Matthew Spencer's debut novel Black River a compelling read

There's the short title, evoking a sense of place; the story, a murder; the characters, the usual trope of troubled journalists and corrupt law enforcement.

These books land on your desk with some regularity and it's hard not to view them with the eye of one who is perhaps, as Spencer reflects, mired in the "calcified seam of middle-aged time servers" in the newsroom.

Thankfully, Black River lives up to the hype. It's a compelling read.

Allen & Unwin publishing director Tom Gilliat says Spencer "belongs in the same Australian crime pantheon as Jane Harper, Chris Hammer and Christian White, and Black River is going to propel him there".

Spencer himself can't quite believe it. He was a journalist with The Australian for 20 years, with long stints on the foreign news desk and opinion pages. He never wanted to be a novelist.

"As a journalist I think I would have loved to find the right non-fiction book to write but they don't come along that often," he says.

"I'd never really thought about fiction, I read a lot of fiction, my degree is in English literature, but I never gave it a moment's thought because I didn't think I knew how to do it."

When he left The Australian in 2016, he decided to give himself a few years to take a shot.

"I just assumed you'd have to have it all mapped out but what I found was that you just needed a good idea and just start from there."

He also believed in the maxim of "write what you know".

Spencer grew up in the grounds of The King's School in Parramatta. His father was a chemistry teacher there and the position enabled his family to live on campus year round.

In Black River, a young woman is found murdered on the grounds of the fictional Prince Albert College. Is she the latest victim of the serial killer the public have dubbed the "Blue Moon Killer", or is there something more sinister going on along the banks of the Parramatta River?

Journalist Adam Bowman, like Spencer, grew up on the grounds of the college. Thirty years later he's battling alcohol, demons from his past, but his inside knowledge of the school and how that rarified private school system functions, might prove useful to the newsroom and the police.

When he's sent out late at night to help a colleague with the story, he discovers more than he and the police might want him to know.

Spencer has nothing but good memories of his time living on the school's grounds.

"It was kind of like a weird English village, on these beautiful grounds, with about 20 other families who had kids my age, my sister's age, during holidays we just had the run of the place," he said.

"It was a wonderful place to grow up, with wonderful people, and now I've sort of defiled it by turning it into a horrible story."

He's right. It is horrible. Dark, moody, scary at times, quite graphic. And that's what sets the book apart from its peers to some extent.

He didn't mean for it to be so sinister. The first couple of drafts weren't so much so, but his editor, Meredith Rose, suggested perhaps it could be a little nastier.

The Parramatta River and the creeks that run off it, provide a setting that hides not only dead bodies, but other secrets nestled on its banks.

What brings the story into the light, in a way, is Spencer's cast of interesting characters. Bowman rivals Jane Harper's Aaron Falk. Bowman is fallible, questioning, vulnerable, broken. He's got too many secrets of his own and is never above suspicion himself. Could he know so much about the murders because he's the actual murderer?

His foil is Detective Sergeant Rose Riley, set to join the list of strong female characters such as those written by Sarah Bailey. They form an unsteady alliance, Riley realising his inside knowledge could be helpful. The potential for a personal relationship also provides some twists and turns.

"As a first time author I had to work on character development, how do you do that?" he says.

"My editor would say they're a bit one-dimensional at the moment, you need to put flesh on the bones.

"I didn't want Bowman to come across as some crime-solving hero. He's a journalist. I wanted him to be realistic and more flawed ... vulnerable, maybe not cowardly, he's not cowardly but he's certainly not a hero."

READ MORE:

Another thing Spencer does well is a few little snipes at the state of modern journalism.

Bowman works for the fictitious paper The National, "the only remaining broadsheet in Australia", where the news floor is full of empty desks and filing cabinets full of useless history.

All that's left are the kids on the website, and the "odd boomer columnist bravely braying on" and us middle-aged time servers filling large print holes and writing headlines that fit across a page.

"I was one of them," says the 52-year-old. "And I feel bad, kind of, that I've abandoned ship, some of those people are still great friends of mine, but it's interesting to leave the profession and look back on it."

He doesn't think journalism and novel writing have much in common.

"They're just completely different disciplines," he says.

"I did do a lot of research for the novel, using those journalism skills, interviewing police officers and forensic doctors and the like, to set me on the right path, or help when I got stuck.

"But just having the freedom to write, to write the ending I wanted, to take it where it went, to make it entertaining, that was just an amazing feeling.

"Journalism was hard work at times."

He knew he wanted to write a crime novel, because they're the books he likes to read. He likes Peter Temple, particularly Truth and The Broken Shore; "he's the bedrock of Australian crime".

He read Peter Corris growing up; now the likes of Chris Hammer, Jane Harper and Sarah Bailey. He really enjoyed Shelley Burr's Wake and Hayley Scrivenor's Dirt Town.

"Internationally, my favourite books of all time are Thomas Harris' early books, Red Dragon and Silence of the Lambs."

Perhaps this is where a little of the sinister sneaks in. Can't wait for the sequel which he's working on now.