Similar to American author Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, whose young narrator speaks to readers across all age groups, Australian author Sean Wilson's debut novel Gemini Falls explores serious and complex social issues through the eyes of a teenager.

The year was 1930, and Phar Lap just won the Melbourne Cup. The race captured the public's imagination, but failed to raise the spirits of hundreds of thousands of Australians who were in the grip of the Great Depression. Worse, an outbreak of the polio epidemic provoked intense public anxiety in Melbourne.

13-year-old Morris was particularly anxious as his family relocated from the city to the small town of Gemini in rural Victoria. His father Jude, a police detective originally from that town, was assigned to investigate the murder of a young woman whose body was left in the local coal mine tunnel.

Morris and his family stayed in a farm owned by Jude's estranged brother Jimmy. There was considerable tension between the two brothers, for reasons unknown. Further questions remained regarding why Jude left the town in the first place. Meanwhile, Morris met his cousin Flo, who dreamed about becoming a detective herself. Together with the mayor's son, Sam, they roam around Gemini trying to identify the killer.

It is often through the eyes of young people that we see the dark and undesired truths of a world dominated by adults. In this case, it is the displaced people and their plight to which Morris's attention was drawn:

“I picture more camps springing up with shacks like these, all over the country. I think about the problems that lead to shacks like this, if they'll ever get fixed or if they'll only be patched up, the way these shacks are. Held together with wire and trine, clinging on until the next storm.”

“This is a place you go when you can't go anywhere else, a place you drop into, falling and reaching out to save yourself. This is not a place you choose to come.”

In his Author's Note, Wilson makes clear that he wants to explore the difficult and tragic and joyful and hopeful parts of life “by showing how characters and relationships transform through conflict”. As he writes in The Guardian:

“What happens in a society when the gap between rich and poor widens? How do we treat the displaced who end up in the unused spaces around our cities and towns? Who do we blame in a crisis? Who holds out a hand, and who raises a fist?”

The bittersweet adventures of Morris and his friends in 1930s Gemini reflect some of the issues that never left our society – violence, xenophobia, problematic masculinity, inadequate housing, weak labour rights, and populist politicians using tensions to divide people and gain power. But there are also dashed ambitions and unfulfilled dreams, as well as families and friends who stand by us through times tough and uncertain.

Gemini Falls is a novel full of empathy and compassion. Highly recommended.

REVIEW: Gemini Falls by @seanrichardwilson

Gemini Falls is set in 1930s Victoria, where the Great Depression and polio are taking hold. Morris, a 13 year old boy, has to move temporarily from Melbourne to country Victoria where his police officer father is to help to investigate the murder of a young woman. The town happens to be where Morris’ father grew up - a place that he left as a young man and hasn’t returned. With the help of some new friends, Morris is determined to solve the murder.

This was an absolute delight to read. We see the world through the eyes of 13 year old Morris, and learn so much about human nature. I love that it is set in Australia and during a time period that I don’t often read about.

Melbourne 1930 - the height of the depression with the added threat of the polio epidemic.

When a woman is murdered in Gemini, Morris's father, a Victoria Police Detective, relocates his family to investigate.

Set in a small town with secrets, scandals and stigma in abundance.

Told through the eyes of a young boy, who with his cousin and new friend, consider themselves the real detectives on the case.

4 stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Special thanks to Netgalley for providing me with this ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

I really struggled to get into this Australian murder mystery. Told from the perspective of a 13 year old boy, the small town his father came from us rocked by the murder of a young girl. The father, a police officer, goes back home to investigate and takes Morris and his sister Lottie with him. Who killed Catherine Fletcher and why? And why did Morris’s father ever have to leave the small town? And what really happened to Morris’s mother? I didn’t predict the perpetrator. It was interesting enough to prevent me walking away entirely, but I kept having to take a break and come back.

Set in 1930 during the Depression era, "Gemini Falls" is a captivating story that follows Detective Jude Turner, who resides in Melbourne with his children, Lottie and Morris. When a young girl is murdered in his hometown, Jude is compelled to investigate, prompting the family's return to a town he had long abandoned. In Gemini, Morris befriends his cousin Flo and Sam, the Mayor's son. Together, they embark on a journey to uncover the truth behind the girl's death, facing suspicions and unearthing family secrets along the way. Told from Morris's perspective, this well-written and engaging tale delves into complex characters, a vividly described setting, and a compelling narrative, making it a highly recommended read. "Gemini Falls" is an exceptional debut that leaves readers eagerly anticipating the author's future works

This is a fabulous story set in 1930 the time of the depression, things were hard for many people, Detective Jude Turner lives in Melbourne with his daughter Lottie and son Morris, when a young girl is murdered in his home town of Gemini he Is sent to investigate, this means moving his family back to the town he left many years ago never to return.

Gemini is a small country coal town, young Morris who is thirteen doesn’t know much about it as his father will not talk about it or his mother who died years ago, the family arrives at the Turner farm that is now run by Morris’s uncle James, he also has an aunt and cousin Flo who is the same age as him, Flo and Morris becomes close friends with Sam the Mayor’s son and the three of them set out to uncover the truth about the young girls death.

There are many suspects according to Flo they have the people living in the camps situated around the town and a couple of other people but Morris is sure that there is more to this murder and befriends young Ollie the brother of the murdered girl who is in a wheel chair because of polio and he learns a few things from him, but soon there are old secrets being uncovered and Morris is learning a lot about his family.

This story is told from Morris’s point of view and had me turning the pages, it was a compelling read from start to finish, well written and engaging, I loved Morris he has a lot of insecurities which we see throughout the story and his love of the stars that he has learnt from his father always seem to help him relax. I would highly recommend this story, fabulous characters and a well described setting and of course a great story.

My thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for my copy to read and review.

3★
“The way I figure it, a murder is like a star system forming. People get pulled into orbit around it. They circle the crime, side by side, everyone moving around and around that terrible thing. They can’t help it. We’re about to fall into orbit around Catherine Fletcher, I know it. “

Thirteen-year-old Morris and his older sister, Lottie (Charlotte), are the children of Police Detective Jude Turner, a widower. He has received a phone call about a murder in his old hometown of Gemini Falls, and as Morris eavesdrops on the call, he gets a fair idea of what has happened, more than he was supposed to hear, of course.

“Out in the hall, Father’s voice gets louder. It’s a storm cloud rising above me. One word is louder than all the others. It stays in the air, thunder rolling around the hall. Pregnant. Catherine Fletcher was pregnant when she died.”

Morris and his father have a close relationship through astronomy, and often go out with a telescope to watch the stars and identify constellations. Dad tells him the myths and legends around the Greek and Roman gods for which the constellations were named in those cultures.

Morris is a thoughtful boy, a worrier and a wonderer. Nobody will tell him anything about how his mother died, and his father refuses to say her name or answer questions. Poor kid.

They go to Gemini Falls and stay with Jude’s brother on the family farm, where they blend in with their Uncle James, Aunt Beth, and cousin Flo. Flo is stand-offish, insists on wearing overalls (Lottie is older and girly), and keeps to herself. Once Flo gets wind of the murder investigation, though, she’s all girl-detective.

“ ‘I’m only saying,’ Flo says. ‘I have the skills to solve it faster than anyone. I’ve trained for this my whole life. If it was me, I’d come up with a suspect and have them followed until they let their guard down. I’d find witnesses and get them to talk. I’d walk in the footsteps of the victim and get to know their life so I could know how they met their end. It’s simple. It’s like the recipe for a cake. You’ve got to get all the ingredients, put them all together in the right order and follow the steps to make sure it comes out right.’ ”

She is a take-charge kid and immediately forms a trio with Morris and young Sam, the mayor’s son, who is a likeable would-be actor. He loves dressing up the way Flo loves dressing down.

“‘The fact is, we’re the best team to solve this murder. I know everything there is to know about investigating. Sam here knows everyone in town because his dad knows everyone in town, and Morris has fresh eyes.’

‘Fresh eyes?’ I ask. ‘What does that mean?’

‘I mean, you don’t know anyone here. You can see them for what they are.’

Me and Sam look at each other. Those faint lines in his forehead get heavier and wider.

‘What do you say?’ Flo asks. ‘Do you want to be the ones who find Catherine Fletcher’s killer?’”

This takes place in depression-era Australia, when families were camped under makeshift shelters and shacks along rivers and living off rabbits and whatever they could beg. Gemini Falls is a coal-mining town, and the miners complain that work is falling off and these ‘people’ are going to take their jobs.

Will Fletcher, the victim’s father rants about the riff-raff In the camps being responsible for his daughter’s murder. Junior detective Flo thinks the father did it, and from there the story follows the struggles between the town and the camps, with the kids tracking people in the rain in the dark at night on bikes. It got pretty far-fetched to me.

I expected to enjoy this. I like mysteries, I like small town stories, and I’m very fond of young teens. It’s hard to say exactly why this missed the mark with me. There is some very descriptive writing.

“Hugh and George are the same kind of build. Low to the ground. Thick legs and arms filling out their clothes. They look like a matching tea set, cups and saucers on a shelf, looking for all the world like they belong together. A family.”

It is a nice turn of phrase which seems more appropriate to me for a couple of dainty ladies in floral dresses, rather than a pair of thickset fellows. I felt I ran across a lot of that sort of writing – nice, but misplaced, something I think an editor might have noticed. I expect to see some more, and better, work from this author. It's all there.

Thanks to NetGalley and Affirm Press for the preview copy for review.

A fantastic debut book and I really commend the author as I could tell alot of research has been done. Unfortunately for me at times it didn't hold my attention but the mystery was intriguing I just felt it was lacking a little something. I know alot of others will disagree with me and they will love it. I did like it, I just didn't love it.

This is a ripping mystery! A detective is called back to his home town to solve a murder. Meanwhile, his kids, and their friends band together to solve the mystery themselves. This all sounded like a stretch of the imagination when I first started reading, but the concept works beautifully.
Sean Wilson has built a mystery, like so many others mystery novels from Australia, in the bush, isolated, desolate, yet beautiful.
What makes this story stand out is the child's perspective of the narrator, Morris, the 13 year old son of the newly arrived detective. The murders, and the investigation is all written from the perspective of an adolescent, which creates an environment where some things are left unexplained, others unknown. If is the perfect backdrop to a mystery, but it does make me wonder why this has not been marketed as a YA novel.
There is nothing particularly 'adult' about the content, and considering the age of the main characters, this sometimes reads as a YA 'type'. It does not back away from some issues like family and domestic abuse, and like me, could be enjoyed by readers of any age from YA readers and above.

What an intriguing debut book, Gemini Falls is definitely thought provoking! Life in the early 1900s is a harsh time, the challenges and realities are confronting, to say the least.
Seen mostly through the eyes of Morris, a teenage boy who is confused by his life and what goes on around him. Morris doesn’t understand his police detective father Jude who won’t talk about how hard their life is, how his mother died and why they need to move to Gemini Falls.
Morris and his sister Lottie move with their father, he’s investigating a murder, opening up more questions than answers.
Morris and Lottie meet Jude’s relatives, a brother Joseph, his wife, and their daughter Flo.
A small town with problems, a murder and accusations, plenty of emotional connections with mysterious secrets!
The storyline is amazingly perceptive with Morris’ growth central, his character with so many interactions make for a well written novel.
The reader doesn’t hear a lot about the murdered girl, there’s more of an exploration of the characters, their relationships, and the stresses of a difficult time in history. This novel is a wonderful reading experience.

Huge thanks and congratulations to Affirm Press, NetGalley and Sean Wilson, an amazing debut!
I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

A young boy and his father live in Hawthorn (Melbourne) in 1930. Polio is spreading through Richmond, and the Great Depression is upon them. The father, police detective, receives a phone call about a murder in his home town, Gemini, and rushes off to the country with his children in tow to solve it.

At times a history textbook and at other times a mystery novel, the pacing infuriated me as it swung from not holding my attention at all to racing through 100 pages in a day.

Moderately diverting, I'm interested to know more about where Gemini is based, assuming Gippsland.

Thank you for such an entertaining, heart-warming, passionate story, Sean. You’ve served up a real treat of urban and rural Victorian life in the challenging era of the Depression through the eyes of a young boy, Morris. I loved his blinkered view of the world around him, his keen (and sometimes laugh out loud) observations of his surroundings and those who populate them. The dreadful state of the (mostly) poverty-stricken population, the sense of hopelessness, the murders, the domestic violence, Morris witnesses objectively so that we make our own judgements. There is some beautiful writing throughout the novel that often made me stop and read again.
Every best wish for your debut novel, Sean. It deserves to do well. Many thanks for the opportunity to read it.

I loved this book from over to cover. My first read by this author and I am sure it will not be last.

I was intrigued where the story was going and how and who might be involved with the murder of a young women in Gemini and why it had bought the Turner family back to this town with many memories for the Policeman father, Jude. 13 year old Morris Turner and his cousin try to uncover the mystery and find themselves in many dangerous situations until the end.

Set in the depression in Australia in 1930, when jobs and food were hard to come by, this book gives a little insight into the resilience of Australians in an unsettling time in our history.

*4 Stars*

Copy kindly recevied via NetGalley for an honest review.

This was an interesting read with interesting characters. Not sure what else to say.

This is a book about first impressions, judging a book by its cover, constellations, life lessons, family complexities, secrets, mysteries, friendship and love.

I really enjoyed Gemini Falls. It kept me engaged, I loved seeing the world through Morris's eyes, I liked the characters, the pace of the book, and the way the book kept you guessing the whole time. I didn't pick the murderer, so that was an interesting twist.

All in all, a great book and I'd be keen to read more from Sean Wilson in the future.

Thank you Netgalley and Affirm Press for the opportunity to read and review this.

Set in 1930s Victoria during the Great Depression follows 13-year-old Morris who teams up with his cousin (Flo) and her friend (Sam) to solve the mystery of a teenage girl, after overhearing his police detective father (Jude Turner), who has been sent to his former hometown to help solve the case.

Morris and his sister Lottie are forced to spend the summer in a new town they have never been to, unaware that they had relatives in said town.

Strong bonds are formed between the new group of friends, and they also learned a lot more than they bargained for, secrets that will surely shape them in the future.

For a species that embraces the certainty of rules, regulations and dogma, we are also invariably in love with the idea of mystery, with the sense that for all the things we know about the world, there are a great many things we do not.

These tantalising unknowns sit just out of reach of what we can see and touch, their seductive potential often too great to resist even at personal risk, or injunctions to leave them alone.

There is often a good reason why we shouldn’t go near them, something that thirteen-year-old Morris Turner discovers when, one day in 1930, he overhears his father, a police detective, being assigned to the case of a murdered young woman in the town of Gemini where she’s been discovered, exposed and debased, at the entrance to a mine shaft.

It’s this conversation that begins the immersively meaningful delight that is Gemini Falls, a novel to which author Sean Wilson, a playwright for whom this is his first book, brings a wondrous sense of the bountiful mysteries and possibilities of life, but also a sage understanding that where there is mystery there can also be sorrow and great loss.

Of course, Morris, who brings a love of astronomy and not inconsiderable anxiety, with him to Gemini at the foot of the Victorian mountains, when he travels there for the summer with his older sister Lottie and his taciturn but loving father who’s still grieving the death of his wife, and the kids’ mother, in circumstances he refuses to discuss, is only just beginning to discover to be the case.

Anxious though he is, he agrees to his cousin Flo’s plan to investigate the murder of Catherine Fletcher – she also ropes in the mayor’s son Sam who has dreams of a thespian life outside of Gemini; his need to eventually leave places him in a group of characters who, in stark of contrast to many townspeople who are happy to stay, or have no way to leave, can’t wait to see what lies out there in the world – in a Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew investigation that seems, at first, to be all fun and no consequence.

Of course, life often comes with serious consequences, especially when you are dabbling in a real life murder in a town riven by dissension and anger at the unemployed people in a camp on the edge of town who are seen as freeloaders and no-hopers by some of the less empathetic citizens, a lesson Morris learns the hard way by the end of Gemini Falls.

That’s not to say he loses his boyish enthusiasm, tempered by his always attendant anxiety, but it is changed into something more knowing, more cognisant of the fact that while there are mysteries aplenty in this life – for him, the prevailing one is not discovering who murdered Catherine but what happened to his mother years later and why they are forbidden from talking about her as a family – delving into them is not always as lighthearted and fun as he, or Flo, who is perhaps the most changed of them all, had supposed.

Set in a time when deprivation is everywhere and we see the very worst and the very best of people – the bigotry towards people who are trapped in homeless poverty through no fault of their own is confronting in its nakedly unthinking hatred with Wilson bringing it horrifying to life even as he leavens it with those, like Morris’s father Jude who stand on the side of the angels – Gemini Falls is a serious novel with a great deal to explore.

Beyond what happened to Catherine Fletcher, a lingering mystery which causes no end of combative angst in a town unsure whom to trust anymore, an fear-laced state of mind encouraged by economic hardship and social malaise, and why no one speaks of Morris’s mother, there is the lingering whispers of why Jude left Gemini in the first place.

As Gemini Falls unfurls in ways thoughtfully intense, emotionally fraught and lightheartedly fun – for much of the time, until things get desperately serious, Morris, Flo and Sam, are allowed to be just be kids, adding an endearingly rambunctious element and some comedic sass to what is in almost every other regard, an intense storyline – and secrets of all kinds are exposed, and lives laid bare, a lot of growing up is done and the idea that mysteries are something otherworldly and magical is manifestly and irrevocably put to rest.

For all of its intensity, and the social dislocation and disruption at its heart, Gemini Falls is also about the closeness of belonging, of how you can be from somewhere and not really belong there anymore, even if it’s been your home all your life, or you can be intimately part of an adopted community who envelop you as their own.

This is felt most profoundly at the end of Gemini Falls, and no, there are no spoilers in play here, when Morris, Lottie and Jude return home, case solved and lives changed for better or worse, and are immediately re-embraced by the suburb in which they live as if they’d never left in the first place.

It’s a powerful message that once we have our people and our place, we have our people, no matter what might crop up to challenge that or take us away from it, and so, while the time Morris and his family spend in Gemini makes a sizably impactful impact on their day-to-day life that changes them all individually and as a family, they know they have a place where they belong – to each other and to others – and where they are loved and accepted without condition.

Gemini Falls is an arduously intense story in many respects, going deep into what happens to people and society as a whole when a great stressor like the Great Depression tips the status quo on its head, and how that can place untold stress on people and places already struggling with secrets, impetuses and impulses that cannot see the light of day, but it is also a love letter to family and belonging and how even when the worst of things happen to us, when we have somewhere to belong and people to belong to, we can survive anything, even when everything changes and there’s a little less mystery left in the world.

A very good debut novel. Set in country Australia, the prose and descriptions really capture small town Australia. Set in 1930, the novel describes the difficult times during the depression, and the way it affected the everyday man. Although this novel is a whodunnit, it was very well done, and kept you guessing until the answer was revealed. Although a little slow in places, overall I enjoyed the characters, plot and descriptive writing.

Gemini Falls is the sort of debut that makes you feel sorry for the author; it’s so good that you wonder how they could possibly improve on it with future works.

In Melbourne in 1930 the Depression is starting to bite, and an outbreak of polio is striking fear into parents’ hearts. Morris Turner is 13 and doesn’t really understand these things. Nor does he understand his father Jude, a police detective who won’t talk about anything important: not his work, and definitely not the long ago death of Morris’ mother.

When a young girl is murdered in Jude’s hometown, Gemini Falls, he’s sent to investigate. As he’ll be there a while, he takes Morris and Morris’ sister Lottie, with him. There they meet unknown relatives – Jude’s brother Joseph, his wife, and their daughter Flo. Flo and her mother are immediately welcoming, but Joseph is a harsh man who seems resentful of Jude.

Small though the town is, it has plenty of problems. The Depression is biting here too, and the townsfolk are up in arms about the murder. There’s an abundance of accusations, but Jude needs proof. Morris and Flo are determined to help him find it.

This is a sensitive picture of a boy on the cusp between childhood and young adulthood. He’s younger than you’d expect of a contemporary 13 year old, and he doesn’t understand everything around him. He sees many of the undercurrents without grasping their cause. His cousin Flo, brassy and insensitive, doesn’t see either the undercurrents or causes, and keeps plunging in where others would hold back a little.

Morris’ growth is an absorbing and central plank of the novel. Wilson shows us his gradual awakening to the shades of gray around him, the dangers of secrets, and the many ways that longing can shape a person. I loved watching as his understanding grew, and loved that Wilson portrayed this without needing to spell everything out.

The murdered girl is an almost invisible character; although her death has galvanised many people, we never learn much about her. Her death is an important catalyst for the novel, but the formal murder investigation is not a big part of the novel either.

The novel is mostly a fascinating and subtle exploration of multiple characters, relationships, and the stresses of a difficult economic time. It’s a vivid picture of the onset of the Great Depression. I found it effective. Many of the behaviours and reactions portrayed in the novel are timeless, although the events evoking some of them are unique to the period.

This is a great novel. A wonderful reading experience. It’s subtle but powerful, well written and vividly imagined. I’d call it primarily a character study – of multiple characters – and I enjoyed it immensely. It has many rewards for a thoughtful reader.

WOW. This book is so beautifully written. The story is so captivating, really putting you in the middle of Depression Era Australia. The imagery is so descriptive, with the common theme of stars and space, connecting the story the whole way through. I needed to stay up until I finished it last night, and it left me feeling like I had seriously been changed by reading it.