Award-winning Australian crime writer Chris Hammer publishes Legacy in UK paperback on 30 July 2026. The fourth Martin Scarsden thriller and Hammer's eighth novel, Legacy marks the return of the investigative journalist protagonist five years after Trust, and was longlisted for the Australian Indie Book Awards. Published in the UK by Wildfire (Headline).
Hammer is a million-copy bestselling author and former journalist who reported from more than thirty countries over a three-decade career with SBS TV, The Bulletin, The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald. His debut, Scrublands (2018), won the CWA John Creasey New Blood Dagger and was named Sunday Times Crime Novel of the Year. It has since been adapted for television, with Scrublands: Silver airing on BBC2 in 2025.
In Legacy, someone is targeting Martin Scarsden. They bomb his book launch and shoot up his hometown. Fleeing for his life into the outback, he learns that nowhere is safe. The killers are closing in, and it's all he can do to survive. In a dramatic finale, Martin finds his fate linked to the disgraced ex-wife of a football icon, a fugitive wanted for a decades-old murder, and two nineteenth-century explorers from a legendary expedition.
"Hammer has confirmed and underlined his reputation as numbering among the very best novelists in detective fiction." — Sydney Morning Herald
"Chris Hammer is a great writer … a leader in Australian noir." — Michael Connelly
"The best Australian crime novel since Peter Temple's The Broken Shore." — The Times on Silver