Deep Water – Sarah Epstein | The Blue Room, Riverside Drive

‘I’m Tasmanian. We’re basically one big sleepy small town so I can spot a fake a mile away.’

It’s fun reviewing books. I don’t have tickets on myself that I’m particularly good at it, but I enjoy doing it immensely. I form my own opinions, but between finishing a tome and sitting down at my favourite nook, here beside the river, to write it up, I always take to the ether to see what others have made of it.

Just occasionally, what I read there may make me see the work of fiction, or reality, I’ve just completed in a new light. Sometimes, what I’ve struggled with, they have loved or, conversely, panned what I’ve adored. It’s always interesting. I suppose I should not have been surprised to see, when searching for what better scribes than I had to say about Sarah Epstein’s ‘Deep Water’, that the first one I hit on was written by my own daughter. After all, she had recommended it to me. I ask her to pass on the best of the YA she reads as I love the genre too – but she is far more up with it. A very fine novelist herself – I am biased, I know, but I think it’s a fair call – she’s eminently well positioned to comment on others. That’s especially the case when it comes to those set in small communities, as is Sarah’s – thus the opening quote from Katie’s review. As well, she is well placed to know the vicissitudes of the writerly life; of putting yourself out there in a work of art.

Obviously she loved ‘Deep Water’, as I did. In a way it is a pity that it is catergorised as YA and would be on the shelves of that section for most booksellers. Obviously the YA market is massive and burgeoning in itself, requiring skilled wordsmiths to sustain it , but it does mean this fine whodunnit would be bypassed by more mature readers. I’m fortunate to have my daughter passing them along to me. Like Katie, I have been recently converted to crime after I cottoned on to Jane Harper, Chris Robotham and now Dervla McTiernan.

And I concur with everything Kate says about the work and its wonderfully well delineated characters, especially the feisty lead. So, if you’re a devotee of crime, move across to the YA section and seek this oh so proficient author out if you’re in the same demographic as myself; that is OA (Old Adult). She’s a great addition to those who are currently making this a golden age for Aussie crime writers, whether they’re setting their sagas in the US, UK, Ireland, the parched outback, hardscrabble regional centres or in our cosmopolitan cities.

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