Three new Australian crime novels demonstrate this variety, although, remarkably perhaps, they are linked not just by rural settings but also by a primary relationship between a mother and son whose anxieties provide the ignition point necessary to drive the narratives.

The Long Shadow by Anne Buist

Text Publishing, $29.99 pb, 320 pp

Anne Buist’s follow-up to her three-book Natalie King: Forensic Psychiatrist series is the standalone The Long Shadow. The novel’s first-person narrator is psychologist Isabel Harris, who, together with her husband and infant son, has moved from the city to the small town of Riley. Her first impressions are that ‘there was little to announce Riley itself, just a dark line of trees in the distance: a gash, with Riley on it, that cut through the centre of the landscape’.

The town is small, isolated west of Dubbo, and prone to flood, although it’s currently in a time of debilitating drought. Isabel’s husband, Dean, is an institutional toecutter who has been sent to Riley to sort out perceived problems at the local hospital. The locals are rightly wary of Dean and his motives; the hospital is the biggest employer in town and there has been a spate of small hospital closures elsewhere. To occupy herself, Isabel establishes a mother–baby therapy group whose members – Sophie, Teagan, Roisin, Kate, and Zahra, each with different problems – are central to the novel’s plot, while serving as windows to the town’s broader social politics and history.

Unbeknown to her patients, Isabel is also the victim of a recent trauma after the near loss of her son, Noah, following a momentary lapse of concentration. When a note is passed to Isabel during the group’s first meeting, suggesting the culprit behind the twenty-five-year-old abduction and murder of a newborn is once again active, Isabel is drawn to investigate, driven by the relentless anxiety that her son might be in danger. This is no easy feat, of course, in a town riven with secrets and ancient loyalties. Isabel is an outsider, too, in more ways than one – not only is she from the city, but her middle-class values, her tendency to view everyone through the lens of clinical analyses, and her husband’s employment all work to distance her. Driven by a stubborn need to know the truth about the historical murder, it’s ultimately good old-fashioned relationship building that creates the emotional intimacy and trust necessary to get to the heart of the matter.

Torched by Kimberley Starr

Pantera Press, $32.99 pb, 400 pp

With the recent bushfires fresh in everyone’s memories, Kimberley Starr’s Torched couldn’t be more topical. The novel is written from two perspectives: that of Phoebe Warton, a small-town school principal and, to a lesser extent, her teenage son Caleb. They both live in the Yarra Valley town of Brunton, close to the city but distant enough to have its own distinct personality and longer European gold rush history.

When a catastrophic fire ignites one afternoon, burning through the town and taking many lives, the immediate suspicion falls upon Caleb, a CFA volunteer who wasn’t at his post and who can’t properly explain his absence. Caleb fits the profile of a firebug, both as a young male and an outsider – he wears Goth clothes and sports lip rings. To many townsfolk, he appears surly and aloof, it not outright deviant. These prejudicial feelings condemn him when the catastrophic fire recedes, and some of his actions take on a sinister appearance.

The reader, however, comes to know Caleb through Phoebe’s eyes. She refuses to believe in his guilt, and it’s her steadfast defence of her son that drives the narrative as evidence mounts. Their filial relationship is tellingly described, as we come to understand why Caleb is so troubled, secretive, and at times apathetic. His behaviour frustrates Phoebe, of course, who, in words familiar to many parents of teenage children, has gradually lost her vision of his ‘infinite, magical future.’ But Phoebe never loses hope, despite the costs to her relationships in the town. She backs Caleb every step of the way, even as she seeks to break through his teenage reserve, and to thereby discern the meanings behind his works of art drawn at the time of the fire.

This central relationship, with all of its anxieties and frustrations, and all of its history and complexity, is both the heart of the novel and the driver of the plot, but it is also a terrific meditation on the meaning of motherhood in the face of misunderstanding, disbelief, outright malice, and intimate deception. Torched is also a beautifully written novel, using an elegant language to sift through each character’s stories but also to vividly represent the town of Brunton itself, and its various townsfolk, while poetically and powerfully rendering the other vital and omnipresent character of Torched – fire itself.

In the Clearing by J.P. Pomare

Hachette, $32.99 pb, 326 pp 

J.P. Pomare’s second novel, In the Clearing, is similarly elevated by its use of the telling image and a focus on deep characterisation. It is also brilliantly plotted – turning our expectations and readings of characters on their heads to great effect. Alternating between the points of view of Amy, a child growing up amid the zealotry and weirdness of a rural cult, and Freya, a single mother to seven-year-old Billy, living in isolated peace but preparing for the worst, the novel begins with the chillingly authentic abduction of a child – a new member for the cult, and a new sister to Amy.

Amy is a terrific character, with just the right notes of naïveté amid her growing doubt. Her diary entries render the sinister in childlike terms that suit her limited horizon. Her job is to teach her new sister while taking it upon herself to protect her from the punishments doled out to transgressors. Freya, on the other hand, is a woman whose trauma appears initially in the rearview mirror – ever visible but hopefully receding out of view. She is, however, eternally vigilant, and when signs start to appear that things aren’t as they seem, she doesn’t dismiss them but rather acts on them. The rising sense of psychological tension brought about by the alternating perspectives is deftly managed, so that when the two narratives are brought together, the effect is as visceral as it is clever.

Pomare’s writing is clear and precise, with not a word wasted. The characters are especially well drawn, developed patiently and with empathy, so that the narrative’s various twists and turns reveal themselves with the appropriate degree of surprise, while remaining perfectly in keeping with our enhanced understanding of Freya’s and Amy’s worlds. It is the plot, however, of In the Clearing that is especially impressive – ambitious, audacious, and masterfully rendered.