Paul Hirschhausen

Hirsch is a whistle-blower. Formerly a promising metropolitan officer, now hated and despised. Exiled to a one-cop station in South Australia’s wheatbelt. Threats. Pistol cartridge in the mailbox. So when he heads up Bitter Wash Road to investigate gunfire and finds himself cut off without backup, there are two possibilities. Either he’s found the fugitive killers thought to be in the area - or his ‘backup’ is about to put a bullet in him. He’s wrong on both counts. But the events that unfold turn out to be a lot more sinister.

Constable Paul Hirschhausen - "Hirsch" - is a recently demoted detective sent from Adelaide, Australia's southernmost booming metropolis, to Tiverton, a one-road town in rustic, backwater "wool and wheat" country three hours north. Hirsch is more than just a disgraced cop, a rumored whistle-blower - internal investigations is still trying to convict him of something, even if it means planting evidence, and someone has a bullet they'd like to put in his head, as has been made clear by the pistol cartridge left in his mailbox.

Constable Paul Hirschhausen has a snowdropper on his patch. Someone is stealing women’s underwear and Hirsch knows enough about that kind of crime - how it can escalate - not to take it lightly. But the more immediate concerns are a call from the high school, a teacher worried about a student who may be in danger at home. Another call, a different school: a man enraged about the principal’s treatment of his daughter.

Hirsch's rural beat is wide. Daybreak to day's end, dirt roads and dust. Every problem that besets small towns and isolated properties, from unlicensed driving to arson. In the time of the virus, Hirsch is seeing stresses heightened and social divisions cracking wide open. His own tolerance under strain; people getting close to the edge.