Chris Hammer in conversation

These days Chris Hammer is best known for his ‘bush noir’ novels - a category which might even have been created to describe his books. They unravel in far-flung parts of Australia: in the opal fields of Lightning Ridge, out in north-western Victoria, in marginal country. They’re incredibly popular, selling several million to date, all over the world, and two of them have been adapted for television under the title of Scrublands. But it wasn’t always thus. Chris started out as a journalist, winning awards for his insights on the machinations in Canberra. By his own account that eventually got too much for him, and he took off, travelling the length of the Murray/Darling from the Paroo to Adelaide, and wrote a book about it, called The River, seeking to depict and understand the complexities of our longest and most important waterway. The book was much-lauded, and deservedly so, but its greatest gift might be the sense of the landscape and the people of the bush that has come to imbue his novels. Yes, there’s a crime been committed - and one of his protagonists, Nell Buchanan, or the investigative reporter Martin Scarsden - will have to figure out who done it, but the real hero is always going to be the richness of the place and of the people in which it all happens. There are no stereotypes, just people. In his new novel, Legacy, Martin Scarsden is the centre of the action, not because he’s caught the scent of wrong-doing, but because someone is out to kill him. He’s on the run, heading out into the desert, although it seems even there he isn’t safe. He has to simultaneously protect himself, and try to find out who it is that wants him dead.