A relocated researcher becomes an accidental Miss Marple in Joan Sauers’ debut thriller, ECHO LAKE.
The Southern Highlands becomes a Midsommer like locale when recently divorced historian Rose McHugh moves down from Sydney, buys a cottage, engages in a bout of road rage, and literally unearths a six year old mystery.
From Bowral to Fitzroy Falls, and villages in between and outlying, Rose careers from coincidence to coincidence colliding with happenstance and spins from suspect to suspect in a giddying gyro of garden secrets, generational ghosts, a drop dead gorgeous cop and guilt edged suspense.
The nearby Belanglo State Forest, made infamous by serial killer, Ivan Milat, looms large and the fear is that another multi-murderer is operating in the district.
ECHO LAKE has an epigram by Margaret Atwood – As all historians know, the past is a great darkness, and filled with echoes. The novel’s primary focus is on the recent past and the disappearance of two women, but Sauers finely weaves in a larger picture of the past, a colonial past that sits uncomfortably on the pearl necklaced shoulders of the well heeled white population.
The myth of peaceful colonisation- an oxymoron in itself- is alive and well in the Southern Highlands. Rose ponders that she has an obligation to expose the lies of the past that still linger, lies that breed a sense of white entitlement.
But, after botching her initial attempt, she comes to the understanding it is her job to educate, not rub noses in ignorance.
ECHO LAKE is the crème of cosy crime capers complete with a complement of characters that move the narrative forward and not just flavour it with quirk.
Suspicions are raised, motives deduced, then traduced, reason seduced, reputations reduced, leading to a climax of physical and psychological abuse.
Named for a geographic place, ECHO LAKE also boasts a vivid sense of environment both physical and cultural, contemporary and historical.
A where is it and why dunnit as much as a who dunnit, ECHO LAKE hooks from the get go and doesn’t let you go till it’s done.
ECHO LAKE by Joan Sauers is published by Allen & Unwin.
