Review: PINK TIDE by Jarad Henry

The third novel to feature Victorian detective Ruebens McCauley PINK TIDE follows on from 2008’s BLOOD SUNSET but takes the protagonist from inner-city Melbourne to the small, Great Ocean Road town of Jutt Rock. McCauley has become what is known in the police force as a shipwreck – a cop burned out by their experiences and left to fend for themselves in some out of the way place until they leave the force all together – and needs a stash of prescription medication to get him through the relatively tame policing needs of a small resort town. It’s not unreasonable to wonder then how he will cope when local surfing champion Teddy Banks and his friend Kurt Welsh, who is also McCauley’s nephew, are brutally beaten after leaving a nightclub. With Banks dead and Welsh not expected to survive his injuries locals are angry, assuming the culprit is one of the many tourists visiting the town, and McCauley’s tenuous hold on his new, relatively stress-free life looks to be in serious danger of slipping away.

PINK TIDE’s plot is a ripper; full of the requisite number of twists and turns but offering a lot more besides as it explores several topical social themes. The issues surrounding small town residents who rely economically on the tourist groups they can attract but who resent the influx of people flashing money around and engaging in lurid, ‘big city’ behaviours are well teased out. As is the way that people’s prejudices are impossible to hide for long and take little encouragement to rise to the surface in all their hate-filled fury.

As he still works in the Victorian criminal justice system there is a real sense that Henry’s use of the story to depict some of the problems deeply rooted in the justice system and operation of a modern police force is accurate and, accordingly, somewhat sad. There is the very real issue of the health problems faced by many police, evidenced here by McCauley’s post traumatic stress disorder, and the fairly woeful way such problems are dealt with by their employers. Other bureaucratic inanities taking an immeasurable toll on the people we expect to protect us from all manner of dangers are also depicted credibly and would give pause for thought if only the right people could be forced to read books such as this. But perhaps the saddest indictment of all is McCauley’s observation when the police are interviewing their prime suspect

Like any criminal investigation, it wasn’t a question of truth. In the absence of any physical evidence or witnesses, the question was whether it was a plausible enough story (p164).

The only slightly disappointing note of the novel for me is the continued deterioration of poor Ruebens McCauley who seems, after only three books, to have experienced every one of the personal foibles and tragedies afflicting crime fiction’s most tortured cops. At some point during this book he moved, on the virtual list I keep in my head, from ‘basically functional, if occasionally troubled’ to ‘impossibly burdened, wouldn’t want him to be my local copper’. Of course it’s not Henry’s fault that I’ve become a bit weary of jaded, dysfunctional policemen (only one of them is his after all) but I do think it was a bit mean to inflict another major personal problem on the poor man towards the end of this novel as it didn’t really add all that much to the larger plot.

Overall though PINK TIDE is a great read: offering a thought-provoking exploration of the social underbelly of polite society and a credible, if maddening, depiction of the more ludicrous aspects of modern bureaucracies. The fact that the revelation at about the half-way point of the central crime’s culprit in no way lessens the tension of the book, which turns then from a whodunnit into a ‘willhegetawaywithit’, is evidence of real skill.

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Publisher: Arcadia [2012]
ISBN/ASIN: 9781921875489
Length: 329 pages

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Review: BLACKWATER MOON by B. Michael Radburn

Almost more a coming of age tale than a piece of crime fiction BLACKWATER MOON is Andy Walker’s story. He is a child of the 60’s in the small town of Blackwater in rural New South Wales and his life is not an easy one. His small family lives in a constant state of worry about what mood Andy’s father will be in at any time: the man is a violent drunk and Andy’s mother is no help to her children. Andy’s older sister collects things for her glory box knowing it will be her means of escape, while Andy takes on a job at the local supermarket to earn some pocket money and gain essential time away from the house. Things turn even darker for Andy when a person struggling with their own demons enters his young life and involves him in something that has a ripple effect for years to come.

BLACKWATER MOON is Radburn’s second book after 2011’s THE CROSSING which I’ve not read. It reads like the work of a well-established author though, taking some risks with literary conventions and managing to pull them off successfully. The first person narrative works well for the kind of deeply personal story being told here and Radburn does manage to maintain Andy’s voice credibly even though it has to span the period from when he is about 10 or so to when he’s a middle-aged man. All the way along Andy’s story is a compelling one, all the more so for the understated quietness with which he travels through life.

The setting – both time and place – is a strong element of the novel, though for me there’s nothing particularly Australian about any of it. I’m prepared to admit though that this might just be because I was reminded of American stories such as Stephen King’s THE BODY and Betty Smith’s A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN as I read. Nevertheless I do have very clear images of the town and its surrounds in my head and the portion of the book set during the time of the Vietnam war is particularly strong. By this stage Andy is married with a young baby and his wife is vehemently opposed to the war, to the point she’d rather Andy went to prison for conscientious objection than to Vietnam to fight. The suspense that builds as the couple wait to hear if Andy’s will be drafted is intense and a really superb depiction of this under-explored theme.

Although many of the events depicted in BLACKWATER MOON are horrific the book doesn’t dwell on the showy, overt consequences of those horrors. Instead it shows the daily grind of living through such traumas. Andy’s story is juxtaposed with that of his tormentor at key points, someone unable to rise above the traumas of their own childhood. I’ve seen this kind of counterbalance before and it’s often awkward or incredible but Radburn didn’t overplay things and so this element did add something worthwhile to the novel.

It’s quite hard to talk about this book because there is so much I would consider a spoiler. I was lucky enough to come to BLACKWATER MOON with absolutely no preconceived ideas about it and I think you should get to do the same should you care to. I found it a gently compelling novel, with a terrific central character and several genuine surprises.

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Publisher: Pantera Press [2012]
ISBN: 9781921997099
Length: 383 pages
Format paperback

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Review: THE HOLIDAY MURDERS by Robert Gott

Robert Gott is a writer of educational texts and a series of comic farce historical mysteries featuring an actor-turned-detective Will Power. With THE HOLIDAY MURDERS he reveals a darker vein to his personality, offering a not all together flattering picture of war-time Melbourne and an intriguing cast of characters, several of whom I am very glad to have only met virtually

Set over the Christmas to New Year holiday period at the end of 1943 the book opens with police being called to a crime scene. Xavier Quinn has been brutally tortured and murdered by, on first appearances, his father John who subsequently committed suicide. However it is soon clear that both men were murdered though a motive for the gruesome crime is not immediately obvious. Mary Quinn, Xavier’s sister, is an actress in radio dramas and has discovered the bodies on coming home from work with her friend Sheila. She can’t seem to provide the police with any leads as to who might have committed the awful crime though she does admit that the family was not close. She describes Xavier as a religious zealot of unsound mind who didn’t really communicate with anyone while she and her father were at odds over her choice to work as an actress. The police wonder if there might be some religious motive to the crimes but then discover some reading material that suggests a political motive. This in turn leads to the involvement of the military’s Intelligence boffins and leads the investigation into the path of Australia’s very own (and very real) Nazi-sympathising fascists.

It’s difficult to know where to start with the list of things I loved about this book but I think the characters (just) edge out everything else as my favourite element of the novel. Titus Lambert is the Inspector in charge of Victoria’s newly established Homicide squad though with manpower shortages the squad is not teeming with numbers. He is an unorthodox fictional detective in several ways, most notably due to his very happy marriage. Indeed his wife, Maude, is really an extra member of his squad as he discusses all his cases with her and, on occasion, even shows her evidence. This could have come across as hokey but Gott does a great job of making the relationship seem very realistic, to the point that I did wonder if it isn’t a jolly good idea to have married police detectives. Rather than having a host of awful memories and images turning him into the usual angst-ridden, alcoholic mess Lambert is able to share his burden and also gain a fresh, intelligent perspective on the cases he confronts. It seems eminently sensible.

The Homicide squad is rounded out by freshly trained Sergeant Joe Sable who is keen but lacks confidence and some of the skills he needs and Constable Helen Lord who seems more suited to the role but as a woman is ineligible to rise any further in the ranks. She is, not unreasonably, a little bitter about this and sometimes her frustration affects her work. Joe is Jewish, though without a very religious upbringing, and is struggling to come to terms with the news that has started to come out of Europe regarding the Nazis’ treatment of the Jewish people. His feelings of guilt and impotence over this lead him to jump at the chance to assist the Intelligence people with the infiltration of a local group suspected of having National Socialist sympathisers and this work, in turn, tests his loyalties to Lambert and the Homicide team.

Early on we meet the menacing brute responsible for the murders but, rarely, this doesn’t lessen the tension and suspense of the novel for readers. Partly this is because we’re worrying who will be the next victim and partly because this isn’t one of those books in which you know the police will triumph over the bad guys. The depiction of the band of hate-filled bigots for whom violence comes as naturally as breathing is all the more chilling because Gott not only makes you believe in these particular fictional people but also that they have real life counterparts, even today. But not all the bigots are Romper Stomper style thugs; the book forces readers to reflect more generally on the many insidious small ways that bigotry was, and is still, allowed to flourish in the wider community.

In addition to all of this the novel has an authentic historical feel, with loads of references to real world people and events and a million little details that make you feel as if you’ve been transported back in time, and a thoroughly gripping plot. Every time I thought I had worked out how things would resolve another element or twist came to light and the resolution, which I stayed up long past my bed time to get to, was a stunner. I’m hopeful this is the first of a series of novels featuring these characters and I highly recommend it.

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Here’s a link to a fascinating interview Robert Gott and his publisher did with Michael Cathcart on Radio National last year which discusses the process by which this novel, which started out as the fourth Will Power book, came to life. At the time of this interview the novel wasn’t finished, it even had a different title.

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Publisher: Scribe [2013]
ISBN/ASIN: 9781922070258
Length: 309 pages
Format: paperback

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Review: SUFFICIENT GRACE, Amy Espeseth

• published by Scribe Publications, Melbourne 2013
  
• 322 pages
• ISBN 978-1-922070-02-9
• Read an extract
• Book Club notes

Synopsis (from the publisher)

Ruth and her cousin Naomi live in rural Wisconsin, part of an isolated religious community. The girls’ lives are ruled by the rhythms of nature — the harsh winters, the hunting seasons, the harvesting of
crops — and by their families’ beliefs. Beneath the surface of this closed, frozen world, hidden dangers lurk.

Then Ruth learns that Naomi harbours a terrible secret. She searches for solace in the mysteries of the natural world: broken fawns, migrating birds, and the strange fish deep beneath the ice. Can the girls’ prayers for deliverance be answered?

Sufficient Grace is a story of lost innocence and the unfailing bond between two young women. It is at once devastating and beautiful, and ultimately transcendent.

My Take

At first glance, SUFFICIENT GRACE is really on the outer edge of the crime fiction genre, although at least one crime does take place. Most reviews have emphasised the literary nature of the book. And so it clings to the crime fiction claim by the slenderest of threads.

I’m finding this a difficult book to review in my usual way because I really don’t want to reveal too much of the plot. Told from the point of view of twelve year old Ruth, the story is set in a remote and isolated Pentecostal community in rural Wisconsin.The setting is not that old, perhaps at the end of the twentieth century. The time frame covers a small period, about 5 months over Christmas and New Year, and through the harshest season. The small community is family-based, although there are members who are not immediate family, and attempting to live a close-to-nature lifestyle while the technology they have at their disposal reveals modernity. Life is dominated by attendance at church, and a strict sense of sin.

Ruth often interprets what she sees around her in a religious fashion but then frequently sees things more clearly than the adults of the community, who made me angry with what they were prepared to ignore, and their lack of awareness of the dangers they subjected their children to.

This is a book that will provoke considerable discussion in book clubs so I encourage you to consider the Book Club notes provided by the publisher.

In a final word the author writes:

Finally I appreciate that although this is a work of fiction, people close to me – now or in the past – may read this novel as a betrayal of both the family and church in which I was raised. I have not intended to cause any hurt. I wrote what I was given to write.

My rating: 4.8

Other reviews to check

• Jo Case @ The Australian
• 1 girl 2 many books
• Deborah Robertson talks to Amy Espeseth

About the author

Born in rural Wisconsin, Amy Espeseth immigrated to Australia in the late 1990s and lives in Melbourne. A writer, publisher and academic, she is the recipient of the 2007 Felix Meyer Scholarship in Literature, the 2010 QUT Postgraduate Creative Writing Prize, and the 2012 CAL Scribe Fiction Prize. Sufficient Grace won the 2009 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an unpublished manuscript. It was also shortlisted for the Stella Prize 2013.

Review: DEAD GIRL SING by Tony Cavanaugh

DEAD GIRL SING is the second instalment of Tony Cavanaugh’s Queensland based series starring ex-cop-turned-vigilante Darian Richards. He is once again dragged reluctantly from his self-imposed retirement; this time because a young woman whose life he saved in the last book rings him out of the blue and says something along the lines of “only you can help..there are so many bodies” and then promptly vanishes into thin air. Darian contacts local a policewoman he knows in Noosa and asks her to follow it up, which she does by asking a Gold Coast based colleague to check out the location Darian has given. When this policeman also disappears Darian decides he must get more actively involved, whereupon he discovers the bodies of two dead girls in a shallow pool of water in the Gold Coast hinterland, bests the local plods with his super-human intelligence and starts his hunt for the missing girl.

I felt this novel wasn’t so much asking me to suspend my disbelief as demanding I buy it a one-way ticket to Bhutan. There just didn’t seem to be a single realistic element to the novel and that’s a hard sell, especially when a book takes itself as seriously as this one appears to. Darian Richards pontificates lengthily about his superior intellect, detecting skills and ability to apply justice which is topped off with a whole load of self-aggrandizing claptrap from the killer’s point of view and there’s no hint of the tongue in cheek humour I need to make the ‘impossibly brilliant hero’ trope even vaguely interesting to me.

It’s not spoiling anything to reveal that the plot of this novel revolves around human trafficking. Cavanaugh’s ‘take’ on the subject is to make the villain a woman which could have been an interesting twist but the character is completely over the top and I did not find her voice very credible. Eventually we learn the reasons behind Starlight’s behaviour but I didn’t really buy into all that either; it felt more like an awful series of violent vignettes strung together for shock value than an actual person’s story.

I think DEAD GIRL SING belongs more in the old-fashioned Western category – a good (if not always legally sound) guy doing battle with a bad guy (or girl) – than it does in crime fiction. There’s precious little mystery to be had as we learn who the killer is and why the crimes are being committed long before the end and the book focuses instead on the interplay between anti hero and villain. Any vestiges of suspense that might have remained are wiped away by the presence of Isosceles. He’s the mega genius geek that Darian has on permanent speed dial who can hack into anything he pleases at the touch of a button. There really is no tension to be had when the protagonist of a crime story can get out of any jam or find out whatever he needs to know so effortlessly.

Ultimately I suppose this is just not my kind of thing. I found Darian and Starlight to have equally inflated egos and neither they nor their battle of wits engaged me at all. The book doesn’t spend any serious time letting us get to know the victims – apart from via the gruesome violence they suffer – which further disconnected me from goings on. My overriding response to it was boredom.

As always, other opinions are available and here are a couple you might like to check out for balance Bite the Book and Aust Crime Fiction

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Publisher: Hachette Australia [2013]
ISBN/ASIN: 9780733627880
Length: 325 pages
Format: paperback

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Review: THE MARMALADE FILES, Steve Lewis & Chris Uhlmann

• published by Fourth Estate (Harper Collins Australia 2012)
  
• ISBN 978-0-7322-9474-8
• 311 pages
• Read an extract

Synopsis (Publisher)

A sticky scandal. A political jam. THE MARMALADE FILES will be the most-talked about political satirical thriller of 2012!

An imaginative romp through the dark underbelly of politics by two veteran Canberra insiders. When seasoned newshound Harry Dunkley is slipped a compromising photograph one frosty Canberra dawn  he knows he′s onto something big. In pursuit of the scoop, Dunkley must negotiate the
deadly corridors of power where the minority Toohey Government hangs by a thread – its stricken Foreign Minister on life support, her heart maintained by a single thought. Revenge.

Rabid Rottweilers prowl in the guise of Opposition senators, union thugs wage class warfare, TV anchors simper and fawn … and loyalty and decency have long since given way to compromise and treachery.

From the teahouses of Beijing to the beaches of Bali, from the marbled halls of Washington to the basements of the bureaucracy, Dunkley′s quest takes him ever closer to the truth – and ever deeper into a lethal political game.

Award-winning journalists Steve Lewis of News Ltd and Chris Uhlmann from the ABC combine forces in this arresting novel that proves fiction is stranger than fact.

My Take

Each of the shortish chapters in this novel is headed with a date, starting with June 16 2011, but the reader soon discovers these chapters are not sequential although there is a logic to them. Eventually this sent me to pen and paper to try to make sure I understood the time line.

We begin with Harry Dunkley, press gallery veteran in the National Parliament in Canberra being given a photo that is about 30 years old. He quickly identifies the Cabinet minister who is centre stage but who are the others?  Later on the same day Catriona Bailey, once Labour Prime Minister, but now the Foreign Minister, has a very public stroke on national television.

So Labour’s Toohey government, already an unpopular minority government hanging on by a thread, and predicted to lose the next election, begins a downward spiral. Can things get any worse?

THE MARMALADE FILES is political satire rather than strictly crime fiction, although crimes, including a murder, are committed. There’s a quirky humour from beginning to end, and certainly connections to current Australian politics, even if events have been warped and names changed.

For me, a fascinating read from beginning to end, although the ending strained my sense of credibility.

I’m not sure that THE MARMALADE FILES will have much appeal outside Australia but in case you do want to look for it, try Amazon (Kindle) or the publisher.

My rating: 4.8

And what do Australia’s politicians say? (Do they recognise themselves?)

Other reviews:

• the National Times
• The Canberra Times
• News.com.au
• Karen @ AustCrime

Review: DEAD HEAT by Bronwyn Parry

I am not a fan of the relatively modern trend towards narrower and narrower ‘genrefication’ of fiction because I believe it repels more readers than it attracts (though I’ll admit this is based on anecdotal and experiential evidence rather than the scientific kind). For example, my expectations that something with the ‘romantic suspense’ label would be too mushy for my tastes has put me off reading anything by Australian author Bronwyn Parry until, fuelled by a personal goal to read at least a smattering of books I wouldn’t otherwise read as part of my participation in the Australian Women Writers Challenge, I plunged into Parry’s third novel, DEAD HEAT. Happily for me it’s an absolute ripper of a yarn and its quota of mushy stuff is well within my personal tolerance levels. But I still think the book will miss a lot of readers (including, I’d wager, the entire male population) based on both its explicit and implicit marketing.

The novel takes place in rural New South Wales where Jo Lockwood is a National Parks Ranger. One morning while going about her normal duties she notices a kangaroo carrying the unlikely breakfast of a human arm and when she backtracks to where the roo came from she finds the body of a man who has been brutally murdered. Soon police, including Detective Nick Matheson, are on the scene. Matheson has only been in his job a few days, having recently transferred to ‘normal duties’ after ten years of undercover work. Unfortunately for everyone involved this murder is just one event in a series that will spell danger for the entire community. Be in no doubt, this is no cosy ‘all the violence takes place off-stage’ kind of novel!

It’s clear Bronwyn Parry knows and loves the Australian landscape: through Jo’s eyes in particular the book shows both its beauties and dangers in stark reality. In fact it was more than a little eerie to read such well-described fire fighting scenes on the very day an unseasonally late fire was ripping through bushland a mere 20 kilometres from my safe city cottage this past weekend. The depiction of modern rural life was completed by the inclusion of the kind of community spirit that does engender small town life in Australia, in particular the human powered magic that is Rotary and its equivalent organisations.

The authentic and quite enveloping setting provides an excellent backdrop for the cracking yarn which belied my ‘life’s slower in the country’ belief by not letting me stop for breath even once. There’s a rogue cop, international drug cartel links and a quite alarming number of dead bodies for something partially labelled romance but it all hangs together very nicely and made me eager to turn each page. You won’t be surprised to learn that Jo and Nick do form a romantic attachment but it’s not even remotely mushy and although the path to their love does not run smoothly the obstacles are not the cliché’s I worried about. Their respective back stories are drama-laden but believable and I found myself keen to know how their personal demons would work their way into unfolding events.

DEAD HEAT reminded me a little of Nevada Barr’s terrific series of novels set in American national parks which also feature a female ranger of independent spirit. The combination of evocative setting, suspense-filled plot and solidly built characters was very engaging and I will definitely be reading more of Parry’s work. She has won extra points on my personal scale because her books all seem to be standalones which, in this era of the never ending series, I find refreshing.

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This is the 9th book I’ve read for this year’s Australian Women Writers Challenge

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Publisher: Hachette [2012]
ISBN/ASIN: 9780733625497
Length: 360 pages
Format: paperback

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Review: THE DARKEST LITTLE ROOM by Patrick Holland

As THE DARKEST LITTLE ROOM opens we meet Joseph, a 33 year-old expat Australian journalist who has been working in Indochina for some years and is now based in Saigon. As a freelancer he works on whatever stories he can find, using an ex policeman called Minh Quy as his investigator and, to supplement their income, as a fellow conspirator in some low-level blackmail. Joseph also pays a young street kid who calls himself Peter Pan to look for a girl that Joseph has lost touch with but is desperate to find. A German tourists seeks out Joseph and tells him about a club which is more sordid and depraved than all the other brothels in Saigon where, in a place called the darkest little room, a woman has been particularly brutally tortured. The tourist claims he is too scared to go to the police but thinks a journalist may be able to do something about the situation. Despite being warned off by Minh Quy and his rich business man friend Zhuan, Joseph does look into the situation which is about the point his life spirals into a version of madness as he finds (or does he?) the woman he has been looking for and goes on the hunt for her human traffickers.

The thing that struck me first about the novel is that this is not the Vietnam readers may have visited on a two-week package holiday or viewed through the prism of a Sunday afternoon travel show. It is a country in which human life is valued in a way completely foreign to my Australian middle-class existence and in which many people struggle with the grimmest of survivals due to a level of poverty I feel deeply fortunate never to have known. A poverty that those locals who do escape it never wish to think of again as Joseph explains early on

“People in Indochina are not sentimental about poverty. They do not read about it in books written by middle-class men and women who make safe dreams about poverty from a far far distance. So the romantic light in which we cast the condition does not shine, say, on the man at the top of the alley whose legs were blown of in the American War, now sleeping in the shopping trolley that his relatives push him about in; nor on the old woman with cancer, wet and filthy in a steaming house where her sons will not pay for the doctor and the doctor will not work without money and the morphine sits unused in a cupboard at the clinic a street away. All traces of poverty must be banished in Vietnam.” (p23).

This is how Holland lets us know that although he’s not a native he’s intimately familiar with the country. It’s also how he shows us we’re not in for an easy ride with THE DARKEST LITTLE ROOM. Not only will we be troubled by some fairly horrific imagery but we will, in all likelihood, have to confront our own beliefs about how we view and act towards people whose lives are vastly different from our own.

That breathtaking sense of place – the way it is so image-rich and enveloping that it makes you believe you are right there to the point that when the going gets tough (a frequent occurrence)  I wanted to look out my window just to make sure I wasn’t in some seedy Saigon brothel or being chased through a northern Vietnamese jungle – is the only element of this novel about which I am not ambivalent.

About the rest I am not so sure. I’ve been mulling it over for a few days now and doubt I’ll quickly come to any definitive answers so have decided to share my undoubtedly muddled thinking. Apologies in advance.

Most of my ambivalence surrounds the fact that so many elements of the book are familiar…wearily familiar.

I wonder if I have reached my fill, for example, of books in which women are not people. I do understand that a book dealing with a subject like human trafficking must, of necessity, depict many people with the view that women are mere objects but here there is not a solitary individual – not a sidekick (quirky or otherwise), not the protagonist and not the women themselves – who think or behave as if women are anything but things. Things to look at. Things to own and trade. Things to use and discard when the attributes that give them value – youth and beauty – have disappeared. I was hopeful that when Zhuan pointedly asked Joseph why he doesn’t crusade on the part of old whores and junkies (p124) that I might have found a lone voice with at least a slightly different view of women but, as things turn out,…no.

I am bloody tired of this world view, no matter how realistic it might be. There are indicators both inane (a popular Australian panel news show last night had its first all-female panel in 4+ years of being on air and seemed pretty proud to be so ground-breaking in having an all-mum panel to precede this weekend’s Mothers Day) and disturbing (official statistics confirm that over three quarters of Australia’s intimate partner homicides involve a male offender and a female victim) that women still have a long way to go before anything like equality is ours and I am, I think, just heartily fed up with being constantly reminded of my inferior status as a human being in the way that this book does. I read one commentary which I annoyingly can’t find now in which the reader sees the woman at the centre of Joseph’s search as a strong character who fights back against her oppression and objectification using her street smarts but even on a second reflection of proceedings I cannot see this character in this way. I don’t want to spoil things for those of you who read the book so will simply say that the way things finish up for Joseph’s ‘love interest’ is not the way I would want things to finish up for any woman I know.

In a way I suppose my second major area of ambivalence mixed with tiredness at the familiarity of the theme is tied up with the first but it is specifically the elements of Joseph’s character which the author appeared to be putting under a microscope and, by omission, those he left unexplored. In the end this is basically a book about a bloke who believes himself in love with a prostitute, who happens to be extraordinarily beautiful, who he then attempts to rescue. Holland does expose Joseph’s self-righteousness and hypocrisy in an unflattering way but I found it troublesome that other issues were ignored, particularly the fact that the girl was 15 and Joseph 31 when they first met (they are 17 and 33 respectively when the action of the novel takes place). Again it is a case of me being weary of seeing such relationships depicted as normal by virtue of them not being remarked upon.

My final gripe is really only minor in comparison but I’m not convinced the novel is of the crime genre despite its heavy marketing that way. If it is it’s only in the broadest possible sense, in the way say that Ian McEwan’s ATONEMENT might be considered of the genre because there is a crime at the start of it. There are crimes in it but they do not really drive the story and, frankly, only those who’ve read precious little of the genre would be confounded by the mysterious element of the novel. I’m prepared to admit though that my acceptance of what is and isn’t crime fiction tends to be quite fluid and it’s not as if there’s an official standard which the book has failed to meet.

In the end then I found THE DARKEST LITTLE ROOM a troubling book on many levels, only some of which I imagine the author intended and I struggle to recommend it, despite the presence of excellent attributes. I want, absurdly I know, to prevent men from reading one more book in which they see it is basically OK to objectify women and to prevent women from reading one more book in which they are reminded that their second class status as human beings has not, where it counts, been wiped away by a few pieces of legislation. But of course whether you read the book or not those things will still be true.

Publisher: Transit Lounge [2012]
ISBN/ASIN: 9781921924248
Length: 267 pages
Format: paperback

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Review: BAY OF FIRES, Poppy Gee

• Published by Headline Review 2013
  
• ISBN 978-0-7553-8784-7
• 305 pages
• Available on Amazon

Synopsis (Hatchett.com)

When the body of a backpacker washes ashore in
an idyllic small town in Tasmania, the close-knit community starts to fall apart. As long-buried secrets start to come out, the delicate balance of their fragile lives is threatened…

Deep in a national park on the east coast of Tasmania, the Bay of Fires is an idyllic holiday community. There are no more than a dozen shacks beside the lagoon – and secrets are hard to keep; the intimacy of other people’s lives is their nourishment.

The fact that Sarah Avery has returned, having left her boyfriend and her job, is cause for gossip in itself. Then, the bikini-clad body of a young girl is found washed up on the beach; a year after another teenage girl went missing. Journalist Hall Flynn is sent to the coast to
investigate, and all too quickly the close-knit community turns in on itself.

My Take

The idyllic holiday community at the Bay of Fires has been meeting each summer for years. But things change, children grow up, parents get older, and at the core of what seems like paradise, decay grows.

It takes Hall Flynn’s outsider’s eye to pick some of the fragility.

Deep in the national park on the east coast of Tasmania, three or four hours by car from Launceston, Bay of Fires is sufficiently isolated to make communications slow. The novel is set over the Christmas Day to New Year’s Day holidays.

This time the dead person is an outsider, a backpacker, and no-one is willing to put everything together. The shack owners don’t reveal all they know. Just twelve months earlier one of their own children disappeared without trace and the sea conveniently bore the blame for that too.

Poppy Gee does a clever job of weaving sub-plots, such as why Sarah Avery has come home and why Hall Flynn is not romantically attached, in with the main mystery of what happened to the backpacker.  The tension between the shack owners and the incoming campers is well depicted, as is the willingness to blame a local resident who is not “normal”. Investigating the backpacker’s death is carried out by Sarah and Hall, sometimes together, sometimes independently.

The setting almost plays the role of another character and certainly sent me off researching.

This was an engaging and refreshing read, another new author to watch.

My rating: 4.3

About the Author

Poppy Gee was born in Launceston, Tasmania in 1977. She spends every
summer with her family at their shack in the Bay of Fires. This novel
was written as part of a Masters in Creative Writing, at the University
of Queensland, which Poppy completed in 2011. This is Poppy’s first
published fiction. She has worked as a journalist, editor and book
reviewer and currently teaches journalism and creative writing. Poppy
lives in Queensland with her husband and two beautiful children. She has
nearly completed her next novel, another literary thriller set in the
Tasmanian ski village Ben Lomond.

Author’s website

Review: HARRY CURRY: THE MURDER BOOK by Stuart Littlemore

This is the second book to feature the eponymous character, a Sydney barrister known for his blunt talking and somewhat anti-establishment leanings and Arabella Engineer, his sometime junior partner and lover. Between them the lawyers tackle a series of murder cases with the focus being on different legal aspects to the cases rather than the crimes at the centre of those cases. There is, for example, a man who unexpectedly pleads guilty to a swag of unsolved murders and Arabella is concerned with trying to attract a sentence lesser than life without the possibility of parole for their client. Another case involves a young man being charged with the murder of the paedophile who abused him for more than a decade but it’s the intricacies of whether the death is the direct result of the client’s actions or not and, if so, whether such action was performed with forethought that occupy Harry and Arabella on this occasion.

I imagine the book offers a realistic picture of the way the legal system operates in this country. Its author is a QC (still active) and there’s every reason to suppose he’s put his extensive knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of the system to good use. Focusing only on legal questions, such as how one might handle a case so that it attracts one kind of sentence over another or how to build a case requiring extensive specialist medical knowledge, is a relatively rare thing in crime fiction and one I took a while to warm to. On reflection though it was a good approach as it allowed the author to delve in-depth into issues that “we” (i.e. the non-lawyers in the readership) only ‘know’ from a steady diet of Law & Order episodes. I did find that the lack of attention to the crimes – and by extension the victims and/or perpetrators of those crimes – made the book a little dry in places but I suspect that my need for a more emotional connection to the people at the heart of these stories is (a) one of several reasons I’d make a truly lousy lawyer and (b) not relevant as the book aims, I think, to do something legitimately different than reveal the ‘why’ of the series of crimes.

The characterisations are a little obvious, with Harry Curry’s main personality traits (ugly, irascible, intolerant, clever) being stamped on the book’s cover (literally), and not particularly deep but they are engaging.The relationship between Harry and Arabella has its tensions with the professional side of it requiring Harry to take on a mentoring role while on the personal side both are cautious and still learning where they stand, especially as they are at such different points in their careers. Harry’s decision to sell his Sydney home and move part-time to a farm in the hinterland puts an added pressure on the couple. Their dialogue though is a treat, even if more aspirational than realistic. It is full of the sorts of clever, witty and appropriate lines that everyone wishes they could use in real life but usually only thinks of hours after the need has passed.  

My nagging fears (which put me off reading the first book) that this series might be nothing more than a clever bit of marketing fluff from its celebrity author proved completely unfounded, though I do have a suspicion that one of the biggest markets for it is members of the Sydney legal fraternity who must pass many happy moments working out which real-life people and cases the fictional ones are based on. But other readers should enjoy it too, especially locals, like me, have almost by osmosis absorbed up a lot of American law over the years and are interested in an Australian take on the subject. There is by the end a real sense that the reader has been provided with genuine insight into the practice of law in this country and the complexities of all cases, even the supposedly open and shut ones. I admit my liking for this one appeared as a slow burn rather than an immediate rush of affection but in the end I found it a very satisfying read and one I would recommend to those in the market for something a little out of the ordinary.

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Publisher: Harper Collins [2012]
ISBN: 9780732293437
Length: 328 pages

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