Tag: Aussie Noir

Book Review: Cutters End by Margaret Hickey – a gripping new Aussie Noir series with a troubled cop

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It’s hard not to pick up a book with a cover showing a dry Aussie outback setting. Those small towns in the rural backwaters of Australia just seem to seethe with all kinds of tension. Broken hearts and lost dreams, the struggle with a harsh environment wearing people down, young people abandoning home for the cities. You can’t help wondering if the author will be the next Jane Harper (author of The Dry).

With Cutters End, we’re in opal mining country, an industry on its last legs, the kind of place you pass through on the Stuart Highway heading north to Alice Springs. It’s also the place where a local hero and father met an unexplained death, discovered trapped beneath his vehicle and apparently burned to death. Back in 1990 this was explained as an accident at the inquest, but Suzanne Miller, a TV host with a flagging career, says it’s time for a reinvestigation. Michael Denby saved her and her mother from floodwaters when she was a small child and he deserves better.

DS Mark Ariti, similarly with a flagging career, is on leave when his superior officer discovers that he knew one of the witnesses at the time – one Ingrid Mathers who Mark dated at high school. Mark’s bumped up to Acting Inspector and sent to re-interview Ingrid and to see if he can jog her memory about the days around New Year 1990 when she was hitchhiking with her friend Joanne. But Ingrid’s not very forthcoming, although the reader has the inkling that she’s got a secret or two.

Mark catches up with Joanne, now living the high life in Sydney, similarly reticent. Why don’t the two women talk to each other any more? More clues pull Mark back to Cutters End, and the Mendamo Roadhouse, once owned by creepy Gerald, where Ingrid hitched a ride with somebody called Ron or Don. He bounces ideas off his new sidekick, DC Jagdeep Kaur, and picks up gossip at the three rather disappointing pubs in Cutters End.

Finally, Cutters End. The Stuart Highway a blade cutting through the centre of town, railway line alongside it like a rival sibling. Two main streets, a petrol station, the town hall, council offices, a supermarket, dingy motel, a primary school and, in the back streets, houses with sad facades and secret interiors.
The opal mining boom was bust, had been for decades, and although the welcome sign read ‘Cutters End, a town on the move!’ Mark doubted it. This town, like many across the country, had the look of a dying dog waiting to be shot. But still, he knew too well that dogs don’t die easy – those pleading eyes, that sense of loyalty and long history. The faded pride of what they once were.

When the woman at the service station where you get the best coffee in town tells Mark to find out about the two missing girls, the story goes in an interesting new direction. More than a couple of young women seem to have disappeared from the area, all of them hitching a ride and chancing their luck with whoever picks them up. Did they just move on and then take off overseas without letting anyone know? Build a better life? Or is there a more sinister explanation?

The story is peppered with interesting local characters: John Baber, the kindly ex-school teacher turned van driver who local businesses rely on for deliveries; mentally damaged Foobie who takes inappropriate pictures of people and becomes a source of useful information; Sergeant Darryl Wickman, the town’s long-serving police officer who has a way with the townspeople and a wise-cracking relationship with Jagdeep.

But it’s the undercurrent of evil so typical in these stories that has you on edge. The ugly circumstances of Denby’s death, the casual misogyny and disregard for vulnerable young women, the tight-lipped attitudes of the locals. Mark is struggling to make headway in all directions, either with his case or in his marriage, and like so many cops in these sorts of novels, never seems able to say the right thing.

There are evocative reminders of the time, not only the terrible haircuts and ugly sweaters, but also the real-life backpacker murders in New South Wales and the serial killer Ivan Milat. These crimes happened around the same time that our fictional Denby was killed. They conjure up all kinds of thoughts and feelings around how we protect our young people from predatory behaviour, about violence against women and whether anything much has changed for the better.

Cutters End is the first in a series about troubled cop, Mark Ariti. It’s a terrific read if you enjoy authors like Jane Harper, Garry Disher, Chris Hammer and Sarah Bailey, and a welcome addition to the genre. There are a couple more to look forward to (Stone Town and Broken Bay) with The Creeper out later this year. Can’t wait. Cutters End is a four star read from me.

Book Review: Exiles by Jane Harper – Aaron Falk is back in an atmospheric new mystery

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I’ve read all of Jane Harper’s novels. It was possibly her first book, The Dry, that triggered a popular interest in Aussie Noir, giving Scandi Noir a run for its money. For me, it was Jane Harper that got me reading Australian mysteries and I imagine it was the same for many readers. There’s just something special about novels set in the outback.

Since The Dry we’ve had a second Aaron Falk novel – Force of Nature is soon to hit the big screen – and now, a long-awaited third. Exiles sees the Melbourne detective visiting friends in rural wine country for a christening. It’s a bitter-sweet time for Greg Raco’s family. While Aaron is going to be godfather to Raco’s baby boy, nobody can forget what happened at the same time a year ago. The Marralee Valley Annual Food and Wine Festival was on and it was here that Kim Gillespie disappeared, leaving her baby Zoe asleep in her pram.

Kim’s older daughter from her long-term relationship with Charlie Raco, Greg Raco’s winemaker brother, is desperate for answers. Now seventeen, she’s running a campaign, aided by Charlie and her good friend Joel, handing out flyers and canvassing potential eyewitnesses. Aaron, with all his detective smarts, somehow gets roped in.

And there’s another cold case – the hit-and-run death of Joel’s father at the Reservoir, a spot adjacent to the festival grounds, and it’s the Reservoir where Kim’s shoe was found. Is this a coincidence or are the two cases linked? Aaron has the added complication of meeting up with Gemma again, Joel’s mother – someone he’d met through Raco, and who he can’t quite forget.

Even in the gloom Falk could see it stretching out, vast and open in its centre, then twisting and curving to fill the turns and gullies that formed the banks. It was big. Bigger than he remembered. The opposite bank was just visible across the swathe of water, but he couldn’t see the westernmost edge, or the dam that lay somewhere to the east. The festival grounds felt far behind them, but Falk could hear a distant low thrum of music and crowd noise undercutting the stillness.

Emotions are high in this story with two teenagers having lost parents and not having any answers. Aaron’s a bit of a softy and is sympathetic. The story also hearkens back to the events from the school days of Kim and the Racos. Like the current batch of kids from the local high school, the opening night of the wine and food festival was when there was a big party in the woods near the Reservoir, something local cop, Sergeant Dwyer would love to shut down.

There’s a lot going on in each of the characters’ lives, and we slowly get a picture of a community, of complicated loyalties among old friends, old grudges and a fair bit more besides. We haven’t got a dry, scarily hot landscape. But the stunning countryside surrounding the grim spectre of the Reservoir and all its secrets makes for another atmospheric setting.

Add some superb writing, and a twist in the story I didn’t see coming and I’m happy to say that Jane Harper has done it again. Exiles is another cracking read and is satisfying on several levels. I’ve also got a feeling we might see Aaron Falk again – I hope so; he’s a complex and interesting detective. Exiles gets four and a half out of five from me.

Book Review: The Way It Is Now by Garry Disher – old crimes surface in Aussie Noir mystery

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I remember when Jane Harper’s stunning novel The Dry hit the shelves and suddenly we all wanted to read more Australian crime, or Aussie Noir as we soon called it. And all the while it seems Australian author Garry Disher has been producing reliably readable and award winning crime thrillers for years. I’d heard of him of course, but this I am ashamed to admit is the first Garry Disher novel I’ve read. At the end of which I could only shake my head and ask myself, what took me so long?

The Way It Is Now is Disher’s latest stand-alone novel. It’s about Charlie Deravin, a police officer on disciplinary leave who has nothing better to do or anywhere else to go but the old family beach house on Menlo Beach. While there’s plenty of surfing and Christmas to think of – his daughter’s visit is something to look forward to – there are reminders of the past at every turn.

The son of a cop, Charlie grew up in a society where the friends who came to family barbecues were other cops. And some of them are still around. But the most haunting thing for Charlie is the disappearance of his mother when he was a rookie policeman part of the team looking for a boy missing from a school camp. Assumed drowned, the child disappeared the same day as Charlie’s mother, a high school teacher who’d just popped home unexpectedly. Her car was found abandoned with evidence of a struggle. Newly separated, many people pointed the finger at Charlie’s dad.

The story weaves Charlie’s memories of the past with his ongoing relationship with his brother who hasn’t spoken to his father since, and his father now ailing but still receiving poison pen letters. There’s also the case Charlie has been suspended from, which caused him to fall out with his boss, but also brought a new love into his life. Anna was a whistle-blower in a case of jury tampering and someone’s trying to silence her. So nothing’s going well for Charlie. As Charlie uncovers the past, two dead bodies are found at a construction site and the police see even more links to Charlie’s dad. But Charlie has seen the toll the unsolved mystery has taken on his father and believes in his innocence. The book becomes a race to prove his innocence while the old man begins to fade.

While the plot is complex and interesting enough, humming along with plenty of suspense, Disher really excels with his characters. Charlie is likeable enough but flawed – the disappearance of his mother niggling in his mind for twenty years. This has put a strain on his marriage to say nothing of his work in Vice. There’re the old-school cops that he bumps onto at the beach, particularly Mark Valente who was like a second father to young Charlie and epitomises the old-boys club of local cops. Minor characters are no less interesting

While Valente seems a benign presence, he evokes a sense of not rocking the boat and keeping the past in its place. Charlie’s brother Liam loathes the man for his homophobic attitudes. Misogeny also lurks throughout the book – his mother’s nervousness around her lodger, the nasty rape case that was Charlie’s downfall, the attitudes to police wives. Disher brings it all to life in a way that seems authentic and adds a tone of menace.

I enjoyed The Way It Is Now as an audiobook, which was superbly read by Henry Nixon and made me feel I was at the beach on Australia’s Victoria coast. Disher evokes the Australian landscape well, so I’m going to see where else he takes me. This books gets a four out of five from me.

Book Review: Resurrection Bay by Emma Viskic – introducing an unforgettable new sleuth

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After such a run of historical novels, I was more than ready for a good, meaty mystery and what better than some Aussie Noir. I’d been meaning to pick up the first in this series for a while because I’d read good things and the idea of a hearing-impaired private investigator sparked my interest. Calum Zelic has been profoundly deaf since a childhood illness. Now in his thirties, he’s divorced and running a private investigation company. Mostly it’s small stuff, like the case he’s got now: the theft of cigarettes in bulk from a warehouse.

Caleb is interesting because he pretends he can hear just as well as anybody else, picking up what he can from lip reading, and signing with the people who know him better. And although Caleb has a talent for reading people through their body language, it’s just as well his trusty side-kick, tough-talking ex-cop, Frankie, is there to pick up anything he’s missed. The two create some terrific dialogue as they are always sparring with each other.

When his childhood friend, Gary, is murdered in an unspeakably violent way, Caleb is both grieving and flung into danger. Gary, a policeman, has been helping Caleb with his case – maybe it’s more than just cigarettes going in and out of that warehouse. Before his death he sent Caleb a text warning him about a man named Scott. Next thing you know, Frankie has gone missing, Caleb’s running for his life and turns to Kat, his ex-wife for help. The two hide out in Resurrection Bay, Gary and Caleb’s childhood home.

In Resurrection Bay we get snippets of Caleb’s childhood, and meet Anton, Caleb’s dodgy brother, who has done time for drug-related crime. Anton says he’s turned his life around, but can you ever trust an addict? We have some interesting dynamics between the two brothers, while Caleb still carries a torch for Kat. So with the case and all, he’s a bundle of conflicting emotions.

Viskic has created a pacy crime thriller but what kept me turning the pages was the smart dialogue and quirky characters. Caleb is constantly on the receiving end of a pasting, but somehow manages to keep going. He plays a cat and mouse game in several nail-biting scenes, and unable to rely on sounds, uses his remaining senses tuned up to the max. This makes for some very dramatic moments all the while propelling Caleb to a gritty showdown and a few twisty surprises.

My only gripe was that the ending just seemed to be a little too much – the violence and the twists. A little over-egging of the pudding perhaps. Although this is probably not uncommon in this genre and the book has garnered a bunch of awards. Overall, Resurrection Bay is a great start to a new series, and I will be happy to check out the next books because Caleb is such a brilliant creation. I even developed a hankering to learn sign language. This book gets a four out of five from me.

Book Review: The Van Apfel Girls Are Gone by Felicity McLean

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Felicity McLean’s debut novel novel has been described as The Virgin Suicides meets Picnic at Hanging Rock. Set in small town Australia, the book is told in two time frames, and begins when Tikka Molloy returns home to reconnect with her sister Laura who isn’t well. She can’t stop thinking, had they did the right thing twenty years ago when their friends, the three Van Apfel sisters vanished. She looks back on that sweltering summer when she was eleven and the events that led up to their disappearance.

Tikka is a great child narrator – she reminds me a little bit of Scout from To Kill a Mockingbird, if we’re thinking of book comparisons here. She’s smart and imaginative and comes from a loving family. At the corner of their street live the Van Apfels and Tikka and Laura spend a lot of time there as the family has a pool. The Van Apfels attend a fundamentalist church – their dad, though outwardly genial, is particularly strict and this causes tension with his wayward thirteen-year-old daughter Cordelia.

There’s a lot of Tikka trying to make sense of her world and understand what’s going on with the grown-ups, and the tension that seems to lurk at the Van Apfels. There’s a new teacher, Mr Avery, who has a mysterious past that may have included a stint in prison – as rumour has it. So along with the simmering heat there is plenty of simmering tension as the school plans its big, Showstopper concert at an outdoor amphitheatre, for which Tikka has written her own skit and where events build to a climax.

In true Aussie Noir style, the landscape plays a big part in this novel. The mangroves around a brackish estuary create a sinister backdrop (Tikka complains of an unpleasant smell); the empty landscape beyond; the heat bouncing off the tarmac. It all adds to the mood and tension of the book. And there is a hint of the unreliable narrator about Tikka. How accurate are her memories from childhood? Even now as an adult she still can’t help looking for Cordelia (Cordie) at railway stations, at busy intersections, her blonde head just disappearing around corners, failing to stop when called. The Van Apfel girls may have disappeared that summer, but a part of Tikka seems to have been lost as well.

The Van Apfel Girls Are Gone is an impressive debut, a character driven mystery that is also quite the page-turner. There is plenty of humour with the way McLean re-imagines childhood, the rivalry between sisters and between classmates, the rumours and the secrets, the superiority of the older kids. This balances out the sadness of what happens and the feeling of lost innocence which runs through the story. Not a long book, McLean’s novel is well worth picking up, and heralds a promising new author to look out for. A four out of five read from me.

Book Review: The Survivors by Jane Harper

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It’s hard not to be disappointed that the new Jane Harper isn’t set in the outback like The Dry and The Lost Man. She uses the relentless heat and harsh environment of that setting in a way that adds suspense and atmosphere by the bucketload. The Survivors sweeps us off to Tasmania and a coast that has seen scores of shipwrecks with tides that can catch out the unwary. A different environment, but still there’s that sense of danger.

Though for most of the inhabitants of Evelyn Bay it’s just the place they call home and where many make enough of an income from the tourists that visit every summer. It’s the place where Kieran grew up, but he’s made a new life in Sydney with Mia, who knew Kieran at school. The couple have returned with a baby in tow to their childhood home to help Kieran’s parents pack up and move to a nearby town. Kieran’s dad has dementia. The family are still haunted by a tragic event that took the life of Kieran’s brother, Finn, and almost Kieran too, for which he feels survivor’s guilt and more.

But this was a dozen or so years ago, and Kieran has a family, a new life, plenty to be getting on with. Another death, a murder no less, threatens to drag the earlier tragedy back into everyone’s thoughts. For at the same time that Finn and his friend had been attempting to rescue Kieran, Gabby, a fourteen year old girl and Mia’s best friend, disappeared, her backpack washed up days later. When Bronte, a young waitress, is found murdered on the beach, questions arise about why the death of Gabby wasn’t investigated properly all those years ago.

Harper really understands how to work small-town prejudices, the tendency to make connections where there are none, to leap to conclusions. The emotions run high in this book, particularly around Kieran and his family, but also on the appearance of Bronte’s parents. You can’t help but feel a parent’s anguish of losing a child. Then there’s all the guilt Kieran feels for the events that led to the earlier tragedy, particularly as he remembers the laddish behaviour, the sexism and one-upmanship he and his mates indulged in. One can’t help hoping he’s a better man now.

The Survivors is another brilliant read by Jane Harper – it doesn’t really matter where she sets her books, because it’s the characters and the way we connect with them that really drives the plot. And living in a country with treacherous coastlines everywhere you look, it was easy for me to visualise the setting and imagine the danger. And yet…. I just love the buzz of reading about the outback and I’m kind of hoping to return there with the next Jane Harper. Still, this one scores and easy four out of five from me.

Book Review: Where the Dead Go by Sarah Bailey

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I discovered this series with the first book, The Dark Lake, which introduced beleaguered police detective Gemma Woodstock. She’s got a lot of baggage, which is relevant to the first novel and here, a couple of books later, things aren’t getting any easier in Where the Dead Go.

Gemma has temporarily left Sydney to return to small town Smithson due to her ex-partner’s death. They have a young son, Ben, although they haven’t been together for a few years, Gemma having made a new life in Sydney with charismatic, older and wiser, Mac. Gemma just makes it through the funeral, when her old boss Jonesy is asked to pick up a missing person’s case in the coastal town of Fairhaven. Jonesy can’t spare the hours, so Gemma ups stakes and bolts, eager to leave the claustrophobic town of her upbringing and immerse herself in work, taking young Ben with her.

This causes all sorts of disapproval – from her dad, from her friends, from Mac. But Gemma is headstrong and sees work as her refuge. The case – a fifteen-year-old girl who vanishes after a party – is tricky with few leads. Possible suspects include Abbey’s ex-boyfriend and her violent father. Plus there are some texts on Abbey’s phone from a mystery man who seems to be stalking her.

Bailey does small towns really well. The way everyone knows everyone and talks about them behind their back. The secrets that no one wants to share with strangers, let alone a strange police woman. Gemma is up against it all. She’s filling in for a Detective Inspector who’s had a car accident and has a grudge against women high achievers like Gemma. Her team vary from being hostile – in the case of detective de Luca, another woman who’s battling the DI – and incompetent. And then there’s the fact that the case reminds Gemma of another girl who went missing in Sydney and who she failed to save. That case is still giving Gemma nightmares.

Soon there’s a death and then Gemma is threatened, reminding us why she should never have brought Ben to Fairhaven. The setting of a seaside town that makes it’s living off a transient holiday population adds atmosphere. Danger builds up to a point where Gemma’s life is at stake and there are some brilliant action scenes.

But the real tension is in the character of Gemma herself. She’s impulsive, forgets to look after herself, and ignores Mac’s frequent texts and phone calls. As a reader I was frequently begging her to pick up the phone, to check back on Ben, to get the heck out of there. While the story seemed to sag a little in the middle with all the characters and interviews and forensic reports, I know I will return to the series to check in again on Gemma – she’s just so interesting. Three and a half stars from me.

Book Review: Scrublands by Chris Hammer

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Aussie Noir has become incredibly popular since The Dry by Jane Harper was published in 2016. Similarly drought and the high heat of summer, this time in outer New South Wales, is the setting for Hammer’s debut crime novel. Newspaper journalist Martin Scarsden visits Riversend, site of a mass killing, a year later to write an update on the town, a story previously covered by rival journo, D’Arcy Defoe.

Scarsden, once something of a lothario, suffers from PTSD following an incident when he was covering the Gaza Strip for his paper. His boss thinks this assignment will be a tonic – get him out of the office yet keep him busy. But Riversend is a depressed sort of place for recovery. The miserable Black Dog Motel lives up to its name; the town’s businesses are struggling and nobody’s very forthcoming – except for the young policeman, Robbie Haus Jones, the hero of the day.

Reverend Byron Swift was a good-looking, charismatic preacher, popular with the young and, with Jones, helped resurrect the youth centre, a Pied Piper figure it seems. So what made him open fire on his church steps, gunning down several men from the Bellington Anglers Club? Scarsden talks to the locals and gets a few more snippets out of Harley Snouch, the dero who says Swift was a pedophile. He takes coffee and comfort at the Oasis bookshop, run by drop-dead gorgeous, Mandalay Blonde – a what’s a beautiful girl like you doing in a place like this scenario.

Fortunately before you have too much time to wonder on the clunkiness of the love angle or the characters’ names, events start to hot up, literally. Martin becomes suddenly popular when he saves a teenager’s life and helps out with a bushfire. There are more murders, including a cold case involving two German backpackers. But Martin’s luck soon runs out as he tries to get his facts straight and more reporters and the police close in. People may be talking but everyone seems to have something to hide. Who can Martin trust?

Hammer manages a lot of plot threads in the novel, carefully reeling out backstory and tying them all together in the end. The pressure to file the story first and the mock camaraderie between the news teams add authenticity. I really enjoyed the lively, unmistakably Australian dialogue which spins the plot along nicely making Scrublands an entertaining read. And in the background there’s that oppressive, drought-stricken landscape.

Hammer earned a best new crime novel Dagger Award for Scrublands and it’s easy to see why. It’s an interesting story given weight by the way it deals with bigger things like evil and redemption. But I found the character of Mandalay Blonde (that surely should be a Bond heroine) and her relationship with Martin didn’t work for me. This one gets a three.

Book Review: Into the Night by Sarah Bailey

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9781760297480I reviewed The Dark Lake by this author not so long ago but actually, it was this book – her second Gemma Woodstock crime novel – that I picked up first. It just looked so interesting with its brooding Melbourne in winter setting; a damaged detective (Woodstock is hopeless at relationships, has more baggage than you can shake a stick at, including a young son she has left behind in the small town where she grew up); and everything’s new – new flat, new job, new city, new partner.

But you just have to read book one first. Into the Night begins with the murder of a homeless man and Sergeant Gemma Woodstock feels the pressure to close the case quickly so that other Melbourne homeless feel safe and the news media think the police care about those who slip below the radar. Continue reading “Book Review: Into the Night by Sarah Bailey” →