Allen & Unwin

Many years ago there was a specialist bookshop tucked away in Auburn Road, Hawthorn run by a crime fiction expert and massive enabler (I think his name was Malcolm Campbell). He was one of those real-life people that made me thankful I'd made the trek from the bush to the big city, and Peter Corris was another. Sure I probably would have eventually found his books, but arriving in the city, finding that shop, and eventually being introduced to Cliff Hardy, kind of reinforced at that time it had been a good move all round.

From the opening book in the Cliff Hardy series, here was something that was familiar, and yet slightly different about them. They are, as further study eventually revealed, straight out of the lone-wolf, private eye rule book, and yet quintessentially Australian. They are also very Sydney - with the mean streets that Hardy lived on never that far from the Harbour, yet there is something in the quick-fire delivery, and the quiet determination that reeks of the laconic Australian character. Put a hat on him, push it back on his head and roll up his sleeves and Hardy could have been a man from the bush. Stick him in a Ford, hand him a glass of wine, and have him haunt a few coffee shops and bars and he was city through and through. Part of the appeal of Cliff Hardy is that he has always been as hard to pin down - age / background / look and feel, as he has been instantly recognisable. 

But forty-two books later, Cliff is flagging a little, but game as always, and Peter Corris has pulled the plug, battling a few health problems of his own. So reading WIN, LOSE OR DRAW is one of those jarring moments no matter how you look at it. It's the last ever book of a series that's become as part of all fans January's as has a food hangover or the Test Cricket. It's certainly always been my Boxing Day Test tradition - flat out on a couch, test on in the background, Cliff Hardy book in hand. Glass of white wine beside me. 

It also appears that the decision to call it quits on the series happened after the book had been written - so there's no maudlin fare-the-well's, no tying up of any long-standing questions (not that there really are that many, expect maybe how bloody old is Cliff really!). What we have in WIN, LOSE OR DRAW is classic Hardy, hired by a wealthy businessman, Gerard Fonteyn, to find his teenage daughter. Julianna has been missing for over a year and despite a number of other granted half-hearted attempts there's never been a hint that she's dead or alive. Initially Hardy is inclined to agree with this assessment, but a photograph that eventually comes to light is just enough for him to get out, kick some rocks and see what crawls out.

A nicely complicated plot is elegantly executed with plenty of opportunity for even a slightly cricket distracted reader to keep up, but as always at the heart of these books is the tough-guy, lone-wolf, rough-around-the-edges, good-bloke Cliff Hardy. Even exiting this way, on a high, solving the unsolvable, never looking back, never saying goodbye, no regrets, no apologies, kind of makes sense. It won't make fans feel any better come next January, but then there are 42 of these books that you can always re-read. That's a lot of January's.

There is no denying Peter Corris’ status as the godfather of modern Australian crime. Corris took the American private investigator corner of the crime genre and made it uniquely Australian. Still going now after 33 years, gumshoe and Sydney icon Cliff Hardy is back in action for the forty-second time in Win, Lose or Draw.

Hardy is hired by Gerard Fonteyn, a wealthy businessman, to find his daughter Julianna. Julianna has been missing for over a year and there is little prospect that she will actually be found. Hardy does some digging and agrees with this assessment. But months later a photo of someone who could be Julianna comes to light on Norfolk Island and Hardy is off. Very soon the search becomes extremely complicated involving drugs, under-age prostitution, murder, corrupt police and dodgy investigators. All in all, a typical Hardy scenario.

Win, Lose or Draw delivers exactly what it promises – a hard boiled jaunt through the seedier parts of the Gold Coast and Sydney. Hardy, although starting to show is age (if he aged at the same rate as normal people he would be about 80 by now), is still as tough as ever. Even tied up and looking at the prospect of being dumped at sea he still manages a hard boiled quip or two. The plot, as always, appears straight forward at first but even Hardy admits about two thirds of the way through that it “made my other missing persons cases look simple”. Complicated, yes, and with plenty of conflicting agendas which often collide violently and tragically, but Corris never lets the reader lose track of what is going on.

Win, Lose or Draw is vintage Corris and vintage Hardy. While there are secrets there is no great mystery to be solved, just hard graft of procedural detection. The tension slowly ratchets but doesn’t quite pay off in the way the reader expects, there is a dead pan noir sense of humour and with locations sketched economically but perfectly to give a great sense of place. The author bio suggests that this might be the final Cliff Hardy book. If so then Corris has ensured that his Sydney Private Eye goes out on a high.

Cal Moriarty's debut novel takes the reader deep into the heart of America. Through the lens of a police procedural, Cal shines a light on the strange world of the religions that flourish in the American mid-west and then spread internationally. In The Killing of Bobbi Lomax, the religion in question is simply called the Faith. In many of its details, the Faith resembles Mormonism but Moriarty takes elements of a number of smaller, Christian-style religions.

The Killing of Bobbi Lomax opens spectacularly. Three bombs have gone off in and around Abraham City, the heart of Canyon County, two people are dead and one has been severely injured. Pressure is immediately on the two investigating officers to find the bomber before they can strike again. Half of the story follows the procedural elements of the story as the investigators try to find the connections between the three, seemingly unconnected victims. The other half of the story relates the backstory of one of the surviving victim - Clark Housemann, a rare book and coin seller. Housemann has made a living selling fake coins but turns his attention to producing fraudulent books and manuscripts. This history carefully, in a way that informs the reader but never pre-empts the next step in the investigation, reveals the real reasons behind the bombings.

The interest in this book lies in its exploration of the Faith. Starting as one man with a small group of followers, the Faith has grown from its centre in Abraham City into a global religion. At one point group of visiting Koreans is caught up in some of the action of the novel. All of the characters are affected by the Faith’s and control of their lives and the life of the town. Canyon County is alcohol free, most people do not have televisions, all pay tithes to the Faith, the ruling Council, all men, controls both the police and politicians. This control forces many of the Faithful to lead double lives - leaving the County to drink or hiding their television away when visitors come.

The Faith, like many religions, has a checkered history. Its founder, Robert Bright, may have lived polygamously with three very young wives. Much like Sunni and Shi'ite Islam, the religion itself is split between the Faith and the "True Faith", the former started by Bright's eldest son Abraham and the latter founded by one of his other children Jeremiah. In the world of the novel, it is The Faith that is in the ascendancy but its elders always feel the True Faith looking for an angle to take over.

The main characters in The Killing of Bobbi Lomax, the victim Clark Housemann and the policeman Marty Sinclair are complex and Moriarty doles out details slowly over the course of the novel. Particularly about the pain at the centre of Sinclair's life. Both have complex and difficult relationships with The Faith which informs their actions and drive the plot forward.

Moriarty makes a number of overt and subtle references to Alice and Wonderland throughout the novel. This includes a strange dreamlike sequence that could be straight out of Lewis Carroll. While the case is wrapped up by the end of the novel (complete with a "where are they now" epilogue), the cover states that it is the first in the "Wonderland" series. It will be interesting to see how Moriarty makes connections to this story although there are some threads left loose, including the cold case of Marty's missing daughter.

The Killing of Bobbi Lomax is a solid procedural with some bigger fish to fry. Its glimpse into the world of the Mormon-like religion of The Faith is illuminating for outsiders. The characters, and the town itself, are well drawn and the twists, when they come, while somewhat expected, are well handled. Overall, this is a readable and engaging debut.

The final book in the James Mycroft and Rachel Watts series starts and draws much to a close on the family farm Five Mile. Deep in the Mallee / Wimmera area of Victoria, first up, Rachel uses a short visit back to try to repair the mental damage that events in the middle book (EVERY WORD) inflicted. Then again the area is the setting for a very different purpose as the series concludes. It's also a chance for her brother Mike to bring his best mate Harris Derwent back to the city with them. 

Designated as Young Adult fiction, the "Every" series has always handled the ongoing romantic interest of these two teenagers (James and Rachel) well. The attraction, the slip into innocent relationship and the fractious nature of pairing up when there's a lot else going on in your life is part of the strength of these books. And logically the reader must know they are getting older, and therefore innocence will move aside. Their relationship must either move to the next level, or disintegrate. Which means a possible rival, or at least the presence of another boy / man is going to cause tension. And it does. 

Given it's also the final book in the series, as expected, there is a lot of rounding up of the strays. The mysterious Mr Wild - he of the physical threat to Watts and Mycroft must be revealed, the cops must solve a few puzzles, Rachel's unspoken war with her mother over the trip to London in book 2 must be ironed out one way or the other, and everything needs to be ticked off before the end of the book. Which means that some of the plot twists aren't exactly going to be twists. Amongst many other things, it came as no surprise that there would be a bit of other boy temptation and some weakening of what are, after all, teenage knees and dare we say a bit of mild stretching of your definition of faithfulness. To be fair though, the play-out of the major threat, of drawing your quarry to the quarry (which this reader found funny), was pretty dramatic and the sort of action that you'd hope for.  

As a standalone book EVERY MOVE won't work - this is a book for followers of the series, although I wouldn't be surprised if there's a few of those a bit disgruntled at the end of this one. Drawing to an end so many elements must be a tricky prospect for an author. It's not enough that there's a bit of mystery left to be sorted, but there's the issue of taking the relationship between the main characters up a notch. It goes somewhere that feels age-appropriate yet somehow a bit of a let down for some of us (maybe it's our fond longing or remembrance of young love's first bloom, and that sense of innocence). 

Whilst things are closed off, this book does feel a lot more like it's addressing the romantic, rather than the mysterious. It feels like a lot less Sherlock and a lot more Twilight (or so I'm told - never read any of them) if you like. Which was mildly disappointing for this reader, what with a life-long preference for mystery reading over romance. It does feel like one of the major revelations - the identity of the threatening Mr Wild - lands in the middle of so much teenage angst that it feels flat and surprisingly unsurprising. Then everybody gets distracted by the play out of the love interest. But then things do have a habit of changing. People change. Times change. Teenagers grow up and tastes in reading subject matters change. Having said that, this reader won't be surprised if EVERY MOVE has some very mixed reactions. The strength of this series is not in the individual books however but the series as a whole. As crime fiction for Young Adults, these books are about a lot of things - teenage attraction, love, friendship, boundary stretching and family angst.

We seem to like spending time with bad people - sociopathic characters who are constantly scheming to manipulate and kill. You just have to look at the popularity of Dexter or Hannibal Lecter or the success of Gone Girl. The Kind Worth Killing understands this desire and plays on it to the hilt. None of the characters come across as particularly likeable and all of them have skeletons in their closets but Swanson makes spending time with them fun.

The Kind Worth Killing has a fabulous cold open: a man meets a woman in an airport bar. The rules are different in airport bars and before long, and after more martinis, Ted is revealing all to Lily about his wife’s infidelity and his desire to kill her. What surprises him is that his companion encourages the idea and offers to help. To reveal anything that happens after that point would take this review well into spoiler territory. Suffice to say that at most points in the narrative, whatever you think is going to happen is not what happens.

There are a couple of caveats with this novel. Firstly, there are the stereotyped gender roles. The main female characters are both stunningly beautiful but deeply, narcissistic and sociopathic. They are constantly using their beauty to manipulate the men around them and, literally in some cases, to get away with murder. The male characters, while also willing to do bad things, are much weaker, easily manipulated or led and never seem to be quite in control of their actions.

Secondly, all of the various narrative voices tend to blend. If not for the post-it note style tag with the character’s name at the beginning of each chapter it is sometimes hard to distinguish between them. This is particularly the case in the section of the book that alternates between the two female protagonists.

On top of this the plot has a couple of holes that, if you stopped too long think about them, you could drive a well stocked ute through. But Swanson has written a classic page turner and manages the pace to ensure that there is no time to think about anything other than what might be coming next. From the opening couple of chapters that introduce the first two thoroughly unlikeable characters, the reader is too busy turning pages to find out how character A is going to outwit or manipulate character B in order to kill character C. In the end, this is a great book to read on a plane, or in an airport lounge, at least as a way of avoiding meeting any sociopaths.

This is going to have to be another one of those reviews that comes with a disclaimer. I love Adrian McKinty's books. Although I will admit that it's always been the dark side, his flawed and controversial characters, and his noir stylings that I'd thought appealed particularly.

THE SUN IS GOD is none of that and yet there are glimpses. Based on elements of a true story, set in 1906 New Guinea, this is the tale of the investigation into the death of a man on a remote island in the midst of a community of nudist, back-to-nature "Cocovores". They eat only coconuts (and bananas as they grow at the top of trees and are therefore close to the Sun). They spend days sunbathing, they live in a weird sort of "Ikea-style" village of odd little pre-fab cottages, supported by local servants, and, whilst they are a small community, they make up for that with large bucket loads of odds.

Before all of that starts though, the reader is introduced to retired British military policeman Will Prior, who after serving during the Boer War ends up in the Germany colony of Herbertshöhe in the middle of the New Guinea islands. He has a loving relationship with a local woman who serves as his housekeeper, keeps himself a little distant from the mostly German ex-pat community, and is somewhat bemused to find himself pressed into investigative service in the pursuit of the truth of Max Lutzow's death.

Needless to say - oddity by the bucket loads - told in a most engaging manner. The central characters - Prior; local government representative, and fellow investigator Hauptmann Kessler and Bessie Pullen-Burry, intrepid lady traveller and reporter, shine. Glow and not just from sunburn. Somehow the oddness of the community into which they are thrust becomes endearing, and yet slightly threatening when viewed through Prior's eyes. Whilst the story is littered with eccentric characters, there are no caricatures. Even the favoured community of tipple Bayer aspirin and heroin ... well of course a bunch of people who believe in eating only Coconuts are going to have a drink like that. Of course.

Echoing much of the true story, McKinty warns at the commencement that there are some fictional characters, and some fictional elements, but in the main, the book follows the facts, as they are known. The deaths that took place on Kabakon during this period haven't been solved, although there's nothing held back in exploring or investigating the possibilities.

Whilst the subject matter, the setting, and the characters are very different from that which fans of Adrian McKinty's books could normally expect, it's what reminds you that aside from anything else, this author can write. Because it's much lighter THE SUN IS GOD is just the ticket for readers who find the darker side too much, but it also works for those of us who don't care. Especially those of us who would happily stump up to the cliché and read the author's shopping list should he be tempted to publish it.
 

The structure of trilogies must have some appeal for McKinty, not just because he has previous form. From the outside you can see that it could be quite a challenge to build a character's life and explore events in a proscribed number of books. And then it's over. For this reader it's a very bitter sweet experience. Especially when, from book number one, this series cemented itself as a big part of January's expectations.

Part of the appeal is obviously the central character Sean Duffy. An outsider in his own country and his own community, it's that viewpoint that makes him such an effective policeman. Not only is he not beholden, he sees everything in a slightly different manner. That idea of the cop as the ultimate outsider's nothing new, but there's something about the way that McKinty has built this scenario - within the framework of the Troubles - with the complications of religion, and ethnicity muddied further by cops versus crims, and the branches of the cops versus each other. It's a multi-layered environment drawn out elegantly by some clever, atmospheric and pointed story telling.

It also doesn't hurt that IN THE MORNING I'LL BE GONE opens with one of those openings we've come to expect:

"The beeper began to whine at 4.27pm on Wednesday, 25 September 1983. It was repeating a shrill C sharp at four-second intervals which meant - for those of us who had bothered to read the manual - that it was a Class 1 emergency. This was a general alert being sent to every off-duty policeman, police reservist and soldier in Northern Ireland. There were only five Class 1 emergencies and three of them were a Soviet nuclear strike, a Soviet invasion and what the civil servants who'd written the manual had nonchalantly called 'an extra-terrestrial trespass'."

From that moment on, until the final page is read, and the book is hugged just a little bit, the story builds. Set as it is in the time of the Troubles, there are cultural references throughout - music, clothes, and to the complications of life at that time. There's classical music references which cleverly reflect Duffy's mood and thinking, and there's humour. Beautifully dry, clever, dropped into the middle of conversations, type humour:

"I had to admit that he was impressive. You noticed the hair first. Kennedy hair was far in advance of anything Ireland had to offer. It was space-age hair. It was hair for the new millennium. Irish hair was stuck somewhere in 1927. Kennedy hair had put man on the fucking moon."

Built into all of the cultural and personality there is also a solid plot, interwoven with a good old fashioned locked room mystery. Which works - not just because of the timeframe, it's a good brain teaser. But the main focus remains that most difficult of issues, well known from the Troubles - terrorism and the IRA. Weaving the fictional into fact worked particularly well here, putting the timeframe into a definite context, and providing a real sense of the threat, and the grievance which gave rise to it.

If you're a fan of McKinty's books you'll also notice a Michael Forsythe cameo. Elegantly done and informative / clever into the bargain.

But then informative, clever, engaging and an undeniable favourite, IN THE MORNING I'LL BE GONE most definitely was. The only downside is that it's the third in the trilogy, and it's impossible not to feel very sad about that.