Cutler, David Whish-Wilson

CUTLER, the novel, features Paul Cutler, the former undercover operative, now working "off the books" in the dangerous and unpredictable world of investigator for hire. In this story he's tasked with finding the truth about the disappearance of an Australian marine scientist, whilst on a Taiwanese distant water fishing vessel, working in the incredibly murky and dodgy world of deep sea trawling and fisheries. With the complication being Bevan's father has his own fleet of distance trawlers, and may not quite be the legal cleanskin he seems to be. Once Cutler starts to scratch the surface of Bevan's disappearance, a slew of dark, horrendous crimes against people, ocean's, environment and just about everything else in their paths, comes to light. 

Whish-Wilson has a number of strengths when it comes to his fiction writing. For a start he's a serious, dedicated researcher who is motivated by wrongs in the world. Read the author's note and acknowledgements at the back of this novel and you can get a very clear sense of what triggers his thinking, and how he goes about his work. He's also blessed with the ability to write lean, mean, pointed and unflinching prose in a way that, confronts, but never repulses to the point where readers are forced to look away (remembering always that the subject matter in this one is pretty bloody awful all the way down). 

One of the reasons I'm such a lover of crime fiction is a willingness to shine a light into areas that need a bit of UV therapy, especially when it's human activity that doesn't sit at the forefront of everyone's minds. It stands to reason that modern industrial fishing (same as human slavery / live animal exports / battery hen farms) must be flat out wrong. There's plenty of history that shows that exploitation of others in order to make "money" has come with hefty doses of cruelty, disregard for sustainability, and a ruthlessness that's breathtaking. Maybe it has always been possible because it tends to happen in the dark, under the radar. Which is where good stories like CUTLER, which also don't pull any punches or indulge in too many weasel words, shed that necessary light, and sometimes bring an unlikely hero into play. Cutler is the perfect sort of cynical, been there, done that, sod it, sort of a hero that brings a real sense of realism to this story. As does the brutality. It's hard to avoid the feeling that brutality and greed have always been there - but have now been industrialised, mechanised, and weaponised. We need more Paul Cutler's and writers like David Whish-Wilson that are willing to turn the wrongs that they see into illustrations for the rest of us.