Peace cover art

Peace

 Preview

Get 30 days of Premium Plus free

£8.99/month after 30-day free trial. Cancel monthly.
Try for £0.00
More purchase options
Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

About this listen

An act of inexplicable cruelty. A family destroyed....

Constable Paul Hirschhausen runs a one-cop station in the dry farming country south of the Flinders Ranges. He's still new in town, but his community work - welfare checks and a light touch - is starting to pay off. Now Christmas is here and, apart from a grass fire, two boys stealing a vehicle and Brenda Flann entering the front bar of the pub without exiting her car, Hirsch's life has been peaceful.

Until he's called to an incident on Kitchener Street, a strange and vicious attack that sickens the community. And when the Sydney police ask him to look in on a family living on a forgotten back road, it doesn't look like a season of goodwill at all....

Garry Disher has published 50 titles across multiple genres and is best known as Australia's King of Crime. He has won the Deutsche Krimi Preis three times, the Ned Kelly Award twice, and his novel The Sunken Road was nominated for the Booker. In 2018 he received the Ned Kelly Lifetime Achievement Award.

©2020 Garry Disher (P)2020 W F Howes Crime Fiction Suspense Thriller & Suspense Crime Fiction Exciting Mystery

Critic reviews

'"A scorchingly good novel." (Michael Robotham)

"Disher is the gold standard for rural noir." (Chris Hammer)

"There has been a lot of fuss about Australian rural noir in recent years, but few, if any, do it better than Disher." (Canberra Weekly)

All stars
Most relevant
First time reading Garry Disher and I liked everything about the genre, the style, the characters, the narrative, the plot and the performance.
The only one point I didn’t like - and this may be a purely personal thing -is that I found one part of the plot particularly distressing and difficult to deal with. Obviously I don’t want to elucidate on this as I don’t wish to give away details or spoilers
In every other aspect I enjoyed the book very much, warming to the detective, new to me, Hirsch.

Fast paced crime drama

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Wonderful low key masterful narration leads you through a simple but multifaceted series of intertwined characters' lives during a troubling period in a backwater town. Spell binding. Descriptively and cleverly written.

Atmospheric and gripping

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I am not sure what took me to finish this book in kindle format but when I finally got down to it I finished the audiobook in 2 days.

Garry Disher is a recent find for me and this second book in the series surpasses the first book which I did not think he would achieve.

The key protagonist Paul Hirshhausen is a world-weary policeman banished to what to many be seen as a backward town in rural Australia. However, Paul takes his integrity with him and strives to do the best for the community and this is despite some opposition among his peers as well as the community. Somehow many other in the town know that he sees them and is there for them so despite his early misgivings he is making himself a part of the town.

Several storylines are running through this book making the in a few sections quite fast and action-packed and these are mixed in with the mundane grievances of a small town which gives you a real sense of both the physical place and the people. The storyline does not feel overdone and the reveals come quite naturally.

Steve Shanahan's narration is beautiful and captures the strengths and fragility of humans that Disher describes so well.

Bring on book three.

An engrossing listen

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I really enjoyed this book. Good writing. Good story. Good narration. However I really needed a more complete ending. I need the satisfaction of knowing how the guilty realise they are found out and how they get their commupance. I’ve seen that reviews of other Disher books have similar issues with the endings. For this reason I will not read another by this author which is a shame. But I can’t go along with him on the journey only to be dissatisfied with the destination.

Really good storytelling but ….

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I liked the story a lot, was saddened when it came to the end. I will be looking for other Books by Gary Disher

Different stories, but included with the Story of Tiverton.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews