Bron Sibree interviews Chris Hammer

12 January 2025 - 10:15 By Bron Sibree
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Journalist-turned-author Chris Hammer is living every writer's dream, with his crime fiction novels having sold more than a million copies worldwide.
Journalist-turned-author Chris Hammer is living every writer's dream, with his crime fiction novels having sold more than a million copies worldwide.
Image: Mike Bowers

The Valley ★★★★
Chris Hammer
Allen & Unwin

Few people can lay claim to one, let alone two, supremely successful careers. Even fewer can switch from one successful line of work to another at the age of 57 and be a raging success at it within months. But Chris Hammer managed to do exactly that when his distinguished 30-year career as a journalist and foreign correspondent came to an end and his debut crime novel, Scrublands, was published soon afterwards in 2018. It became an instant best-seller, scooping both the UK Crime Writers’ Association John Creasey New Blood Dagger and the Sunday Times Crime Novel of the Year awards in 2019. “Yet,” as he notes wryly, “it was really funny being described as an exciting new emerging author at the age of 57 or 58. Mind you, I’m now being described as a veteran because I’ve been published for six years!”

Indeed, six years and seven novels into his second career and this “veteran” still can’t believe his good fortune. With more than a million of his books sold and his newly released seventh novel, The Valley, already riding high on best-seller lists — not to mention a television series based on his first novel, Scrublands, now being screened and yet another based on his second, Silver, due for imminent release — he says, “I have to pinch myself, to be honest. I’m kind of living the dream of every aspiring writer, which is to be able to write full time and have his books translated into different languages. I really do feel as if I’ve won the lottery or something, and I’m over the moon about it.”

'The Valley' by Chris Hammer.
'The Valley' by Chris Hammer.
Image: Supplied

Seven novels on, he still finds “a certain joy in writing”, but he says “that doesn’t mean it’s always easy”. Hammer is a self-described “pantser” — someone who writes and plots his novels on the fly (in other words, by the seat of his pants) — but there’s no doubt The Valley possesses one of the most, if not the most, cannily layered, complex and deeply satisfying plots he has written so far.

With a mysterious prologue set in the 1980s that is seeming unrelated to what ensues, it features the popular police detective duo Nell Buchanan and Ivan Lucic, who first took centre stage in his 2021 novel Opal Country.

His most recent novel opens in 2024, with the pair sharing the six-hour drive from Dubbo to a place called The Valley. The plot was seeded by his 2022 novel The Tilt, in which the crime-busting duo were sent to the Barmah-Millewa Forest to investigate after a body had been found there. Hammer says, “In that investigation — and I think it’s safe to say this now, two years on — Nell learns she’s adopted. And so at the end of the book there is Nell’s family tree.”

While that family tree laid out Nell’s adoptive family, as well as her biological mother and family, Hammer says, “It left a blank space for her father. At that stage, it wasn’t important for that book, and I didn’t know who her father was. But I did have readers come up to me and saying, ‘You know, I think there’s a mistake in that family tree. You haven’t said who her father was.’ And I would gently say, ‘You know she’s a fictional character, right? She’s not real, and I don’t know who the father is.’ But that planted the seed for The Valley, which of course starts when Nell and Ivan are sent to this remote valley where a man’s been murdered. Then, after the forensic team does a DNA test, she learns the victim is closely related to her through her biological father.”

The murdered man, her blood relative, is a well-known and somewhat controversial entrepreneur in the area, but apart from throwing Nell into arguably her most emotionally unsettling case yet, it soon becomes apparent this is no ordinary investigation. For a start, instead of the usual protocol of having a local team handle the matter, the head of homicide has instead insisted that DS Lucic and SC Buchanan from the rural flying squad undertake the six-hour journey from Dubbo to The Valley and head the investigation. The unorthodox nature of this decision is something Nell and Ivan ponder on the drive there, with Nell pointing out their boss “never acts without reason”.

The pair soon find themselves confronting cowboy lawyers, grave robbers, political intrigue and possible police corruption, as well as a small-town community reluctant to yield its closely held secrets. There exist a veritable mass of long-held skeletons in the cupboard that are, by and large, uniquely integral to this novel’s exquisitely evoked valley setting which is, Hammer says, “a fictionalised version of a very real place called the Araluen Valley”. He adds, “It’s a very lush valley where gold used to be mined. But I’ve made the topography a bit more dramatic and brought in some of the characteristics of the surrounding towns, so it’s an amalgam of things.”

Hammer’s extraordinary ability to evoke a keen sense of place in his largely rural settings has become a trademark of his crime fiction, and doing so remains crucial to his attempt, he says, “to bring the reader into an imagined world”. He says, “I’m trying to cast a spell, and the setting is almost like the stage on which the characters appear and the drama plays out. It fires my imagination to think about what could happen in that space, and it informs who the characters are and why they behave the way they do.” And because his novels usually feature multiple crimes and multiple plots, he adds, “A rural setting is very useful for a crime writer because everybody knows everybody else, not to mention everybody else’s business.”

He acknowledges, too, that there has been a progression in his books, with the recent ones having, not only more complex plots, but also additional points of view and storylines set in the past. “All that is tricky to pull off, though it can really help the pace of the book. But if you can bring it all together, it can be very effective. That’s not to say a complex book is inherently better than a simple one. But I couldn’t have written The Tilt, The Seven and The Valley if I hadn’t written those earlier books such as Scrublands, Silver and Trust. And I don’t think I could have written them if I hadn’t previously written the non-fiction books The River and The Coast.”

Indeed, Scrublands owes its authenticity to his 2010 non-fiction work The River, which took the ACT Book of the Year award and was shortlisted for several other prestigious prizes. The book saw Hammer journeying through Australia’s heartland, following the ailing river systems of the Murray Darling. Silver’s coastal setting owes much to The Coast, which saw him travelling the length of Australia’s eastern seaboard. He remains intensely proud of his non-fiction books but freely acknowledges, “They didn’t really sell.” He has just learnt that both are about to be republished on the back of the extraordinary success of his crime fiction books and says he’s “absolutely delighted” about that.

Hammer jokingly refers to his time spent assiduously researching and writing those non-fiction books as a “half career”. After penning them, he turned to crime fiction largely because he was inspired by the much-acclaimed thrillers of his former university lecturer, South African-born Peter Temple. “Peter had shown you can do so much more with a crime book than just having a mystery, so I thought, ‘Oh well, I’ll have a crack at doing that’, and I found I just loved doing it. I’m completely hooked on it now, and the books are slowly evolving over time. If the books don’t change and evolve, and you don't learn something along the way, what’s the point?”

CHRIS HAMMER ON THE BOOKS THAT HAVE INFLUENCED HIM

'The Great Gatsby' by F Scott Fitzgerald.
'The Great Gatsby' by F Scott Fitzgerald.
Image: Supplied

‘The Great Gatsby’ by F Scott Fitzgerald

In some ways, Fitzgerald’s masterpiece can be seen as a crime novel — after all, Gatsby ends up shot dead in his swimming pool. Of course, the structure is completely different: the murder comes at the end of the novel, not the start. But there is a central mystery to the book: Who is Jay Gatsby? That’s the puzzle that plays out as the story unfolds. The real power of the book lies in the way it strips back the veneer of glamour surrounding the wealthy elite of America’s Roaring Twenties, revealing just how deeply flawed Gatsby, Tom and Daisy really are.

 

 

 

 

 

 

'The Broken Shore' by Peter Temple.
'The Broken Shore' by Peter Temple.
Image: Supplied

‘The Broken Shore’ by Peter Temple

This is a masterclass in crime writing from expat South African author Temple. This was the first book by an Australian to win the UK Crime Writers’ Association’s Gold Dagger award — and deservedly so. The novel has Temple’s trademark taut dialogue and beautifully sparse language, combined with insights into the underbelly of Australian society. Many of Temple’s books have urban settings, but this one is located on the rugged coastline of Victoria’s Great Ocean Road and can be seen as a harbinger of the current wave of Australian rural noir.

 

 

 

 

 

'Rebecca' by Daphne du Maurier.
'Rebecca' by Daphne du Maurier.
Image: Supplied

‘Rebecca’ by Daphne du Maurier

I recently reread this 1938 book, and it remains as gripping and powerful now as when it was first published. A young woman marries a rich widower and moves to his country estate, Manderley. But the bride is never named, even though we follow her throughout the story. Instead, it is Rebecca, her husband’s first wife, who dominates the story — and the imagination of the reader. It must be one of the most atmospheric books ever written, coming alive in the reader’s mind. The famous first line is enough to evoke the story years after first reading it: “Last night, I dreamt I went to Manderley again.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

'The Lord of the Rings' by JRR Tolkien.
'The Lord of the Rings' by JRR Tolkien.
Image: Supplied

‘The Lord of the Rings’ by JRR Tolkien

Every novel creates an imaginary world, even those set in real places in the present day. But has anyone ever built such a convincing setting? This is a tour de force of the imagination — world-building at its best. I first read it as a teenager, and I loved it. The characters are brilliant and the story compelling, but it’s the sheer scale and authenticity of Middle Earth that fills me with awe. Is this the most imitated work in the literary canon?

 

 

 

 

 

 

'We Begin at the End' by Chris Whitaker.
'We Begin at the End' by Chris Whitaker.
Image: Supplied

‘We Begin at the End’ by Chris Whitaker

Whitaker is an English author, but you wouldn’t know it from reading this book, which takes you deep into the heart of small-town America. The story is a heartbreaker told through the eyes of local police chief, his health fading and his past haunting him, and Duchess, a feisty 13-year-old girl struggling to survive and protect her baby brother. It’s a masterpiece of crime fiction.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


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