Dirt Creek

A Novel

By: Hayley Scrivenor

Narrated by: Sophie Loughran

Winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Best LGBTQ+ Mystery!

In Hayley Scrivenor's Dirt Creek, a small-town debut mystery described as The Dry meets Everything I Never Told You, a girl goes missing and a community falls apart and comes together.

When 12-year-old Esther disappears on the way home from school in a small town in rural Australia, the community is thrown into a maelstrom of suspicion and grief. As Detective Sergeant Sarah Michaels arrives in town during the hottest spring in decades and begins her investigation, Esther’s tenacious best friend, Ronnie, is determined to find Esther and bring her home.

When schoolfriend Lewis tells Ronnie that he saw Esther with a strange man at the creek the afternoon she went missing, Ronnie feels she is one step closer to finding her. But why is Lewis refusing to speak to the police? And who else is lying about how much they know about what has happened to Esther?

Punctuated by a Greek chorus, which gives voice to the remaining children of the small dying town, this novel explores the ties that bind, what we try and leave behind us, and what we can never outrun, while never losing sight of the question of what happened to Esther, and what her loss does to a whole town.

A Macmillan Audio production from Flatiron Books

©2022 Hayley Scrivenor (P)2022 Macmillan Audio

Dark, but brimming with humanity

Love the characterizations of the people in the town, and the ending was completely surprising

Amazing narrator!

I enjoyed the narration so much. She did an amazing job with the different voices. I will look for more of her work!

Wonderful

Best book I've read in a long time and I've read some great books! yay!

A Good Listen..

An unusually literate writing, and a good story well read. One of the best of far too many I've listened to. Highly recommend.

Hurting children is the opposite of creative.

Children are the most vulnerable of victims, why choose to write about it. Low hanging fruit. The twist was unsurprising and yet still annoying.

Beautifully written

If you like Jane Harper, Chris Hammer, Tana French, Dervla McTiernan, you will enjoy this book.

Now that's what I call a debut

Wow. Just... wow. I've been making my way through the debut works in the past month and after a quite disappointing one, Dirt Creek made me feel eager to read all over again. Just as the title says: Scrivenor definitely made their mark and promise of greatness with this book. Characterization was through the roof. Just about a few chapters in and I was emotionally tethered already. With it being a mystery novel, the information reveal was inspired tbh. Made my mind race while at the same time throwing me off (in a *very* good way) at my every guess. Yes, there is a very good twist here. I call it good because Scrivenor had been sowing the details to support it since the very beginning. It definitely gave me that pleasurable 'ohhHhhhhhH' moment. Loughran's narration was absolutely stunning, as well. They did the voices pretty well, and was a definite factor in making me love/hate characters here and there. The modern appropriation of the Greek Chorus is a very nice touch, too. Not too loyal to the classical use for it, but not too liberal with it either. To end: Yes, spend your credit/money on this. The 10 hrs would literally fly by.

A Slow Rolling Beautifully Written Mystery

I am not a good reviewer. But when a book takes me by surprise I do like to at least give it a wing.

This story just rolls off the tongue and into your brain. Not fast paced, but told as it should be told. From the viewpoint of several children and many different adults. Life in a small rural town can be complicated and very interwoven and when tragedy strikes, you don't know who is to blame.

I am looking forward to other books by this author...

dark and anti-climactic

This story was alright, but had sort of a depressing tone throughout. I almost needed an org chart to follow all the characters. Most chapters were from the POV of children and their perspective of the adults is totally different from the chapters told from adult perspectives, making it difficult to track who is who. The "mystery" of the missing girl had a bunch of red herrings and an unsatisfactory wrap up. I finished the book and stayed engaged but not sure I would recommend it or look for more by this author.

story was great but..

I could have lived without the LGBTQ push. It seemed a bit forced and added nothing to the plot.