The prolific author has written around 50 books - literary novels, kids books, young adult stories - but he is best known as a crime novelist.

His latest book, Consolation, follows Hirsch as he polices the country town of Tiverton - in rural South Australia, the region where Disher grew up.

It's third in a series that started with 2013's Bitter Wash Road. And that is where Disher thought it might end.

"I thought it was a standalone," he says of Bitter Wash Road, "but the character wouldn't leave me alone.

"Also, even though I left the area when I was around 17, I still have family there and I still call it home and it exerts a pull on my imagination. So I wanted to head back there again."

It was a good move - Bitter Wash Road sold well, as did the follow-up Peace - and with readers who weren't familiar with his earlier books.

"It's all a matter of marketing I suppose," he says.

"The books went into places like Big W and Kmart, where certainly a lot of books get sold but I don't think my publisher had traditionally placed books in that sort of market."

The novels are set in the small town of Tiverton and the larger regional centre of Redruth. While neither of those places exist in regional South Australia, Disher says they are representative of the area.

Setting the novels in a country area has seen these books lumped into the growing "rural noir" genre, where writers forsake the crime of the cities and look at the dark side of country towns.

"I think the amazing success of The Dry by Jane Harper and Chris Hammer's Scrublands really showed that terrific crime fiction can be set in rural areas - that a rural area doesn't make it slow and plodding and boring," he says.

"I'd hate to see novelists get on a bandwagon and start setting their novels in the bush because they sell so well. I think you need to know the bush for them to be good books. I'm writing about where I grew up and where I go back to at least once a year."

While this new genre might have helped Disher with a few sales, he did admit to being a bit wary that some may think he too was trying to get on that very bandwagon.

"My own act of rebellion with this book Consolation is to set it in winter because a lot of these rural noir novels are set in dusty outback towns where there are dust storms and bushfires and terrible heat and drought," he says.

The wide range of genres Disher crosses in his various novels is part because it helps keep him fresh rather than focusing solely on, say, the crime genre.

There's also the blunt reality that he needs to make a living.

"I needed to be a professional writer - I needed to make a living from writing.

"If I was to spend five years writing a literary novel that sold 2000 copies I wouldn't last very long. Partly I was motivated by wanting to be a professional and having a range and writing for a range of readerships."

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