by Margaret Hickey
Publisher: Penguin Books Australia, 2025
Review
by Carol Woeltjes
‘Beneath every country town there is a low hum of action. Discernible only to locals and dogs.’
How does a person end up hanging from the blade of a wind turbine? It might be conceivable if the person is alive and had shimmied out there under their own steam, but not so much if they’re dead.
The beautiful rolling hills surrounding Carrabeen are home to cows, tractors, those people who know a thing or two about cows and tractors and, increasingly, wind turbines. Many neighbouring farmers have sold their properties to the local success story, Geordie Pritchard, fuelling his sustainability dreams. This upsets other locals not so keen on what that sustainability looks like, and its impact on farmable land.
The story is told from Belinda, a local cop’s, point of view. She grew up in the area but has only recently returned from the city and is finding the familiarity both comforting and claustrophobic. When she has to investigate the death of someone she went to primary school with, that’s a whole other thing.
Belinda is one of my favourite fictional people, she is the kind of person I want to have a chat with. Her wry sense of humour and sarcasm are relatable and appealing, and the dynamic between her and many of the other characters is just priceless.
As the investigation progresses, I found myself questioning the behaviour of many of the townspeople; some gave me the creeps, and others had me really pondering their lack of subtlety. Now I know someone was going to be guilty, but it couldn’t be all those I suspected at one point or another.
Margaret Hickey showed her writerly skill when it came to wrapping up all my odd feelings and niggling questions, not to mention the way she planted them in my way in the first place. I loved the little meta-asides where a detective is pondering their resemblance to ‘fictional’ detectives, or the name-drop of someone that readers who are familiar with Hickey’s previous novels will recognise.
These wonderful nuggets combined with the serious make this an absolute gem of a novel. An Ill Wind does not shy away from the issues impacting us all, climate change, financial hardship, homelessness and class divisions, but it does it with humour and consideration. Not to put the pressure on, but I desperately hope I get to go back to Carrabeen. I really want to spend more time with the locals, particularly Belinda.
Publisher’s blurb
The exciting new rural crime novel from the bestselling author of Broken Bay and The Creeper. When a massive wind farm is erected on its outskirts, a small Victorian town is ripped apart in the deadliest of ways.
High on a hill above the small Victorian town of Carrabeen, 300 wind turbines constantly spin.
Except one is now deadly still – a body hanging from its huge white blade.
Detective Sergeants Belinda Burney and Will Lovell are shocked to discover the dead man is Geordie Pritchard, a rich local philanthropist and owner of the wind energy farm.
Suicide at first seems the likely explanation, until Geordie’s widow Lucinda insists her husband was murdered – and she has the death threats to prove it.
Certainly the wind farm has ripped the rural town in two. Some welcome the jobs and prosperity it brings, others are enraged by the loss of farming land.
In short, Pritchard was both saint and sinner. But who in the small community hated him enough to want him dead?