last page.
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