Gunshot Road: An Emily Tempest Investigation

By Adrian Hyland

Emily Tempest is appointed an aboriginal community police officer for the Moonlight Downs station. Investigating the possible murder of an elderly geologist, she encounters Danny, an emotionally fragile Stonehouse mob teenager who is traumatized by the image of “poison flowing green.” The terrain of Australia, a Japanese rock garden painter, a rash of unexplained illnesses, and the implausibility of two elderly friends killing each other present Emily with a unique puzzle.


From the Hardcover edition.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: May 1, 2010
• ISBN: 9781569478905

Reviews for Gunshot Road

[adonisguilfoyle · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Started with the second book in the series - again! - and panicked when the male author described the female character's breasts on page two, but Emily's narrative voice and the crazy outback lifestyle of a part-Aboriginal police liaison officer soon won me over. Adrian Hyland has created a detective gem in Emily Tempest, and I'm definitely going to read the first novel, Diamond Dove.I looked out the window onto the sad, sunblasted streets of Bluebrush. Not much to see. A dog struggled against the tide of heat, tongue lolling; it bunched up, dropped a jobbie on the pavement. A mad-looking fellow in lycra jogged past. Walked past, if strictly truthful, but moving as if he meant it. Poncing down the road like he had a duck shoved up his arse.'This is the portrait of a small town in the Northern Territory of Australia which captured my imagination, and in Emily's wonderfully droll voice. She has been drafted into the police as a liaison officer after proving her amateur detective prowess in the first novel - I presume! - but soon starts pushing boundaries - and her boss' buttons - when an eccentric old geologist, and family friend, is murdered. What had old Doc found out about the land that got him killed?I grew to love Emily, even when she pointedly walked into a dangerous situation like a teenage girl from a 1970s horror film. She's plain-spoken, like all the best Aussie characters, and a great mix of Aboriginal mysticism and outback hardiness. The other characters are equally likeable, apart from the 'bad guys' of course!The plot kept me reading, but I can't tell if I predicted the 'whydunit' or was just slightly disappointed. Either way, this book is definitely character- and location-led, so I didn't mind spending 400 pages with Emily. Back to book one!

[fmrox · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

2nd in a series by Hyland an Australian author. Emily Tempest is a biracial Australian hired as a police officer go between in the Australian outback. This is a rough, gritty area and a rough, gritty novel. I didn't enjoy the dangerous situations she put herself in and definitely did not enjoy the magical element near the end for which there was no warning of. Read for a reading group and won't be continuing any other in the series. I did enjoy the description of the Australian land.

[brian55_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Great plot. Interesting reading about Australian culture in the outback.

[smik_3 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

When Tom McGillivray, superintendent of the Bluebush Police and an old friend of the Tempest clan, came up with some paid employment for Emily as an Aboriginal Community Police Officer, she was happy to accept. The deal was that she would spend a month in Bluebush in training and then she'd be based at Moonlight Downs as its ACPO.Emily's just come back from a short training course in Darwin in time to catch the tail end of the Bluebush aboriginal community's Young Man's Time. On her way from the women's camp to work she stops and washes off her body art under a garden hose, and dons her oversize police uniform. That in itself seems symbolic, as she attempts to bridge two cultures.She arrives at work to find that there's been a murder: One oldie has killed another out at Green Swamp Well, and McGillivray is in hospital, his place taken by a new senior sergeant Bruce Cockburn. On their way to the crime scene Emily senses something out of place and discovers a Range Rover that's gone off the road, its occupants spilled into the gully and in need of help.When they eventually make it to Green Swamp Well, Emily finds that she knows both the victim, and the apparent perpetrator, two eccentrics who had a history of argumentation, but were underneath it all the best of mates.Emily was never going to get on with Senior Sergeant Cockburn: where he tries to simplify things, she sees complications. Emily's aboriginal background gives her a heightened sense of disturbed balance. He reminds her that she is simply meant to be a liaison officer not an investigator, but Emily really can't help herself.There is such a lot to like about this book: starting with Emily herself and her unexpected sense of humour, and then there is such a range of interesting and intriguing characters, and description that takes you right into the heart of the outback. I like the way Hyland layers our introduction to people and events. One or two characters from his earlier novel DIAMOND DOVE make an appearance. Emily herself seems more certain of who she is, and she has a status with the locals that I didn't pick up in the earlier novel.The author says, in the blog post he wrote for Readings:Takes a little time for the country to get to know you......It is this world-view, and its ongoing clash with the threshing machine of Western materialism, that lies at the heart of Gunshot Road. I find this conflict utterly compelling, and of great significance; I have no hesitation in recommending that you find a copy of GUNSHOT ROAD.

[cathyskye · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

First Line: I closed my eyes, felt the ragged harmonies flowing through my head.Working as an Aboriginal Community police officer, the half-Aboriginal, half-white Emily Tempest is working the harsh land of northern Australia. It doesn't take long for her to encounter her first dead body-- an old prospector she knew as a child. Trouble is, her boss has already figured out who the murderer is and wants Emily to mind her own business and work the night shift in town like a good little Abo girl. Emily believes the old prospector-- and the man they have thrown in prison--deserve much better than that, and she goes her own way, conducting her own investigation. Emily has never been afraid of getting into a fight, but during the course of her travels along Gunshot Road, she finds the hard knocks to be much worse than she'd anticipated.This is an excellent follow-up to Hyland's first book, Moonlight Downs (published elsewhere as Diamond Dove). Emily is most definitely an amateur detective; she leads with her heart instead of her head, and she has a tendency to make mistakes. If she's lucky, the mistakes aren't painful, but she's not always lucky. In fact, if you have a strong aversion to violence against women, there is one scene in this book that you will want to avoid. For that matter, Emily's world is dirty and rough. People don't always bathe as often as they should, they use whatever language they feel like using, and violence is often a way of life. Expect grit and realism as you read about Emily.Having a foot in two worlds, Emily has reaped some of the benefits of the white world: she has furthered her education, and she is a world traveler. However, she cannot and will not ignore injustice, especially to the Aboriginal people among whom she spent her childhood.Each character in this book seems to fit perfectly into the hot and dusty land, and as much as I enjoy Hyland's plot, pacing and characters, one of the main reasons why I love his books is because of the landscape. It reminds me of my own chosen one: "I wasn't paying a huge amount of attention to the road, I admit-- a nasty habit I've acquired since coming back out bush. Sometimes I even read while I'm driving. Nothing heavy, mind you-- crime, perhaps, maybe a magazine. I'm not the only culprit, I'm sure. Meeting another vehicle out here is an event of such magnitude you tend to get out and talk about it."Like the Australian Outback, there are places here in the Arizona desert where you can drive all day long and never meet another living soul outside of a snake and a lizard or two. If you do meet someone out in this vast emptiness, you acknowledge each other. You are no longer in the city, and anonymity can get you killed. Although Hyland's territory is an exotic one, it does feel familiar to me even if I don't always understand the lingo.Story, pacing, characters, setting... these are four very important things to any book, but Hyland adds yet another element that makes his writing stand out: the Aboriginal culture. As much as I enjoyed this book, one sentence engraved itself on my mind because it voices something I've felt for a long time without ever putting it into words: "He bin say you not from here. You move too fast: more better you slow down, take time for the country to know you."Take time for the country to know you. In Gunshot Road, that is important advice from a people who have learned to live in rhythm with a very special land. Outside of Gunshot Road it is excellent advice for us all to follow.If you haven't tasted a book written by Adrian Hyland, you've been missing a banquet.

[austcrimefiction · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

GUNSHOT ROAD is the second Emily Tempest novel from Australian author Adrian Hyland. Set in the outback of Australia, GUNSHOT ROAD has one of those magnificently authentic Australian voices that you just know comes from an author who knows his place, and his characters very very well.Emily Tempest is a tricky woman. She's one of those mouthy, stubborn, opinionated women who will do what she believes is right, no matter who or what says no. She's going to stick to her case, she's going to support her people, she's going to follow her instinct - and everybody else, well they can like it or lump it. Either way - their choice. Emily's her own woman. Joining the police seems like an inexplicable decision for a woman like Emily. And then again, it doesn't - nothing like fighting the system from within after all. Besides, none of her colleagues have the slightest idea what or who she is or what she'll do next. Least of all somebody "Acting" as the boss. Poor Cockburn - he's new in town and he doesn't quite get the idea that you never, ever ever poke a snake with a stick.When Doc is found dead in his shack, a hammer in his throat and his latest combatant drunk and snoring away in the bunk beside him, Cockburn and just about everybody else is happy to accept the bleeding obvious. Emily knows something's not right and she knows these people - Doc, the accused Wireless, the community, and she comes to know the artist sitting on the rockface above Doc's who can also see the strange patterns in the landscape.DIAMOND DOVE, the first Emily Tempest novel was a really really good book, but GUNSHOT ROAD is more. Much much more. Hyland's taken this book further into country, aboriginal lore and lifestyle. Whilst weaving a tale of death, deception and much nefarious goings on, which is a reasonable puzzle, carefully laid out, and ultimately plausible. Perhaps a little too plausible. But more than that, into this western "plausibility" Hyland has seamlessly woven Aboriginal lore and dreaming. He's also not shied away from the less savoury aspects of these outback communities and the ravages of the difficult balancing act between traditional and western life for so many people. But he does that with a wonderful touch, with an inspirational feeling of true admiration and affection for these people.I read GUNSHOT ROAD on a cold Central-Western Victorian day, sat in front of an open fire. Yet I could see the heat haze. Taste the bulldust as it swirled around my feet. Hear the beautiful, haunting, glorious sound of singing to country. I could see Emily, I could sense her exasperation, feel her frustration, hear the determination. GUNSHOT ROAD made me yearn to be out there, perhaps to come across Emily and maybe cheer a bit from a safe distance. To be privileged enough to really hear language, that singing to country and to witness the intrinsic, heartfelt, deep connection to place and a way of life. GUNSHOT ROAD has left me so very very pleased that Hyland wrote a second book, hoping there is a third, and filled with the need to pack the car and head off into the place that Hyland writes so well.

[seriousgrace · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In the last Emily Tempest installment, Emily had just returned to the Outback. When we catch up to her in Gunshot Road, she has settled in as a Aboriginal Community Police Officer (ACPO) for the Bluebush police department. Only half the uniform fits her and she is "allergic to authority" so the job isn't sitting with her as comfortably as she (and others) would like. To top it off, her superior is a by-the-book replacement by the name of Bruce Cockburn. Cockburn is filling in for Emily's old friend, Tom MacGillivray while Tom is hospitalized. Unfortunately, Bruce doesn't get Emily at all. All the barriers are there; the biggest being gender. As a female investigator she isn't taken seriously. Being biracial doesn't help either. Her very first case is a murder investigation at the Green Swamp Well Roadhouse and she has very little support during the investigation. Par for the course, someone is covering up something much bigger.As an aside, Emily is someone I could kick back with and enjoy a beer. I admire her smart, funny, and courageous attitude. I do not, however, believe she could fire a shotgun with her big toe while wrestling, with her hands tied, with a 200lb+ brute. As you can probably tell, there is a lot of violence in Hyland novels.Best part of Gunshot Road: Emily's best friend, Hazel, and boyfriend, Jojo, are back. Yes!

[condorena · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a story of many things, of murder, of hate, of greed and of violence all told over the haunting music of the outback, deep in the heart of Australia. It begins when Emily Tempest of a Young Man’s Time ceremony where she is joining with the women of the group in their song.
'You could imagine those great song cycles rolling across country, taking their shape from what they encountered scraps of language, minerals and dreams, a hawk’s flight, a feather’s fall, the flash of a meteorite.'

Emily Tempest is just back from training and is to start as Aboriginal Community Police Officer for her outback township Bluebush. This will be an odd job for Emily for although she is well educated, intelligent and part of the community she has always resisted authority herself. But she has a sense of the rhythms of her people and can see below the surface of the obvious problems of alcohol, prejudice, poverty and now drugs. One of her problems will be her new boss who is new to the territory and a by the book kind of man named Sergeant Cockburn.


Before her first day is over there is the murder of an old geologist who was getting a little crazy and a friend of his is arrested. Knowing the men Emily can’t accept the pat verdict that the rest of the force is eager to swallow to settle the case. The old man Doc as he was known had been surveying the Fuego Desert. He had traversed it from east to west and mapped it completely including ranges, ridges glaciers and water fields.

Emily convinces Sergeant Cockburn to let her take a trip out there. Along with her against regulations she takes along people who know the area well. She meets one old man called Eli Windmill. The specific area that is headed to is Eli’s dreaming. It is called Dingo Springs and Eli called it a fire-dreaming place.

Windmill is blind but when the party gets to Dingo springs Eli knows something is terribly wrong. Other members of the tribe also can sense some thing wrong and they leave immediately. The difficulty is this is all too vague for Emily to bring to Cockburn. Now however there are attempts being made on Emily’s life and the violence escalates Emily’s wits are all that help her because she has a tendency to tackle everything on her own.

I liked this book and the first of the series Moonlight Downs AKA Diamond Dove very much.

[bsquaredinoz · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Emily Tempest has become the world’s most unlikely cop, an Aboriginal Community Police Officer no less. On her first day on the job in Bluebush in the Northern Territory she is one of the officers called to the scene of a stabbing out at Green Swamp Well. On the surface it looks like an open and shut case: two old drunks got into a fight and one stabbed the other in the neck. But to Emily, who knows both the victim (Doc) and the suspect (Wireless), something doesn’t feel right and she can’t let the investigation slide.

Gunshot Road has it all. Literally. Everything I could possibly want from a work of fiction all in one gorgeous package.

First there are fantastic characters. Emily Tempest is brave and stubborn and smart and funny and, as was the case with the first book in which she features, I’m still not entirely sure how a bloke can create such a credible female character but I’m delighted he has. In this book she is more mature than in her first outing though she still struggles when she knows what she should do is not what she wants to do and usually her heart wins out over her head. For better or worse.

There are plenty of other beautifully depicted characters to look out for too. Like the teenage Aboriginal boy called Danny who is deeply troubled by something and unable to communicate his fears to Emily. And the town’s new top cop, taciturn and uncomprehending of all the things he doesn’t know, but trying to do the right thing in his way. And of course the setting, the harsh land in the country’s centre, is just as much a character as any person in the book.

The desert isolation, the unrelenting heat, the laconic humour, the often awkward relationships between blacks and whites all combine to form an unmistakably Australian story. It’s not always a pretty one though and no one could accuse Hyland of trying to make it so because he tackles touch subjects such as the rampant domestic abuse of women in Aboriginal communities, endemic poverty and racism. However he somehow manages to do it without once lecturing from a self-proclaimed moral high ground. That’s a much rarer trait than it ought to be in modern literature.

Next there is writing that made me simultaneously jealous at someone else’s ability to string words together in a way that I will never be able to and grateful that he didn’t keep his gift to himself. This is from the opening chapter about an initiation

The town mob: fractured and deracinated they might have been, torn apart by idleness and violence, by Hollywood and booze. But moments like these, when people come together, when they try to recover the core, they gave you hope.

It was the songs that did it: the women didn’t so much sing them as pick them up like radio receivers. You could imagine those great song cycles rolling across country, taking their shape from what they encountered: scraps of language, minerals and dreams, a hawk’s flight, a feather’s fall, the flash of a meteorite.

The resonance of that music is everywhere, even here, on the outskirts of the whitefeller town, out among the rubbish dumps and truck yards. It sings along the wires, it rings off bitumen and steel.

I could go on but I’d end up quoting the whole book. In short, Hyland’s writing is a thing of beauty and the entire book is, in part, one long ode to its country.

Finally there is a great story and Gunshot Road is a more solid piece of crime fiction than its predecessor. For the first half of the novel there’s a fairly slow, humorous approach to the investigation as we’re introduced to all the players and people tease Emily about her new obsession. Then at a certain point the novel switches gears and speeds up as it becomes more serious and foreboding. Together these halves make up a perfectly paced story with a genuine nail-biting finish.

Heck the book even incorporates, glorifies actually, geology, my favourite science. What more could I possibly ask for? Gunshot Road is a funny, beautiful, sad and thoughtful book that everyone should read. Immediately.