Poppy Gee

Thanks to Scene of the Crime for the ARC of Vanishing Falls. This novel, set in Australia, is about a small town that was once a thriving place, but now it’s poor with a meth addiction problem. There is a wealthy family, Jack and Celia Lily, that own the Calendar House. Jack has recently acquired a valuable and rare painting. Most people don’t think highly of the Lilys. Their friends, Kim and Cliff, run a poultry farm, but Cliff is a meth addict, and Kim is trying to manage their show more finances. Joelle is married to the butcher, Brian, and she is hiding a terrible secret about her past. Brian is c overly protective of Joelle. Finally, Brendan and Karen Keegan are a couple who own a junkyard, and they have a weird connection to Jack.
When Celia goes missing, Jack is automatically a suspect. He swears his innocence as the town searches for Celia. The novel lays out a tale retracing what happened before and after her disappearance. The clues are all there, and the reader can easily determine who caused Celia‘s disappearance. However, you may not guess the full motive, and the unlikely friendship that is made.
I enjoyed this novel, although I think there could have been some more crispness in the story, especially around Joelle’s back story. I would be interested in reading more from this author.
#VanishingFalls #PoppyGee #SceneOfTheCrime #HarperCollins #NetGalley show less

The idyllic holiday community at the Bay of Fires has been meeting each summer for years. But things change, children grow up, parents get older, and at the core of what seems like paradise, decay grows.
It takes Hall Flynn's outsider's eye to pick some of the fragility.

Deep in the national park on the east coast of Tasmania, three or four hours by car from Launceston, Bay of Fires is sufficiently isolated to make communications slow. The novel is set over the Christmas Day to New Year's Day show more holidays.

This time the dead person is an outsider, a backpacker, and no-one is willing to put everything together. The shack owners don't reveal all they know. Just twelve months earlier one of their own children disappeared without trace and the sea conveniently bore the blame for that too.

Poppy Gee does a clever job of weaving sub-plots, such as why Sarah Avery has come home and why Hall Flynn is not romantically attached, in with the main mystery of what happened to the backpacker. The tension between the shack owners and the incoming campers is well depicted, as is the willingness to blame a local resident who is not "normal". Investigating the backpacker's death is carried out by Sarah and Hall, sometimes together, sometimes independently.

The setting almost plays the role of another character and certainly sent me off researching.

This was an engaging and refreshing read, another new author to watch. show less

This novel takes its name from its setting: a beautiful stretch of Tasmania’s east coast which does exist in the real world, though here it is given a village, a shop and a camp ground which do not. The spot forms the backdrop for a group of holiday shacks which have been used by the same families for years. Last summer a local teenage girl went missing and hasn’t been seen since, now the body of a young European tourist has been found. And the question on everyone’s mind…is one of show more them responsible?

My family used to holiday in the same beachside location every summer so I immediately felt a connection to BAY OF FIRES. I even recognised a lot of the just-beneath-the-surface discords on display amongst the regular visitors. Gee does a good job of showing both the monotony and the comfort offered by this sort of set-up and provides two key characters to show the reader what’s really going on in this community.

Sarah Avery offers the insider’s perspective. She is the eldest daughter of one of the regular families and is a somewhat reluctant participant in this year’s holiday, partly because she is coming to grips with some troubles in her personal life. She’s staying with her parents and younger sister. Hall Flynn, a journalist for a Launceston newspaper who has been assigned to cover the story, provides the outsider’s point of view. He takes a room at the guest house at which the girl whose body has been found was staying. Between them, these two piece together the story of what has happened to the two girls, Sarah using her knowledge of the regulars and Hall using his observational skills and ability to ease himself into local events without causing too many ripples.

BAY OF FIRES succeeds as a work of observation about a small community that appears to be close-knit on the surface. The death and disappearance – and the almost total lack of formal progress on either case – highlight all the personality clashes and not-so-petty differences of opinion that have been lying dormant for years. People’s fears lead to finger pointing, attempts at vigilante justice and plain meanness and I found this element of the book – a kind of character study en masse – quite enthralling.

As a work of crime fiction I thought it a little less successful, with the resolution being somewhat obvious and the lack of police presence and progress not being explained terribly satisfactorily. That said, I did appreciate the crime’s unconventional resolution as it seemed to be in keeping with the world Gee had depicted.

Overall this début novel has much to commend it and I will certainly be on the lookout for more of Gee’s writing. In BAY OF FIRES she has demonstrated a flair for depicting evocative settings and the personality shifts that happen to average people when unexpectedly terrible things happen around them. show less

Vanishing Falls was an atmospheric mystery with a unique setting that had me eager to pick it up. I've never read a mystery set in the Tasmanian rainforest so a book set there had me instantly intrigued. Also, that cover is absolutely gorgeous! Joelle's character though is what made this book standout for me. She was just one of those characters that I instantly cared about. There is something different about her that the author never fully explains. I think that her past has a lot to do show more with it even though I didn't feel like we were given enough information to fully confirm that. It's my theory at least (and if you've read this one, let me know if you agree). Anyways, for me this book was more about the characters than the mystery. There were a bunch of different characters and for me I enjoyed reading about them and getting to know their motivations behind their actions. I admit that I wasn't as focused on the mystery itself which isn't a negative at all. I was curious on what had happened to Celia but early on I had a theory on who was behind it all. My enjoyment of this book really came from getting to know more about the characters (especially Joelle) and how all of these different tiny details related to Celia's disappearance. The characters weren't all likable at times but I still wanted to understand them. I really don't know how else to explain it. It was just an intriguing, quieter book that I really enjoyed throughout. I'm looking forward to reading more by this author and seeing what else she has written. The focus on all of the characters and unique setting really made this book stand out for me.

Overall, I enjoyed my time with this book and definitely plan to read more by this author. This is more of a slow burn mystery that really focuses on the characters. I thought that the author did a wonderful job portraying the characters and the struggles that they faced. I think that mystery readers who enjoy quiet mysteries that are character focused will really enjoy this one. I was trying to think of another book that I've read to compare this one to but I really can't. It's unique and a great addition to the mystery genre because of that. Recommended!

Bottom Line: A book with characters that I still think about every now and then.

Disclosure: I received a copy of this book thanks to the publisher. Honest thoughts are my own. show less