In Justice in God’s Hands, Steve Matthews explores ethical questions such as the inequality of our justice system.
Steve Matthews is an author who concerns himself with morality. His latest novel Justice in God’s Hands (Big Sky Publishing, Australia, 2025; cover design Think Productions) cloaks its philosophising in sleazy criminality, jocular banter and the darkness of humanity, but he always invites his reader to consider significant underlying ethical issues.
This is the second in a series and the main characters carry through — Diana Spencer, who runs an organisation seeking to redress injustice for the wrongly convicted, and her police officer brother Bruce Spencer, now promoted to the rank of Chief Superintendent.
There are two storylines — one deals with the wrongful imprisonment of an Aboriginal woman. The other concerns the questioning of the â€~lightness’ of a sentence for a mugging that may have caused the death of the victim.
Judge Lucy Prior was the presiding judge and when her daughter goes missing, Bruce Spencer comes under intense pressure to get to the bottom of the crime and bring the perpetrator to justice.
Judge Lucy believes that many commit crimes because of their disadvantaged circumstances and she is inclined to offer second chances. It is of course here that the fiction intersects with reality, as debates about sentencing, the unequal application of the law and the reformative role of prison as opposed to its propensity to make â€~better’ criminals of minor offenders, are all topics of constant public debate.
The author asks us to consider the inequality of our justice system, where flash lawyers can get one person off lightly or altogether while others without expensive representation serve long gaol terms. We are also asked to consider ends and means, as violence towards innocents is introduced into both plots.
Justice in God’s Hands can be read for its light entertainment value, but for me, it is the consideration of big contemporary social justice questions that holds sway. If crime fiction can be rollicking, this is deliberately so. However, the reader should not be fooled into thinking the writing is slight.
Steve Matthews continues to produce work from the heart, which comes from a solid background of research and a firm conviction that ethical questions are important both in life and in fiction.
Michael Brissenden’s Dust is contemporary crime fiction which pits a police duo against climate change deniers, drug and people traffickers, corrupt police and a disaffected rural community.
Justice and lawlessness are also at the heart of Michael Brissenden’s Dust (Affirm Press, Australia, 2025; cover design Luke Causby/Blue Cork; cover image Creative Images/Adobe Stock).
In a fast-paced contemporary crime fiction that feels scarily close to reality, the author pits his police duo against climate change deniers, cookers, drug and people traffickers, corrupt police and a disaffected rural community.
Grappling with a serious professional crisis (before this story begins), Detective Sergeant Martyn Kravets is joined by newly minted, university qualified Senior Constable Fiona Weldon. They circle round each other for a while but soon find each other’s measure and become good working colleagues, Martyn’s long years of experience and consequent jadedness weighed against Fiona’s real policing inexperience but intelligence and dogged enthusiasm.
The death of a journalist begins the police investigation. Police intelligence have had him on their radar because of the nature of the story he was pursuing, but there is a complex web of violence and organised crime to work through before answers are found.
Meanwhile Martyn’s daughter gets herself into serious trouble back in the city when she takes part in an unlawful protest action to highlight the seriousness of climate change. Contrasting urban and rural values and viewpoints bubble along as themes beneath the crime plot, along with notions of family and professional loyalty, best police practice, community policing, the drawing of lines.
The harshness of the drought-devastated landscape and the disintegration of rural communities and their fringe dwellers is a looming presence. How do communities like this cope when everything is swept away?
This is gripping crime writing which cleverly allows us our interest in the characters, both the heroic and the amoral/immoral, and our crime reader’s enthusiasm for story twists, darkness and successive waves of danger. There is plenty of fear in this story, a heavy atmosphere of threat and suspicion, of doom in fact.
Happily, we always know that Fiona and Martyn will live to see another crime-fighting day — and I look forward to it very much.
Barbie Robinson is co-founder and a content creator for Living Arts Canberra, a not for profit media outfit supporting arts and community in the Canberra region and books worldwide through its website, podcast interviews and a 24/7 internet radio station.
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