Book review: The Valley by Chris Hammer

The Valley by Chris Hammer is the fourth in the Ivan Lucic / Nell Buchanan series and again the former journalist offers an investigation that becomes personal with Nell discovering a link to a murder victim. And again Hammer is able to combine a whodunnit with social commentary on the (former) logging industry and its workers clashing with environmentalists; the impact on mining as well as mother nature on their surrounds; the need to balance the environmental AND economic sustainability of small communities; also moving into ecotourism, clean energy and pumped hydro.

A controversial entrepreneur is murdered in a remote mountain valley, but this is no ordinary case. Ivan Lucic and Nell Buchanan are soon contending with cowboy lawyers, conmen, bullion thieves and grave robbers.

But it's when Nell discovers the victim is a close blood relative, that the past begins to take on a looming significance.

What did take place in The Valley all those years ago? What was Nell's mother doing there, and what was her connection to troubled young police officer Simmons Burnside? And why do the police hierarchy insist Ivan and Nell stay with the case despite an obvious conflict of interest?

Hammer opens this in 1988 with the aftermath of a bank robbery-gone-wrong, resulting in a heist of $25m in cash and gold bullion and most of the thieves dead. He moves on then to the present and the murder of a local entrepreneur who ends up – VERY coincidentally – being related to Nell. And yes, it does seem overly coincidental though interestingly Hammer doesn’t make any attempt to include any motivation behind the coincidence as the connection is only discovered during the investigation rather than being a motive to have Nell and Ivan involved (which would have felt more feasible). Though after the discovery the pair are surprised their boss prefers them to lead the case rather than hand it over.

Although this is part of a series I hadn’t really remembered much about Nell’s mother Amber, or her backstory from previous books but it didn’t matter as some of those gaps are filled here. In fact much of this is set in the early to mid 1990s when Saltwood was trying to re-establish a gold mine that would again resurrect the dying town following the loss of timber industry. During that time we’re hosted by a young cop, Simmons Burnside, as well as Amber.

And in the present Nell is front and centre, given her links to the victim and a connection to the town she never knew existed. Initially it seems the events from the 1990s are merely a backdrop, but we learn there’s far more to it with the past igniting everything in the present when old secrets are (inadvertently) revealed.

I should mention fans of maps (cos I know there are some!) will appreciate that one of the area is included, which we’ve seen in Hammer’s previous books, offering up visual imagery that reflects his emotive descriptions of settings and surrounds.

As an aside, I must say I was confused by some of the names here as many are long or unusual: Wolfgang Burnside, Hannibal Earl, Cornell Obswith, Teramina Cloverton, Willard Halliday and Fred Wallington. Some were hard to remember so on a few occasions I had to flick back to remind myself who was who. But that’s a minor and probably very personal gripe and I’ve noticed I often struggle with large numbers of characters when I don’t read a book in a sitting and have to come back to it.

I very much enjoyed this book and Hammer continues to frame his prose and deliver a narrative in a way that doesn’t belabour the setting but places readers firmly in his fictional word, as if we’re privy to the events unfolding.

The Valley by Chris Hammer will be published in Australia by Allen and Unwin on 1 October 2024.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher for review purposes.