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

the details

I was fully engaged and interested right at the 3/4 mark in the book. I personally felt way too much detail not 100% relevant to the plot.

Wonderful

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

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!

Great story, one small annoyance

This is a great story. I always enjoy books where each chapter is told from a different character's point of view, each with distinctive voices. There was only one small annoyance - one too many soap-operatic backstories that seemed unneeded. At the end, I realized the purpose of this particular backstory, but I found it just a bit unneeded and distracting.

Dark, but brimming with humanity

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