What I liked most about 'Outback' was that it felt firmly grounded in reality.

The North Queensland desert became almost a character in its own right, its unremitting harshness dominating the lives of the people trying to live in it or even just trying to pass through it.

The people in the small town of Caloodie felt real. Patricia Wolf captured their speech patterns and the small details of their behaviour in ways that quickly immersed me in their community.

The police procedural aspects of the investigation were plausible and delivered at a pace that sustained the tension of the story but also matched the rate at which two investigators might reasonably be expected to work.

Seeing DS Walker surrounded by his extended family and dealing with the imminent death from cancer of the grandmother who raised him from a character who was there to solve puzzles to a real person with more on his mind than the case in hand.

Seeing the town, its people and DS Walker through the eyes of a police detective from Berlin, the sister of one of the missing German tourists, allowed some of the odd-but-taken-for-granted-by-the-people-who-live-there aspects of Australian small-town culture to be examined and explained from both an outsider and insider point of view.

All of that made for a very satisfying read.

The plot, which involves the investigation of the disappearance of two German tourists who we know have been abducted, was a strong one. The story was unfurled in a way that allowed the reader to know what was being done to the two tourists but not who was doing it. This meant that, as the investigators assembled information, the reader had the fun of guessing whether or not they were looking at the right suspect. I enjoyed that the investigation was complicated further by plot lines involving police corruption, organised crime and the possible existence of a serial killer.

All of that kept me turning the pages eagerly.

The book concludes with some very intense action scenes that pulled everything together. I was totally immersed in the action, to the point that when one of the investigators did something stupid that put them at risk, I found myself saying "How could you do that? You should know better!"

The only thing that I was a little disappointed in was that Patricia Wolf seemed to me to have been too kind to some of her characters, letting them survive when I'd expected them to die. Still, that was her call to make.

I'll be reading, 'Paradise', the next DI Walker book, later this year. I'll be going with the audiobook version of 'Paradise' as I thought Adam Fitzgerald did a remarkable job with the narration. Click on the SoundCloud link below to hear a sample.

https://soundcloud.com/bonnierbooksuk/sampleaudioclip ( )

Outback by Patricia Wolf is the first book in her DS Lucas Walker series. This book is set in the Australian outback as Lucas Walker comes home to visit with his dying grandmother. At the same time two young German backpackers pass through town and disappear in the bush. Lucas is asked to act as liaison between the families of the missing and the police. The older sister of one of the backpackers comes to Australia to aid in the search of her sister, and she and Lucas work together to try to solve the mystery.

I found this story quite engrossing and the author certainly made the harsh country of the Outback, with it’s isolation, severe heat, and dust a major part of the story. The writing was descriptive without being too long-winded and the characters felt real. Lucas and Barbara worked well together and as the serial killer angle is slowly revealed the tension rose and the pages turned much faster.

The story unfolds through multiple viewpoints, including that of the villain and this aspect also gave the book a sense of urgency as the reader could feel that time was running out for the victims. I didn’t love the ending however, as a number of threads were left hanging but I would say that it did it’s job as I have already picked up the next book in the series. ( )

Unusual plot set in rural Queensland with a cast of well-drawn and suspicious characters. DS Lucas is on compassionate leave from his Sydney undercover job and is tasked to help local cop Grogan find two missing German tourists, although his boss also has an ulterior motive. Lucas is joined by the sister of one of the missing tourists who is a detective in Berlin, another interesting twist and the plot rolls along nicely as time is running out for the missing tourists. I learnt a number of Queensland vernacular words and phrases I hadn't heard before, which fitted well in what appears to be an accurately drawn rural community. ( )

This made for interesting reading. It hits a topic, the disappearance and murder of backpackers, that has been raised in a number of novels, and also in true crime reporting. There are several narrators but the story is told largely in the third person, with glimpses of the thoughts of individual characters.

The coincidence of the young missing backpackers being German, and the fact that the author lives in Germany is an interesting one. I liked the character of the policewoman from Berlin who comes searching for her sister. It would be good to see her work with Lucas Walker in future novels.

I was reminded also of the international tourist (a Belgian) who comes looking for her missing son in Garry Disher's DAY'S END, who just happens to be a forensic expert.

The original interest of the Federal Police and the Department of Foreign Affairs in the disappearance of these two backpackers, just days after they have gone missing, is never really explained. (Or if it was, I missed it)

It is interesting also that the accounts by a number of crime fiction authors, including Chris Hammer, and Garry Disher, support the view of what Patricia Wolf is saying about Outback towns. ( )