Karen Herbert

From the publication info, this is Herbert's first book, although The River Mouth came out earlier. Which explains why some of the characterisation -- which I found such a strength of The River Mouth -- seemed a bit rough around the edges. Herbert has managed delightfully distinct voices for each of the viewpoint characters, but there are times that they are just a bit didactic, a bit stilted for my liking.

From the blurb, I was primed for this to be some kind of pandemic book. Turns out it is actually set in late 2019, so, ah, not quite. Instead it is a gentle stroll through the lives of several members of a community.

I did appreciate that there are lots of details that are elided, suggested, left for the reader to deduce. And to feel smug about, because isn't it obvious, how is it that the character has missed such an obvious detail. And that a couple of the story threads, which had the potential to derail the rest, were kept relatively minor. This is something that I loved in The River Mouth, and I'm optimistic that this will continue to be a feature of Herbert's work

For people familiar with the real places mentioned in the book, there is some looseness in how locations are described that I found disconcerting. There was certainly a moment were I was all 'you can't see both of those from there' where I wondered if I'd just missed the correct interpretation of where the character was standing. I had fun attempting to work out where the fictional Harewood Hall would be, with my initial guess being in quite the wrong suburb.… (más)

The setting of this novel is a small coastal town on the West Australian coast at the mouth of the Weymouth River some days south of the Pilbara. There are two major timelines. The novel has several narrators including Darren, his friends Colin and Tim, and Darren's mother Sandra. The combination of the timelines and the various narrative voices give the story considerable complexity.

The narration starts with Sandra, and what she knows, ten years after her son was killed and few days after her best friend's body has been found in the Pilbara. Chapter 2 is narrated by Colin and begins a count down 25 days before Darren died. From there we flit backwards and forwards from the past to the present. The reader is often left to deduce which timeline we are on, and I did find that confusing at times, although we do know who the narrator is. There is a lot for the reader to unravel, but that is part of the pleasure of the book, so I am not going to explain everything here. At times the author attempts to see things through the eyes of the three boys, and at times reflects their lack of understanding of what is happening in the adult world around them.

Sandra thinks she has moved on since Darren's death, but there are questions she has never asked and answers she has never sought.

I thought there were hints that various of the characters may have indigenous background but perhaps I missed out on picking up on when that was more clearly stated.

The final resolution to who killed Darren, and why, seems to come out of left field, but there were hints among all the red herrings.

So here is another new author to watch!… (más)

bought this at the freo press book launch; started it then, finished it the following night. So, ~24 hours

This is amazing. Crime fiction that doesn't focus on the police or procedure, but focuses on the protagonist learning what is going on, and the reader getting more detail than any of the protagonists ever will.

I don't know what needs to be said here, but I absolutely adored the way that the author let out information in dribs and drabs -- multiple individuals have 'hidden' information that just isn't relevant until it gets mentioned -- and I'm not mentioning specifics, because they would all be spoilers, and this is a book that works well without.

the kinds of details that I want to squee over are sadly ones that would take away from experiencing sheer genius of this book as-is.… (más)

In Karen Herbert’s accomplished crime fiction debut, The River Mouth, a mother resumes her search for answers to the unsolved murder of her teenage son when the decade old case is reopened in the wake of the death of her best friend.

Sandra Davies is stunned when the police advise her that not only has the body of her best friend, Barbara Russell, been found in the Pilbara desert, but that routine tests discovered Barbara’s DNA matched a sample taken from the under the fingernails of her late son. Darren was shot dead by an unknown assailant while swimming in the river with friends ten years earlier, but what possible motive could explain Barbara killing a fifteen year old boy?

As Sandra tries to make sense of this unexpected development, convinced Barbara is blameless, Herbert unravels the past from the perspective of Barbara’s son, and Darren’s best friend, Colin. Darren is a high-spirited teenager, full of teenage bravado, with a sharp tongue, while Colin is more reserved and thoughtful. When Darren is not helping out his dad, a successful cray fisherman, the boys spend much of their time together, at school and on weekends, often joined by Tim, and occasionally Amy. While they occasionally cause mischief, and push against their parents’ rules, the group are fairly typical teenagers. I thought Herberts characterisation of the teens was realistic, and felt that she deftly captured their dialogue, attitudes and behaviours.

It becomes clear as the story unfolds that the insular Western Australian costal community in which Sandra lives harbours more than one secret that could have led to Darren’s murder, and Herbert uses these red herrings to good effect. The novel is well paced, with the suspense managed effectively across both timelines. Though the ambiguous circumstances of Barbara’s passing remains an irritant to me, I think the mystery of Darren’s death is satisfactorily resolved, even if the aftermath is somewhat non-traditional.

The River Mouth is an impressive debut, and a fine addition to the growing oeuvre of rural Australian crime fiction.… (más)