Garry Disher — Australian Author born on August 15, 1949,

Garry Disher is an Australian author of crime fiction and children's literature... (wikipedia)

From my years of teaching creative writing, I know that new writers take the setting for granted, as simply a place to set the action, but setting is a vital element in fiction writing and deserves serious treatment.
A good writer can set a thriller anywhere and make it convincing: the trick is to evoke the setting in such a way that it highlights the crime or unsettles the reader.
Delaying and withholding tactics, red herrings, partial and doubtful outcomes are stock in trade for fiction writers, especially crime writers.
Chopper Read attended a writing school I gave for inmates at Risdon Prison in Hobart many years ago. Even if I hadn't known about his hacked-off ears and his criminal history, I'd have found him powerful and compelling.
To be a writer, you must be a reader, yet as many as 30 per cent of my writing students were not readers.