Garry Disher’s Snapshot continues his police procedural series about Mornington Peninsula detective Hal Challis, begun with Dragon Man in 1999 (before that, Disher wrote an excellent series of thrillers about a career criminal named Wyatt, starting with Kickback, 1991). Snapshot is 100 pages longer than Dragon Man, but, paradoxically, it is much more pared back, leaner and smarter about what a police procedural (PP) can be.

A bit lost in the byways of the Peninsula (and Disher’s opening is eloquently economical in conflating two kinds: a subculture of partner-swapping sexual byways, and the geography of back roads and byways in the area), a therapist and her seven-year-old daughter turn into a strange yard. A car follows them in, with consequences. Challis gets the case. Complication: the victim’s father-in-law is Challis’s undependable, careerist superior, Superintendent McQuarrie, who won’t stop interfering with the case, doesn’t want to know about his son’s wife-swapping and pushes for the quick (and dirty) solution.