Blood River by Tony Cavanaugh is an incredible story that had me totally spell bound.

Initially set in Brisbane just before the change of the millennium with the hype of the Y2K and the uncertainty of what was going to happen with all the computers, there are three murders that are obviously the work of a serial killer. Two homicide detectives, Billy and Lara, make an unusual team with Billy being of the old-guard and Lara a young half-Asian woman with bleached blonde hair. Attention becomes focused on several men until Jennifer White, a 17 year old school girl becomes the main suspect. The publicity surrounding the case is intense and Jen is sent to trial, convicted and sent to prison. Jen maintains the whole time that she is innocent and only relinquishes this when going in front of the parole board for a fourth time - she needs to seek atonement for her crimes otherwise she will not be released.
It is now 2019 and what follows her release is her fear that the real killer with strike again now that she is out of prison. Lara at this time is Police Commissioner and she too has her doubts that Jen is the real killer. With the help of her old team mate, Billy, Lara seeks the truth. Once again public outcry about Jen’s release creates a lot of tension about what will happen.
The outcome was totally unexpected - it is complicated but had me totally captivated.

Tony Cavanaugh’s writing is lucid and vivid, with well developed and believable characters.

Highly recommended read.

Thank you to Netgalley and publisher Hachette Australia for copy to read and review.

Thankyou to NetGalley, Hatchette Australia and the author, Tony Cavanaugh, for the opportunity to read a digital copy of Blood River in exchange for an honest and unbiased opinion.
I was initially intrigued by the premise of the story. The book itself certainly did not disappoint.
What a thrilling ride. I was up into the early hours to finish reading this book and certainly wasn't expecting the ending.
Well worth a read

Book blurb…
Brisbane 1999. It's hot. Stormy. Dangerous. The waters of the Brisbane River are rising. The rains won't stop. People's nerves are on edge. And then . . .
A body is found.
And then another.
And another.
A string of seemingly ritualised but gruesome murders. All the victims are men. Affluent. Guys with nice houses, wives and kids at private schools. All have had their throats cut. Tabloid headlines shout, THE VAMPIRE KILLER STRIKES AGAIN!

Detective Constable Lara Ocean knows the look. The 'my-life-will-never-be-the-same-again look'. She's seen it too many times on too many faces. Telling a wife her husband won't be coming home. Ever again. Telling her the brutal way he was murdered. That's a look you never get used to.

Telling a mother you need her daughter to come to the station for questioning. That's another look she doesn't want to see again.

And staring into the eyes of a murderer, yet doubting you've got it right. That's the worst look of all - the one you see in the mirror. Get it right, you're a hero and the city is a safer place. Get it wrong and you destroy a life. And a killer remains free. Twenty years down the track, Lara Ocean will know the truth.

My thoughts…
This story is intriguing and captivated me until the very end. I do enjoy a first-person narrative and the pace is terrific.
I liked all the characters and their complexities, and the author’s attention to detail helped me visualise them on the pages. I did not work out the plot (which is rare for me—so very pleased about that!) and Lara’s conflict is solid and believable.
Did she put the right person behind bars?
A daunting responsibility and a great plot.

It’s Brisbane, 1999. Three men have been savagely murdered during a flood. Lara Ocean, a fledgling homicide detective of seven months and her veteran partner, Billy Waterson, arrest seventeen-year-old student, Jen White. The media labels Jen ‘The Slayer’ and she is sentenced to life in prison.

Twenty years later and Queensland is in drought. Jen is released on parole and Lara is now the Police Commissioner. The Attorney-General threatens to terminate the president of the parole board and all its members unless they put Jen back in prison. Meanwhile, The Slayer plans to take advantage of Jen’s release – they will kill again, unless Jen can find a way to stop them.

Female detectives are becoming more prevalent in Australian crime fiction, with Sarah Bailey’s Gemma Woodstock novels (The Dark Lake, Into the Night), and James Patterson and Candice Fox’s Detective Harriet Blue series topping recent bestseller lists. Lara Ocean is another intriguing, flawed and carefully rendered protagonist, a tenacious detective with a complicated backstory spurred by rebellion – drug use and dangerous boyfriends. We meet her in 1999 through the eyes of another character – “the youngest detective in the Squad, ever, a twentysomething Asian with dyed blonde hair”. She’s busy trying to balance the pressure from her traditionalist mother to get married and have babies with her desire to work her way to the top of the police force.

Blood River bounces between many different viewpoints with the narrative separated into five parts, each beginning with lyrics from the African-American spiritual “Mary Don’t You Weep”. It’s the first person narration from Lara and from Jen that drive the story forward – both engaging characters with strong voices. There are also scenes with an omniscient viewpoint scattered throughout, including two graduate engineers who stand staring at the rising waters of the Wivenhoe Dam, trying to decide if they should open the sluice gates. The effect of these varying viewpoints is as though the reader is watching a movie, which is hardly surprising given Cavanaugh’s lucrative career writing and producing for screen. He also has an excellent and almost disturbing grasp of the voice of The Slayer to the point where, on several occasions, I nearly skipped to the next section because I couldn’t bear to be inside their twisted mind any longer.

With the majority of Australian crime fiction set in and around Sydney or Melbourne, I was interested to read a novel set in Brisbane, especially having enjoyed recent local crime drama, Harrow (ABC), which is filmed predominately in Brisbane. The Blood River murders occur at the iconic Kangaroo Point cliffs and the Brisbane Botanical Gardens, with several other notable locations also featured – the Breakfast Creek Hotel, Racecourse Road and the upmarket suburb of Ascot. The feel of Brisbane is expertly painted onto the page with descriptions of jacaranda trees lining the footpaths, tumble-down Queenslanders, and of course, the sub-tropical humidity and fierce heat of a Brisbane summer. The fictional murders are grounded in real-life local crimes, some of the gruesome details being quite similar to the 1989 Brisbane ‘Vampire Killer’.

In an interview with Hachette, Tony Cavanaugh states he was keen to explore the notion of the doppelgänger and there are many dualities and contrasts throughout Blood River – 1999 versus 2019, the odd coupling of Lara and Billy, flood versus drought; and within the lives of each main character – Lara’s chequered past is the opposite side of the coin to her professional and upstanding future as a Police Commissioner; Jen’s innocence versus the necessity for her to find the killer inside so she can have a future; and, the real killer, who is living a lie and waits like a dormant volcano ready to wake up for one last hurrah.

Another thing I found clever were the name choices for each character – an Ocean and a Waterson introduced during a flood, and I think the real name of The Slayer may have been chosen due to it’s connection to a drought, but I won’t say anything further here in case I give it away.

The mystery of The Slayer’s identity had me intrigued and as it turns out, I did correctly guess the killer earlier in the novel (an instinctive choice), but then became distracted by red herrings, only to discover I’d been right at the start. The author has planted enough crafty clues to enable the reader to guess correctly – but beware of sneaky misdirection (or if you prefer, you can enjoy being tricked).

A solid piece of entertaining, clever, and thoughtful crime fiction, Blood River was a story I read quickly, eager to find out what was going to happen, and which stayed with me long after I’d finished.

I had read Tony Cavanaugh’s mid 2010’s books and had really enjoyed them. Then everything went quiet and, somewhat disappointed, I thought he must have just retired. So it was much to my delight when I found his new book Blood River on Net Galley. I was even more delighted when I was given permission to read and review this very exciting new book. And what a great read it was. Set in Brisbane, it starts in 1999 when a serial killer is on the loose. It then finishes in current times, in 2019, 20 years after the person jailed for the crimes is let out on parole. And so the fun begins. A fantastic read and I hope we keep seeing more from this great Aussie crime writer.

Blood River is the first stand-alone novel by Australian crime novelist, screenwriter and film and television producer, Tony Cavanaugh. In November, 1999, a mere seven months into her career on the Homicide Squad, Detective Constable Lara Ocean finds herself sharing the lead in a serial killer case. Over a matter of days, three middle-aged, wealthy men have been found brutally murdered in or near Brisbane’s Botanic Gardens. They were, but for a strip of skin, decapitated in a ritualistic manner by someone the press soon dubs The Slayer.

Lara may be the youngest on the Squad, but she is teamed with William Waterson, the oldest and most experienced Detective Inspector on the force. A number of features common to each victim send Lara searching out certain figures from her wild teenage years. Other possible suspects are questioned, and Lara even checks the recent movements of a childhood acquaintance.

But when a tip has them questioning seventeen-year-old Jen White, Lara recalls her own rebellious adolescence: drugs, booze, tatts, sex and dangerous behaviour. Frustrated with the lack of progress, her superiors make an unexpected move, one Lara inwardly condemns, but it produces a result and all of Brisbane breathes easier with a cold-blooded killer serving a life sentence behind bars.

Twenty years on, and Lara is in a very different position when she learns that The Slayer has, against the Attorney General’s instructions, been released on parole. While some have proclaimed wrongful imprisonment for twenty years, the widows of the victims vociferously protest the release. Will the killing begin again?

Cavanaugh easily conveys the heat and humidity of the rainy Brisbane summer, as well as that unique Queensland attitude displayed by police and politicians. The Y2K hysteria, the threatening floods and later droughts, and Brisbane itself, all are expertly rendered. Cavanaugh’s plot takes some unexpected turns and keeps the reader guessing right up to the final chapters: even the most astute reader is likely to be surprised at the reveal. There are a few red herrings and some minor elements remain unresolved by the dramatic climax.

Lara is an interesting character: half-Chinese and under maternal pressure to marry, but determined to advance her career as a policewoman of integrity. In fact, most of the strong characters in this novel are female. The narrative does jump about quite a bit in both time and person, which may be a source of confusion, so the reader has to pay careful attention to context. One would hope that the poor formatting and missing punctuation throughout this uncorrected proof has been rectified in the final version, although it does not unduly affect the reading experience. Outstanding Aussie crime fiction.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Hachette Australia.

An interesting enough crime thriller, set in Brisbane, that sees seventeen year old Jen going down for three gruesome murders that she hasn't committed. One of the detectives on the case, Lara Ocean, has her doubts about the verdict, but the Brisbane police force in the late 90s is still a bit of an old school boys club. We follow the original, flawed investigation, and the aftermath, where families are destroyed, yet has the truth really won out here?

I did enjoy this book, reading through it quickly, though I did find some of the content disturbing. The book is written in a style where it jumps around a bit, and sometimes it's hard to keep up with who's point of view you are reading. All in all though it's not a bad book, and living in the Brisbane/Gold Coast area I am very familiar with the setting, which was fun to read.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Blood River is a discomforting yet compelling crime novel which unfolds over two decades from multiple perspectives.

It’s 1999 In Brisbane when “Lara, the youngest detective in the Squad, ever, a twentysomething Asian woman with dyed blonde hair and Billy, the oldest detective in the Squad, with the fiercest reputation in the state of Queensland, ever, an old school copper who would smash a suspect over the head, dangle him from a balcony or just forge a confession from him.” are called to the scene of a horrific murder.

Over a three week period, two more bodies are discovered with signature injuries, including the symbol of Taranus, the Celtic God of Thunder, carved into their flesh. Lara and Billy come up with three suspects, one of them Lara’s violent ex boyfriend, but under pressure from the media and officials, 17 year old Jennifer White is accused and eventually convicted of the three murders, despite the flimsiest of evidence.

Meanwhile, the real killer goes free.

“Fear is His word for man. Aoife is His word for woman. I am going to do it again. Another fear kill. I am going to do it again. Soon.”

Nineteen years later, Lara is the police commissioner, Billy has retired, and Jennifer, despite the objection of the state’s Attorney General, is finally paroled.

“There was also something else, something that had bothered me as I prepared to be paroled. I kept this to myself, my own private fear. That the real killer would take advantage of my release and kill again. I am no longer him. I am now his perfect alibi.”

Cavanaugh’s complex characters are fully realised portraits that add depth and interest to the story. Lara in particular is a fascinating personality with a rich backstory. What I also found of interest were the insights Cavanaugh offers into some of the characters who could be said to be only tangentially related to the main thrust of the plot, but nevertheless less impact it, or the main characters, in significant ways.

The shifts in narrative perspective are stimulating, moving between an omniscient viewpoint and individual characters. It can be difficult, on occasion, to immediately identify each ‘voice’, though I think that may have been in large part because of the poor formatting of my advance reader copy.

Blood River is quite different from Cavanaugh’s series featuring Darian Richards, which I loved, though they do share some similar themes, such as police corruption, women in policing, and the failings of the justice system.

With a final reveal I didn’t see coming at all (a rare event I must note), Blood River is a clever, gritty and engrossing story. This is another impressive crime novel from Australian author, Tony Cavanaugh.

I enjoyed Blood River by Tony Cavanaugh. This is captivating crime fiction story told by multiple narrators across two decades. The characters are well developed and unique. The story will keep you guessing. Readers who are familiar with Brisbane will enjoy the descriptions of the river and suburbs. I recommend this to anyone who enjoys crime fiction and Australian literature. I intend to read further novels by Tony Cavanaugh.