"I always loved Wagga Wagga," the retired schoolteacher and author told The Daily Advertiser.

"Coming from a little place like Barellan, Wagga was like a major city in the 1940s and 50s to me."

It is perhaps no surprise, then, that Mr Dicker chose to set his latest novel, titled 'Harry: Amazing Grace', in Wagga in 1948. The novel follows former war veteran and detective Harry Taylor as he investigates several deaths connected to a fictional fringe religious cult on the Murrumbidgee River.

The Wagga that Mr Dicker's detective occupies in 1948 is very different to the city it is today. Wagga had only been declared a city two years before, in 1946. Any suburbs south of Turvey Park didn't exist, and many of the roads were yet to be sealed, but Mr Dicker has fond memories of the people who lived in the Riverina at the time.

"I loved that period, because the people who were living in the country areas in that time were country people, and I just loved those country people at that time," he said.

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There is also a dark side to this country charm. The novel's main character comes face to face with a fictional religious cult, but also with the very real racism Dicker witnessed as a young man. He remembers the racism directed towards Wiradjuri and other First Nations people, who often lived on the fringes of towns like Wagga, Narrandera and Griffith, and the Chinese miners who arrived during the Gold Rush.

"Initially, there was very distinct racism in regard to them, and attitudes to them," he said.

"Yet, many of those Chinese people rose to become very, very prominent citizens in Wagga and Narrandera and the other towns."

Harry: Amazing Grace is the third instalment in the Harry Taylor trilogy.

Mr Dicker will be hosting a book launch and signing at the Wagga Library at 4pm on Friday, March 4, followed by an author talk at the Griffith Library on Tuesday, March 8.

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