Mark Brandi – Wimmera (Literature Review)

In the rural town of Wimmera, Victoria in 1989, Ben and Fab spend nearly all their time together. They may be young and impressionable, but even they know it’s better to while away their days yabbying and dreaming of expensive possessions than to talk about the sinister side of their town … like why no one ever talks about his next door neighbour’s death, or the fact that Fab’s father becomes abusive after a few drinks.

So, when someone new disturbs the peaceful routine of their country lives, Ben can’t help but be intrigued. Little did he know that 20 years later, this stranger’s sudden appearance in their lives would continue to haunt them.

Even before its official release in mid-2017, praise for Mark Brandi’s debut novel was everywhere. In 2016, the novel won the Crime Writers’ Association Debut Dagger Award (UK), as well as a host of other prestigious prizes. Recently, Wimmera was among those shortlisted in the ABIAs and Brandi’s upcoming second novel, The Rip is highly anticipated by those in the industry and fans alike.

I couldn’t help but be drawn into the positive buzz surrounding Wimmera and approached the novel with high expectations of its literary prowess, particularly one that Books + Publishing labelled “literary crime fiction at its best”. Unfortunately, the higher your expectations, the bigger the disappointment.

Try as a I might, I could not (and still cannot) see what others see in this book. While it’s not necessarily a bad book, I can’t exactly call it a good book and my indecision over whether I actually enjoyed it is one of the reasons I have taken so long to write this review.

Sure, Wimmera’s subject matter is unsettling – just like some of the best suspense novels out there are – but for me it wasn’t suspenseful enough. Although I did get through the novel quite quickly, it was more out of a sense that I wanted to move on to another book than the fact that I was compelled to finish it. Within the first few pages I had an inkling of what was going to happen, so the story in between was, for me, just wasted time as I waited for them to hurry up and figure it out.

Now, I’m not saying that Brandi is a bad writer, because obviously the former journalist-turned-novelist does have a certain way with words. What I am saying is that maybe this wasn’t the book for me.

In my opinion, Wimmera didn’t quite live up to the hype surrounding it and fell a little flat in places where it should have triumphed. While this book didn’t endear itself to me, I would be interested in hearing the opinions of those who enjoyed it.

To find out more about Wimmera, Mark Brandi and other novels released by Hachette Books Australia, visit their new “crime-devoted” blog, Maximum Sentence.