Very well written and full of twists and turns. I wouldn't necessarily call this a thriller but the mystery aspect was intriguing and kept me hooked until the end.

I really liked this "mystery within a mystery." Set in the small fictional Australian town of Rainier, Shelly Burr introduces the reader to Gemma, owner of a tea room and hotel, central to a triple murder fifteen years prior.
Rainier still harbors old wounds from the Rainier Ripper, a killer who still sits in prison. Now, a tour company wants to make a killing from the ghastly murders and disrupt the still-healing community.
Gemma, her teenage daughters and cop husband are against the tour, as is the whole town.
When the tour guide is found butchered in the town fountain, the site of a Ripper murder, a new terror embraces Rainier.
Is the killer one of Gemma's guests? Are they tied to the past? Is Rainier ready for another bloodbath?
Only the real Ripper knows. Former detective, now inmate Lane must interview and learn the truth before Gemma and her family succumb to a new monster hiding in plain sight.
Take a trip to Murder Town, Australia. Burr's double mystery is fast, clever and filled with bloody red herrings.

This book was good, but not great. I did like the connections between the characters and how they continued to build. However, nothing really stood out as outstanding. It was a generic mystery/thriller. I also feel as though the story ended abruptly. I would have liked to hear the questioning that happened with Christian, Ruth and Nico along with Hugh and Aubrey. Thank you for the opportunity to read and review!

I loved another book by this author so went into this one with high expectations, which generally is not a good thing and not the fault of the author. It is more of a cozy mystery, small town, lots of characters that have known each other for a long time and the various secrets, issues between them that get stirred up when someone gets murdered. It seems like the same serial killer that killed three others from the town, but he is in jail, so....... This book was slow and at times the characters got mixed up in my mind. It wasn't a favorite of mine but would read others by this author

3.5 stars

This book had some interesting twists and turns but it was so slow paced that I found I had a hard time staying focused. For the majority of the book it feels like nothing happens and I kept getting bored and not wanting to pick this book back up. Even knowing how everything tied together it feels like there was a lot of unnecessary filler that just didn’t really add to the story for me.
There were also a lot of characters in this book and I had a hard time remembering who was who and how they were related to/involved with each other.
If you’re looking for a slow paced mystery/thriller about a small town full of suspicious people you might like this book. It’s definitely not a fast paced, action filled story but I think knowing what to expect going into it helps.

Thank you to NetGalley and William Morrow for the ARC!

3.5/5 ⭐️

Murder Town' is a good thriller with a decent mystery at its heart. It's filled with old secrets and present-day lies. It's set in a small town that has suffered a steady decline in the fifteen years since the murders, blighting the lives of the remaining locals while also seeming to offer them their only path to survival. The suspect pool is small but interesting. Best of all, although the man convicted of the killings is in jail, another murder is committed in the same style at a time when most of the townsfolk are gathered together.

The story is told mostly from the point of view of Gemma Guillory, a lifelong resident of the town, who has a personal connection to the killings, is (unhappily) married to a local police detective, has secrets of her own and is just starting to discover that she knows much less about her neighbours than she thought she did. As she tries to figure out who did the latest killings she has to rethink her relationship with everyone around her and re-evaluate what really happened fifteen years earlier.

I liked Gemma Guilory and I became engaged in her search for the truth, especially as it started to put her safety at risk.

This book is much more plot-driven and while the twists and surprises add tension and excitement, they're most definitely not character-driven.

Unfortunately, this ended up being a DNF for me.

It wasn't for any glaringly awful reason. I just...kept losing interest.

I didn't love or hate the characters and I didn't love or hate the plot.

I just wasn't particularly entertained.

* ARC via Publisher

Add this to your TBR! Murder Town has all of the components you want in a thriller-- murder, mystery, secrets, spies, and intrigue. There are plenty of twists that come to light at the end, and I bet you don't see the main one coming! Nicely done, Ms. Burr!

This is the second book by this author that I've read. It is essentially a second story in the Lane Holland case and although he place a pivotal role, he's hardly in it. I'm not sure I buy the story that put him into it but outside of that I think it's a solid book. She really writes great small town characters, evokes so much of the rural mindset and feelings (I don't know rural Australia but I do know rural dryland US and they seem somewhat similar). There are a couple different threads here and most of them are resolved by the end but just enough left outstanding to make you think about books 3/more in this vein.

I received an advance copy from Netgalley and the publisher.

(Spoilers)
I liked this cozy cold case murder mystery for the first half. But there is a second part to the mystery that just makes the book crazy the second half. And it just kept getting crazier. There were a lot of unbelievable mistaken identities and idiotic police decisions (overlooking the business partner who had an insurance policy on the victim?).

It's hard to top the quality of the author's first novel, WAKE, and the presence of the likable Lane from that book was ill-placed. Overall, too much happening in this book.

Thank you William Morrow for the digital review copy.

I received a free copy of, Murder Town, by Shelley Burr, from the publisher and Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Gemma Guillory lives in Australia, Ranier, her town is famous for a serial killer who has never been caught. This was an interesting read, it was good, but I did not enjoy the language at times.

Murder Town by Shelley Burr is a dark and gripping thriller that is set in a small town in the Australian Outback. I'm not too sure how to rate this book. I had some difficulty with the pacing, seemed slow at the beginning. And I had a difficult time getting invested in the characters.

The story revolves around Gemma Guillory, who has lived in the Australian Outback enclave of Rainier her entire life. She knows the tiny, red-dust town’s ins and outs by heart, knows the people like they are her family, their quirks as if they were her own.

She also knows her once charming town is now remembered for one reason and one reason only: three innocent people died at the hands of a serial killer.

I kept reading because I wanted to find out what would happen. Overall, it is just an okay read for me.

#MurderTown #NetGalley @WmMorrowBooks

Murder Town by Shelley Burr takes place in a small Australian town called Rainier. Not much ever happened in Rainier, until a serial killer came to town. leaving three bodies in his wake, the Rainier Ripper is spending his time in prison when Lochlan Lewis comes to town to start a Ripper tour. Some of the townspeople hope the tour will bring in extra income. Others just want to forget. So when Lochlan ends up dead in the same way and in the same spot as the Ripper victims, everyone in town starts to re-think who the murdered truly is.
This story is a good mystery novel. Everyone in town is a suspect. Everyone is re-thinking their memories of the past. Everyone has something to hide. It is a nice quick read.

Thank you to NetGalley and William Morrow for the advanced copy. The opinions are my own.

This book wasn’t a fit for me. The story was convoluted and at the beginning I thought it was a cozy read but soon after I realized it wasn’t. Very confusing.

“Murder Town” by Shelley Burr is the second book in the PI Lane Holland series.
Lane is in prison for the entire novel and not the main character, but he does play a small part in the unraveling of the Ripper murder case. Gemma is the narrator and I enjoyed her perspective. The story has so many characters and twists that it’s hard to even summarize it.

Thank you NetGalley and William Morrow for allowing me to read this book early.Gemma Guillory has lived in Rainier her entire life . She knows the tiny town's ins and outs like the back of her hand, the people like they are her family, their quirks as if they were her own.I found the first half really slow and a bit difficult to get through.The last half of the book was a bit more engaging .