Book review: Digging Up Dirt by Pamela Hart

It is always a delight to come across a novel that embodies the very best of a genre and yet also manages to be its own marvellously unique creation.

Digging Up Dirt by Pamela Hart sits very much in that rarefied camp, a book that manages to give Agatha Christie an invigorating 21st-century Australian sensibility while having a great deal of romantic comedy fun, with a deliciously dark tinge, into the bargain.

Chief among its many pluses is protagonist Poppy McGowan, a late twenty something producer in educational children’s television for Australia’s national broadcaster, the ABC, who has just bought her first small but perfect home in the inner west suburb of Annandale in Sydney.

Also newly-ensconced in a relationship with accountant Stuart, who’s oddly stuffy and decidedly unexciting but sweet nonetheless, Poppy looks to have kicked a lot of life goals all at once.

Tick one for living her best life.

However, and you knew there’d be a however because how else would a book like Digging Up Dirt have the narrative fun you know is coming your way, life has a funny way of upending even the most ordered and stable of apple carts and so it is that just as Poppy is cosying up in her new happy world, she discovers a body in a pit in her currently-being-renovated house.

“Monday

‘Hello, miss?’ It was Boris, my carpenter, and he sounded worried. ‘Miss, I found something.’

‘Something? What? Where?’

‘I dug the hole for the post. I found …’ His voice dropped. ‘… body.”

‘What?’

‘A body, miss.’

‘What kind of body?’ I was thinking, for some reason, of an old car body—a Valiant or a Ford or something, and wondering how they’d got in the door.

‘You know, bones. Skellington.’

‘A skeleton?’ I almost dropped the phone. And I’m ashamed to admit it, but my first thought was, This is going to completely stuff up my renovations.”

Yes, a body but not just any body.

No, no the person lying decidedly lifeless in the pit in the bottom floor of her home, which may or may contain vitally important archaeological evidence of early agrarian activity in Australia (yet another complication Poppy does not need), is none other than Dr. Julieanne Weaver, an archaeologist at the Museum of New South Wales where Poppy once worked and as much of a nemesis as anyone can hope to have.

Even worse, everyone knew the two of them didn’t get along which means that the police almost immediately zero in on Poppy as a suspect.

She’s not alone, of course, but as she reflects on the near-overnight destruction of her Oprah-esque best life, and the fact that Julieanne’s smoking hot and delightfully warm and sweet archaeologist boyfriend Tol Lang seems to like her a lot (the feeling is mutual, soz Stuart), Poppy has a choice – she either caves in or she fights.

No prizes for guessing that Poppy goes into bat for herself and the truth, setting in train a huge amount of very entertaining sleuthing that comes with a nice side order of biting social commentary.

That’s right – not only does Hart beautifully serve up a mystery worthy of the genre while giving us some Spencer-Hepburn level romantic comedy vibes, but she also expertly and with pleasing acidity takes down some very worrying trends in Australian society such as the rise of right-wing Christian fundamentalists who stand firmly against many of the progressive ideals that mark a mature and fulsome society.

The right-wing angle comes in courtesy of ambitious Julieanne’s quest to become a candidate in NSW state elections for warm-and-fuzzily named Australian Family Party – the rule of thumb is the loftier and lovelier the name, the darker the intent of those sheltering beneath its silken visage – which comes coupled with some relational choices that leave poor Tol rather in the dark.

This would not be the first time a mystery has unleashed a Pandora’s box worth of messy intrigue but Hart lets loose in the best possible way, sending readers on an energetic and very funny to find out whodunnit.

Happily, the path to finding out who did the deed is riotously festooned with red herrings aplenty as a suspect after suspect, and yes, there are a few of them as befits any mystery worth its name, come into play as amateur detective Poopy, who also roped into reporting for ABC News, finds herself determined to seek the truth if only to get her house back.

What makes Poppy such a likable and engaging character is that she’s not perfect; she has dark thoughts, impure projections of what might be (mainly relating to Tol) and she doesn’t always get it right.

That said, though, she does get a lot of things right, a capable protagonist who doesn’t anyone to save her thank you very much and yet who remains endearingly, groundedly likable throughout.

Poppy’s character, emblematic of all of the characterisation in Digging up Dirt, is fully fleshed out, delightfully substantial and a hoot to be around which helps when you are rooting for her to get to the bottom of a growing pile of shady business.

“The most reasonable explanation was that she had gone there to meet someone. An empty house was a great place for an assignation. I really hoped nothing physical had happened before she was killed. Somehow I found the idea of Julieanne having illicit sex in my house more off-putting than the memory of her corpse. But surely the police wouldn’t suspect me if there was evidence of Julieanne’s sexual activity?”

And, as noted, there is a lot of shady business to go around.

All of it built, it should be added, meticulously and carefully by Hart who for all the novel’s fun rom-com trappings, has crafted a really fascinatingly realised whodunnit.

Where Digging Up Dirt also succeeds brilliantly, and this is observed from a purely parochial position as an Australian, is the way it brings Sydney so perfectly and vivaciously to life.

It may be a cliche to say this but the city is very much a character in this novel, from the opening page where Poppy’s first reaction to bones being discovered in her house is how it will affect her renovations (Sydney is notoriously property obsessed) through to her trips across the Harbour Bridge, her Annandale neighbourhood, and even the Museum and its proximity to the very heart of Sydney’s CBD.

It is gloriously good to see the city featured so prominently and lovingly, not simply that’s highly enjoyable in and of itself but because it lends Digging Up Dirt a wholly distinctive air, a point of difference to many other novels of the genre, suffused as it is with an innate Australianness that is charming but also muscular and robust particularly when it comes to Poppy’s no-nonsense willingness to take the fight for justice (and her home renovations!) to wherever it must be fought.

Pamela Hart has gifted us with a brilliantly clever read in Digging Up Dirt, a novel which effortlessly and entertainingly combines a winning protagonist of great capability and likable groundedness, an evocative setting, a beguiling and steadily-built mystery and a lingering rom-com sense of fun, with all these parts brought together in a story that is cohesively appealing, bright, light and meaningful and which gives you a very modern and rewarding twist on the much-loved and highly-read mystery novel.