Review: INSPECTOR ANDERS AND THE BLOOD VENDETTA, Marshall Browne

Random House Australia, Dec 2006, ISBN 9781741664928

This review is one of a number that I am re-publishing as they were originally published elsewhere, not on this blog.

It is twenty years since the Mafia had Inspector Anders blown up in his car in Rome, and eighteen months since Anders has been in Italy. The killing of two right wing Italian politicians one month apart has resulted in Anders' Europol chief sending the one-legged investigator back to Milan where he will be in most danger. A calling card with each of the bodies leaves no doubt that the killings have both been carried out by the same person. There are no witnesses, and no useful forensic data at the crime scenes.

Within hours of his arrival in Milan Inspector Anders' cover is blown. Shortly after, a third right wing politician is murdered. Anders is under pressure from the Italian government to stop these killings. Terrorism is his speciality and the government is convinced these are terrorist acts. Anders is not so sure. Other factors complicate his investigation: he is unwell with some sort of virus; he is wearing a new leg (Mark IV); has some personal pressures to get a book published; leaks by parliamentarians let the public know things he wants kept quiet; and the investigation seems to be alternately going down side alleys and then back-tracking.

INSPECTOR ANDERS AND THE BLOOD VENDETTA moves at a cracking pace as Anders and those he is working with in the Milano Questura follow lead after lead in their search for the killer(s). Huge manpower and resources are thrown at this investigation, and more than anything the government does not want the Mafia to carry out its long-standing threat of killing Anders on Italian soil. They come close at least twice.

This is not the Italy we see as tourists, but the world of political confusion, of a "nation thick with crime and mayhem". Browne uses some wonderful imagery as he describes a country "being ripped apart at the seams" by the killing of right wing politicians.

Inspector Anders is a very interesting character. One of his friends describes him as "a lonely, damaged man with a mind full of dark corners". His stubbornness, taciturnity, willingness to put himself in danger for the sake of the investigation, the domination of what he is physically able to do by "the leg", are all things that make him more alive to us.

Marshall Browne is an Australian author living in Melbourne. There are five titles in the Inspector Anders series. INSPECTOR ANDERS AND THE BLOOD VENDETTA is the most recent.

January 2007 review, originally published on Murder and Mayhem

My rating: 4.5

My reviews:
THE IRON HEART, my rating 4.5
RENDEZVOUS AT KAMAKURA INN (2006) my rating 4.3

INSPECTOR ANDERS and THE SHIP OF FOOLS (2001). My rating 4.2
Somebody doesn't want two big European companies to conduct a merger. An estimated 21,000 redundancies will occur if the merger goes ahead. So someone plants a bomb in the boardroom of ChemtexAG, a "fish tank" with walls of unbreakable glass, on the 33rd floor of a Frankfurt office tower. For the 16 directors of the two companies meeting in the room at the time, it is instant death, their remains coating the inside walls of the room just like paint. Interpol, in the person of one-legged Inspector Anders and his off-sider Matucci, are called in.
A group called Judgement Day claim responsibility, and seems to have some sort of link with the German terrorism of the 1970s. A message from the terrorists identifies another proposed merger as the next target and suddenly Anders has a race against time on his hands. Not so much a mystery as a thriller, #2 in Marshall Browne's Inspector Anders series. The action moves between Brussels, Strasbourg, and Paris.

Up for Grabs - THE IRON HEART by Marshall Browne

Marshall Browne is an Australian author and you will find I have referred to him quite a bit in my blog.

I am offering a copy of Browne's latest book THE IRON HEART (just reviewed) and I am willing to send it anywhere in the world.
But you will have to work for it!

There are 10 questions to answer.
This label will help you find most of what you need. You may have to follow a link or two to get the right answer.
You must answer via a comment - I have put Comments into moderation to facilitate this.

Even if you don't actually want a copy of the book, you can enter the competition. Just say in your comment that you don't want a copy.
I will take entries until April 25 and if there is more than one winner I'll pick the winner's name out of a hat.
On April 27 I will announce the correct answers, as well as who has won the book, and invite the person to contact me by email.

The Questions:

A

B

C

D

1. Which of the above is Marshall Browne?
2. Which Marshall Browne book is basically a classic locked room mystery?
3. In which Inspector Anders book does a bomb explode in the boardroom on the 33rd floor of a Frankfurt office tower?
4. Who is the protagonist in THE IRON HEART?
5. What has been Marshall Browne's profession for most of his life?
6. For which novel did Marshall Browne win Best First Novel Ned Kelly Award in 2000?
7. What is Inspector Anders' distinguishing physical characteristic?
8. In which Australian city are Browne's historical novels set?
9. How many titles are there in the Inspector Anders series?
10. How did Anders lose his leg?

So there you are. Happy researching.

Review: THE IRON HEART, Marshall Browne

William Hennemann Australia, 2009, ISBN 978-1-74166-467-6, 390 pages.

January 23 1939 is a big day for Berlin's Reichsbank - it has a new President and a new Chief Auditor. The latter is Franz Schmidt, recently divorced, and the saviour of Bankhaus Wertheim. The Reichsbank is the financial heart of the Third Reich, and Schmidt has been placed there by Manfred von Streck, a high-ranking member of the Nazi Party. Schmidt's role at present will be a watching one, von Streck's eyes and ears. He will report directly to Dr Walther Funk, the bank's president. But he suspects von Streck will require more of him.

Politically this is a time when even members of the Nazi party are divided about the future of Germany. Ideas of cleansing the population are gaining ascendance, with the Gestapo actively hunting down Jews and other traitorous elements. However not everyone in the party likes Hitler and there have already been plots to assassinate him. Party zealots though are insistent that everyone in high office should be a party member and that there is no room for anyone in a public institution like the Reichsbank for anyone who isn't. Franz Schmidt is a badge wearing party member, but this doesn't stop the zealots wondering how he got the job of Chief Auditor.

In Franz Schmidt's case his party membership is a camouflage, acquired for the same reason that he divorced his wife: to make it easier to undermine Nazism from within. Schmidt quickly realises that he will need to tread carefully in the Reichsbank: there are Nazi zealots like President Funk and the statuesque Fraulein Brandt, head of the Precious Metals Deaprtment, who will be watching his every move. And then Fischer, a non-party member, head of Foreign Bank Relations, is murdered on the eve of a trip to Switzerland.

THE IRON HEART is a thriller rather than a murder mystery. I haven't read many books set in the period immediately before the outbreak of World War 2. Browne has made me think about how dangerous it became in the face of rising Nazism to be a non-Nazi, a Jew, an aristocrat, or simply associated with one of these people. As Schmidt tries to achieve the task von Streck sets him, the danger for him, and the tension in the story, increases. The Gestapo are watching him and any false step will give them the opportunity to take him. It makes for very satisfying reading.

My rating: 4.5

In THE IRON HEART Marshall Browne obviously draws on considerable research into the period, as well as his own background as an international banker. THE IRON HEART is the second title in the series. The first was THE EYE OF THE ABYSS.

Marshall Browne is an Australian author living in Melbourne. He first came to attention when he won the Ned Kelly Award for Best First Novel in 2000 with THE WOODEN LEG OF INSPECTOR ANDERS. Browne began writing in the 1970s as a "Sunday morning" writer, when living in Hong Kong. His first title CITY OF MASKS was published in 1981, and he now has thirteen published titles.

Other Reviews:

• Jason Steger Banking on the action in Berlin
• Review by Karen on Aust Crime
  

Links to check

• Interview with Browne at Duffy & Snellgrove
• Snapshot on Matilda
• Novels listed on Fantastic Fiction
• Wikipedia entry
  

Other titles I have read

INSPECTOR ANDERS and THE SHIP OF FOOLS (2001). My rating 4.2
Somebody doesn't want two big European companies to conduct a merger. An estimated 21,000 redundancies will occur if the merger goes ahead. So someone plants a bomb in the boardroom of ChemtexAG, a "fish tank" with walls of unbreakable glass, on the 33rd floor of a Frankfurt office tower. For the 16 directors of the two companies meeting in the room at the time, it is instant death, their remains coating the inside walls of the room just like paint. Interpol, in the person of one-legged Inspector Anders and his off-sider Matucci, are called in.
A group called Judgement Day claim responsibility, and seems to have some sort of link with the German terrorism of the 1970s. A message from the terrorists identifies another proposed merger as the next target and suddenly Anders has a race against time on his hands. Not so much a mystery as a thriller, #2 in Marshall Browne's Inspector Anders series. The action moves between Brussels, Strasbourg, and Paris.

RENDEZVOUS AT KAMAKURA INN (2006) my rating 4.3

INSPECTOR ANDERS and THE BLOOD VENDETTA (2006). My rating 4.5
Inspector Anders, whose specialisation is terrorism, has been sent by Europol to Italy to assist in the investigation of the murder of 2 right wing senior politicians. Just after he arrives in Milan, a third is murdered. The cause of their deaths appears to be a serial killer although the national government is saying terrorism.
In returning to Italy, in fact his 'home country' after 2 years, Anders is being put into great danger from the Mafia in the South who have threatened to 'get' him, and also from members of the public who hold him responsible for the deaths of innocent people when he hasn't solved terrorism threats quickly enough in the past.
There is a nice interweaving of personal issues, such as a book Anders is trying to get published, and a woman friend in Strasbourg whom he is very fond of. Anders has replaced his wooden leg with a titanium one.

Locked-Off Murders

Inspired by fellow blogger Petrona whose latest posting is about "island novels", I decided to investigate my mini-reviews for different sorts of isolation. I've come up with 11 murder mysteries that I've read in the last 3 years or so, that are really variations on the "locked-room" scenario.

On an island

THE LIGHTHOUSE, P.D. James, my rating 5.0
Combe Island off the Cornish coast has a bloodstained history of piracy and cruelty but now, privately owned, it offers respite to over-stressed men and women in positions of high authority who require privacy and guaranteed security. But the peace of Combe is violated when one of the distinguished visitors is bizarrely murdered.

PIG ISLAND, Mo Hayder, my rating 4.8
Journalist Joe Oakes makes his living exposing supernatural hoaxes. The video of the 'the devil of Pig Island' has been around for a couple of years and Joe is absolutely sure that it is a hoax. Rumours of Satanic rituals taking place on Pig Island still proliferate, particularly among the mainland locals who resent the fact that the island is no longer open to them. The secretive religious group that lives on the island invites Joe to stay with them on the island for a week to see how the community lives. That dreadful events occur on Pig Island seems confirmed by two pieces of evidence that Joe can check for himself: a dreadful smell apparent when the wind blows from that quarter, and decaying chunks of flesh that constantly drift from the island to the mainland.

RAVEN BLACK, Ann Cleeves, my rating 4.6
Set on Shetland. Magnus Tait, an elderly man living on his own, mentally slow, and once dominated by his mother, was thought by the islanders to have been responsible when a little girl disappeared a few years ago. Her body was never found. But now when Magnus's teenage neighbour Catherine Ross is found strangled, there are those who say that Tait must be the prime suspect, and that the police need look no further. The detective is Jimmy Perez, an islander himself, now living on Fair Isle, but he went to school on Shetland. A carefully constructed satisfying read. 4.6

THE RECKONING, Sue Walker, my rating 4.4
They buried three girls. They buried the killer. But did they bury the truth? In June 1973 the bodies of three missing teenagers were found on the tiny Scottish island of Fidra. And when his father was arrested for the murders, 11-year-old Miller McAllister's life fell apart.

Isolated by snow

RENDEZVOUS AT KAMAKURA INN, Marshall Browne, my rating 4.3
Just when things really can't get any worse, Aoki is sent by his superintendent to the Kamakura Inn, a ryokan in Hokkaido, to recuperate.The detective in Aoki is revived as he realises that the other guests at the ryokan have secrets to hide, and he wonders if he has been sent there intentionally. He remembers an unsolved mystery of the disappearance of a woman 7 years earlier, and realises that at least two of the other guests have connections to that case. When the ryokan is cut off from the world in a snow storm, this tale becomes a classic locked room mystery. The ryokan is a house of many secrets, built to hide as well as accommodate, and the tension grows as first of all the telephone, and then the lights fail.

THE SACRED CUT, David Hewson, my rating 4.8
For the first time in two decades, Rome is paralysed by a blizzard. And a gruesome discovery is made in the Pantheon, one of the city's most ancient and revered architectural treasures. Covered by soft snow is the body of an American tourist - her back horribly mutilated.

DISTURBED EARTH, Reggie Nadelsen, my rating 4.2
Winter 2003. War is looming and New York is paralysed by the worst blizzard in years. Artie Cohen is called in to investigate a case: a pile of blood-soaked children's clothes have been found on the beach in Brooklyn. Almost against his will, Artie finds himself drawn into a case that involves the death of a child and the unaccountable disappearance of another, all against the background of a city already stricken by fear.

On a train

THE MYSTERY OF THE BLUE TRAIN, Agatha Christie, my rating 4.5
When Ruth Van Aldin Kettering is found murdered on the Blue Train en route to her annual winter trip to the French Riviera, it is up to Hercule Poirot to discover if she was murdered because the famous jewel was in her possession or was she murdered by her husband or his mistress or was there yet another sinister motive.

THE EXCURSION TRAIN, Edward Marston, my rating 4.0
London 1852. A trainful of excited fans are delivered to the illegal prize fight between Mad Isaac and the Bargeman near Twyford. But one second class passenger does not leave the train. He has been garrotted en route. Inspector Robert Colbeck of the Detective Department of the Metropolitan Police at Scotland Yard, now known as the Railway Detective, after his success in the previous year, takes up the case.

THE VICTIM IN VICTORIA STATION, Jeanne M. Dams, my rating 3.9
American Dorothy Martin broke her ankle shortly after her second marriage. Her British husband is ex-policeman Alan Nesbitt much in demand by police forces around the world as a consultant, and in this book he is only a voice at the other end of the phone. Dorothy has to travel to London by train to see her specialist, and during the journey she talks to the young man in the opposite seat, who is the CEO of a software company. When they arrive at Victoria Station he appears to have fallen asleep, and when Dorothy tries to wake him she finds that he is very dead.

NEVER GO BACK, Robert Goddard, my rating 4.5
An old mate from Harry Barnett's RAF days is organising a 50th anniversary reunion in Scotland at Kilveen Castle where as young men they had taken part in a psychological experiment. But even before they arrive at the castle one of their group has disappeared and soon after they arrive another dies in strange circumstances.

RENDEZVOUS AT KAMAKURA INN, Marshall Browne

Random House 2006, 287 pages. ISBN 978-1-74166-527-7

Tokyo detective Aoki and his team are expecting that the case they have been working on for the last seventeen months will soon be over. Along the way they have lost 3 of their team who fell under the pace of the investigation, but it will all be worth it. This case is about to break and they will all have promotions.

But that's not the way it works out. They are called abruptly to a meeting with the superintendent and the director general and told that the investigation is over, no action will be taken, the case will not be proceeding. The ex-governor with connections to the yakuza will get away with it yet again.

In the following months, the ex-governor's star rises and people begin to talk of him as the next prime minister, and Aoki's star goes into decline. A member of his team commits suicide, a journalist, and both his father and his wife die and Aoki himself is suspended from duty. And just when things really can't get any worse, Aoki is sent by his superintendent to the Kamakura Inn, a ryokan in Hokkaido, to recuperate.

The detective in Aoki is revived as he realises that the other guests at the ryokan have secrets to hide, and he wonders if he has been sent there intentionally. He remembers an unsolved mystery of the disappearance of a woman 7 years earlier, and reaslises that at least two of the other guests have connections to that case. When the ryokan is cut off from the world in a snow storm, this tale becomes a classic locked room mystery. The ryokan is a house of many secrets, built to hide as well as accommodate, and the tension grows as first of all the telephone, and then the lights fail.

All the other Marshall Browne books I've read, the Inspector Anders ones, have rated highly. This one is no exception. My rating 4.3

I bought RENDEZVOUS AT KAMAKURA INN at Adelaide Writers' Week after I had heard Marshall Browne talk, and he duly signed it for me.

Meanwhile in Abu Dhabi
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
An inviting pile of books beckons outside the public library at the Cultural Foundation in Abu Dhabi.

Today was 44 degrees C, windy, and a bit dusty, so we spent a couple of hours viewing an exhibition about Sudan (in airconditioned comfort).

The pile of books is a "sculpture".

Hahndorf Band Festival, German crime fiction writers

Sitting in the Hahndorf Institute this afternoon listening to brass bands got me thinking about German crime fiction.

Hahndorf is a tourist town in the Adelaide Hills with a proud history and long connection to brass banding. Today 5 bands, including Enfield Brass (alias Klemzig Oompah) with which I am connected, participated in the 2008 Hahndorf Band Festival beginning with a street march, and then a concert this afternoon.

Thinking of German crime fiction leads me to remind you that the Carnival of Criminal Minds is at present being hosted by Internationale Krimis. The Carnival of Criminal Minds reminds me a little of Enid Blyton's MAGIC FARAWAY TREE. Every time you visited the top of the tree there was a different land hovering.

I must confess that I am not familiar with a great range of German crime fiction. When I was in Germany a little under 2 years ago, I did notice many crime fiction novels originally printed in English available as German translations, so I know crime fiction is very popular there.

However in the list that follows I'm taking a few liberties and including crime fiction titles I've read that have German settings. I included some when I wrote about the Schutzenfest back in january.

These all have a rating of better than 4.0 from me

INSPECTOR ANDERS and THE SHIP OF FOOLS, Marshall Browne
Somebody doesn't want two big European companies to conduct a merger. An estimated 21,000 redundancies will occur if the merger goes ahead. So someone plants a bomb in the boardroom of ChemtexAG, a "fish tank" with walls of unbreakable glass, on the 33rd floor of a Frankfurt office tower. For the 16 directors of the two companies meeting in the room at the time, it is instant death, their remains coating the inside walls of the room just like paint. Interpol, in the person of one-legged Inspector Anders and his off-sider Matucci, are called in. A group called Judgement Day claim responsibility, and seems to have some sort of link with the German terrorism of the 1970s. A message from the terrorists identifies another proposed merger as the next target and suddenly Anders has a race against time on his hands. Not so much a mystery as a thriller, #2 in Marshall Browne's Inspector Anders series. The action moves between Brussels, Strasbourg, and Paris.

THE FIRST CASUALTY, Ben Elton
The setting is 1917 and the Great War grinds on, with the youth of the British Empire and Germany being sacrificed on the Somme. Douglas Kingsley, an inspector in His Majesty's Metropolitan Police in London, finds himself in gaol when he declares that the war offends his sense of logic. Rejected by his wife and condemned as a conscientious objector, Kingsley is sent to Flanders to investigate the murder of a British officer, also renowned as a poet. The setting in the war allows the author to ask questions about the importance of investigating the murder of one man when so much bloodshed is occurring all the time.

THE MASK OF ATREUS, A. J. Hartley
There are really two beginning points for this thriller/mystery. In the dying days of World War Two, a German tank convoy escorting a truck is intercepted by an American platoon. In the skirmish that follows most of the Germans are killed and the rest flee leaving the truck behind. Inside the truck is a single crate stencilled with the German eagle and swastika. The contents of this crate are pivotal to the rest of the story. The story then leaps to the present day. At 3 am Deborah Miller, curator of a small private museum in Atlanta, Georgia, is awoken by her third strange phone call for the night. This one sends her hurrying back to the museum which she had left only just after midnight after a successful promotional evening. At the museum, in a room she did not even know existed, she finds the body of Richard Dixon, her mentor and the museum's founder and director. On the shelves around the room is a treasure trove of what seem to be genuine Mycenaean antiquities. The reader unravels the mystery, essentially the story of why Richard was killed, in THE MASK OF ATREUS through Deborah's eyes, travelling to Greece and Russia, patching together an incredible story.

STRAIGHT INTO DARKNESS, Faye Kellerman
Axel Berg is an Inspektor in Munich's newly formed Mordkommission. The year is 1929 and the Austrian Adolf Hitler is on the rise. He leads those who want to rid Germany of degenerates, Jews, Communists. The police force that Berg belongs to is underpaid and corrupt and ill equipped to deal with the growing Brown Shirt menace, young drunken hooligans who are manipulated by Hitler and murder and attack 'degenerates'. Lustmord — the joy of murder. The terrifying concept seems apt for the brutal slaying of a beautiful young society wife dumped in the vast English Garden. Homicide inspector Axel Berg is horrified by the crime...and disturbed by the artful arrangement of the victim's clothes and hair — a madman's portrait of death. Berg's superiors demand quick answers and a quick arrest: a vagrant, the woman's husband, anyone who can be demonized will do. When a second body is discovered, the city erupts into panic, the unrest fomented by the wild-eyed, hate-mongering Austrian Adolf Hitler and his Brownshirt party of young thugs. Berg can trust no one as he relentlessly hunts a ruthless killer, dodging faceless enemies and back-alley intrigue, struggling to bring a fiend to justice before the country — and his life — veer straight into darkness.

BROTHER GRIMM, Craig Russell
A girl's body has turned up on a Hamburg beach with a note concealed in her hand. The note gives her name, that of a 13 year old who went missing on her way home from school 3 years earlier. But it is not the same girl. Fabel has worked this out even before her parents come to identify the body and confirm his suspicions. Then two more bodies turn up, posed at a picnic table in the woods, also with notes concealed in their hands. The notes say Hansel and Gretel, in the same tiny, obsessively neat writing. This book was interesting because it was released simultaneously in English and German. Craig Russell is an author I've meant to follow up on.

THUMBPRINT, Friedrich Glauser,
Sergeant Studer has been asked to arrest Erwin Schlumpf on suspicion of having murdered his fiance’s father. The body of Wendelin Witschi, merchant and travelling salesman from Gerzenstein, has been found in the forest, shot in the head behind the ear. For reasons really unknown to himself, having delivered the prisoner to Thun Castle only an hour so previously, Studer returns to find the young man hanging by the neck from a leather belt tied around the window bars. He is in time to save Schlumpf’s life. The case of murder appears to be an open and shut one, but to Studer, an aging sergeant and unlikely detective, things don’t seem right, and of course they are not. Studer gets himself assigned to the case by almost blackmailing the magistrate who originally thought the facts clearly showed Schlumpf’s guilt. This is a very satisfying whodunit, with lots of the elements of the more modern whydunnits. I've included this one because it was translated from German. I reviewed it recently.

Adelaide Writers' Week, Final Day, Day #4 for me

Other things have intervened in the last 2 days, so there are things I've missed. People tell me there was a stunning session with Germain Greer yesterday, and then on Wednesday I missed sessions with Ian McEwan and Geraldine Brooks.

Adelaide is in the grip of what looks set to be one of our longest hot spells ever. Even the white plastic chairs feel warm to the seat, and there were many less people in attendance today. Hand fans were briskly being waved and even water spray bottles were in use.

So much going on in Adelaide just now: the Festival of Arts (of which AWW is a part), the Fringe Festival, and tonight WOMAdelaide kicks off. Tomorrow night the Crows host a home final in the AFL pre-season cup. To cap it all, a state public holiday on Monday for Adelaide Cup ( a horse race).

My purchase today: RENDEZVOUS AT KAMAKURA INN by Marshall Browne.

A real treat for crime fiction addicts this afternoon. Elsewhere I have grumbled about programming Gabrille Lord and Garry Disher in rival Meet the Author sessions.
Here are some snippets from the sessions I attended.

Session 1: Meet the author: Marshall Browne

In 2000 he won Best First Crime Novel in the Ned Kelly Awards for THE WOODEN LEG OF INSPECTOR ANDERS.

Browne began writing in the 1970s as a "Sunday morning" writer, when living in Hong Kong. Marshall Browne seems an unlikely author, coming over more like the banker that he's been most of his life.

He was very candid about how his novels develop, how his ideas often begin as images, seen early in the morning, sometimes when he is half asleep. Incidents and details often emerge from his own life. The book gradually emerges from his sub-conscious, which he is in thrall to. He doesn't plot the book prior to writing and researches as he needs to. He often mixes real characters with fictional.

He is really one of Australia's lesser known crime writers, but there is plenty in the 12 already published novels, some out of print. Indeed at AWW he warranted a larger audience.
He is currently working on 3 books: the sequel to EYE OF THE ABYSS will be published later this year, the 4th Inspector Anders is in draft, and next year will work on his 4th book in the "Melbourne" series. His bio says he works 40 hour week.

Session 2: Meet the Author: Gabrielle Lord

Gabrielle Lord appears a number of times elsewhere in my blog, and her latest book SHATTERED shares top spot in my best reads for 2008.

She has collected 2 awards: The Ned Kelly Award for best novel in 2002 for DEATH DELIGHTS, and a Davitt Award in 2003 for the best Australian crime novel by an Australian woman in the previous year for BABY DID A BAD, BAD THING.

Gabrielle began by describing what led to the writing of her first published novel FORTRESS in 3 weeks. She says that for any book, writing is only 5% of it. getting to the writing stage, for her is the hard part and accounts for 95% of the effort. She plans and researches all her books meticulously. The depth of research is what results in the meticulous details. She interviews experts and finds that most enjoy talking about what they do, especially if they recognise that you have made some effort to get your head around the topic,a nd can ask focussed questions. Gabrielle has done work experience in surveillance, attended victims of homicide meetings, done courses in anatomy, stood on the streets with prostitutes, toured morgues.

She believes most central characters will be flawed - that is what makes them so interesting. "Angels" are generally not very interesting, and she constantly looks for very human stories. She is always looking for stories to engage the reader.

Gabrielle says writing a book is a lot like knitting. Complexity emerges to keep the author intrigued. She sets herself problems and challenges. At the same time her setting is Australia because she tries to focus on what she knows.

She talked briefly about her 12 part thriller for YA, designed to be a continuous story, in 12 parts. Each will be self contained but all 12 will add up to a whole. They will come out on a monthly basis and be named January, February, etc.

Gabrielle feels very strongly about issues such as women's rights, e.g. in Islamic communities both here and abroad.

Session 3: Friday Crime
A panel with Marshall Browne, Garry Disher, Gabrielle Lord, Denise Mina.
Garry Disher won the Ned Kelly Award for best crime novel in 2007 for CHAIN OF EVIDENCE. In April, oz_mystery_readers are discussing this book.

The panel at first individually attempted to explain why crime fiction is becoming so popular.

Garry Disher:

• it has always been popular, the real question is why it has become so acceptable
• enormous diversity in the genre
• some approaches "literature"
• fed by the popularity of true crime books, and TV shows
• strongly narrative, lots of acvtion
• social barometer, tells us about the "real" world
• gives us vicarious pleasure, often darkly humorous
• at one level can be very re-assuring as justice is often restored
• main characters are often just like us
• "who dunnits" have been replaced by "what makes people tick"
• the reader is the investigator
• an exploration of our darker side

Gabrielle Lord

• dramatic shift from cozies - those days have gone
• sees herself as a relationship writer rather than a crime writer. Crime is the vehicle to draw the story along - the hook
• how do people connect?
• how do people tell the truth in fiction?
• creation of tension

Marshall Browne

• basically only 2 genres: books you like & those you don't
• novels are places where you can explore the exotic and bizarre
• the main thrust is the developing story
• character driven fiction
• determined to conquer the writing of shorter novels

Denise Mina

• thought about writing under an alias - how about MissDMina?
• fan of literary fiction
• crime fiction often seen as trash
• literary fiction should aspire to having the readership of crime fiction
• move for crime fiction to be taken seriously
• crime writers are expected to write about 1 book a year, and they often make a pretty good living (if they are successful)
• crime writing lays the author's politics bare
• social & political issues become part of the novel's underlying fabric.
  

So that is Adelaide Writers' Week for another 2 years.
Today's events ended at about 5 with drinks and nibbles - very civilised.

Adelaide Writers' Week, Day 3

A marathon day today- 6 sessions!
Not only hot today (35 c) but even bigger crowds than yesterday. Breaks between sessions were characterised by people hurrying from one place to another (never in the right place for the next session) only to find that not all the lemmings are migrating! Some have just gone for coffee, or a "wee" break, leaving chairs "bagged" with hats, clothing and programmes.

It's hot, William McInnes arrives for his session (more later) attired in ancient red board shorts and thongs. (You can almost hear his father saying "Typical!")
If you don't get a seat in a tent, then outside in the shade is a possibility, but outside in the sun - well you know what Noel Coward said about mad dogs and Englishmen..

My purchase for the day : HEARTBREAK HILL by Thomas H. Cook - signed too.

Session #1 - Meet the author: Siri Hustvedt, chaired by John Coetzee

Biographical details here.
A very nervous Siri compared books to echo chambers, full of themes, and ideas, like halls of mirrors. John Coetzee asked Siri to comment on the after effects of 9/11 on the inner lives of New Yorkers. She said that many people have flashbacks well after a traumatic event particularly on anniversaries.
She is particularly interested by the idea of family secrets. There are many things that we don't know about that remain as secrets in previous generations. She likened a family secret to a bulging pocket - we know there is something there, but we don't know what it is.

Session #2 - Sports - a panel session with Gideon Haigh, John Harms, and William McInnes, chaired by Bernard Whimpress.
This was a very entertaining session - the chance to hear McInnes do impersonations should not be missed!

Panel conversation centred around the cultural importance of sport, and the real importance that sports writing be done well, but so much of what appears in the papers is mechanical. John Harms talked about the role that newspapers play, as stakeholders, in determining the quality of what is published. They build individual players up as super heroes, for the pure pleasure of knocking them down when they fall.
William McInnes talked about the social importance of cricket, and Gideon Haigh about sport as a forum for building of social capital in Australia.

Session #3 Book Launch - Peter Carey HIS ILLEGAL SELF

The guest "launcher" was Ian McEwan.
He spoke of how difficult it is to get into the mind of a child, and how well Peter Carey does it.
He too referred to James Wood's review and in the process of looking I found a useful collection of reviews. McEwan says Carey is a "writer of world rank at the top of his game."

Hearing McEwan speak here was a little compensation for the very disappointing cancellation of the "public audience part" of the scheduled recording of the First Tuesday Book Club at the Adelaide ABC Studio tomorrow afternoon.

Session #4: Meet the Author: Thomas H. Cook

My crime fiction treat for the day. I heard Cook speak the other day on a panel, and I have read a number of his novels including THE CHATHAM SCHOOL AFFAIR, RED LEAVES and THE MURMUR OF STONES.

Cook sees himself as writing in the William Faulkner tradition. He writes about ordinary people whose lives spiral down to black.

Session #5 - Double Exposure - a panel session

3 authors: Georgia Blain, Patrick McGrath, and Melina Marchetta have all had books turned into films, and what a long and agonising process it seems to have been. Georgia Blain tried to distance herself from the process as much as possible. Patrick McGarth revelled in it, and Melina Marchetta, who wrote LOOKING FOR ALIBRANDI, got drawn into it despite feeling that she was not qualified to write film script. It seems that anywhere 6-10 years is not uncommon for a film to go from options to actual filming.

Session #6 - Meet the Author - Richard Holmes

Energy very definitely waning at this stage.
Holmes is a very successful historian who specialises in things military. We went mainly because husband Bob has two of his books, but he was an interesting speaker, and sparked a lot of questions from the audience.

Tomorrow I'm having a rest day!
The temperatures for the rest of the week will be 35-37 c, so I'm staying home, although on Friday I will go in to hear Gabrielle Lord, Marshall Browne, and Garry Disher.

Tomorrow morning I'm going to an International Women's Day breakfast to hear Margaret Pomeranz speak.

Australian Crime Fiction Snapshots

Check up on these interviews, the first in a series which is the result of a collaboration between Karen Chisholm (of the Aust Crime Fiction weblog), Damien Gay (of Crime DownUnder) and Perry Middlemiss (of Matilda).

Today's released interviews

• Matthew Freeman on Aust Crime Fiction
• Lucy Sussex on Matilda
• P. D. Martin on Aust Crime Fiction
• Adrian Hyland on Crime Down Under
• Marshall Browne on Matilda

Adelaide Writers Week program available online

See 2012 information

The program for Adelaide writers Week 2-7 March 2008 is available online at http://www.adelaidefestival.com.au/library/WWTimetable.pdf

You'll need Adobe Acrobat reader 8 to read it - if opening the pdf stalls on your computer then the likely answer is that you need to update your Acrobat Reader.
You can do that easily by going to http://www.adobe.com/uk/products/reader/ and choosing the Download option.

So what do I think of the program?
On the first day, 2 March, Sunday Crimes - a 90 minute session with Thomas Cook, Peter Corris, and Denise Mina looks right up my alley.

But on the next day, 3 March, I have to make a choice between Dorothy Porter and Peter Carey (the latter will probably win)
There's a session called Window on Scotland with James Meek and Denise Mina.
And then a couple of sessions in the afternoon including Peter Corris.

Day 3
A book launch with Peter Carey
But who set Thomas Cook and Denise Mina on at the same time? grrr..........
Not really much more on that day for this little duck.

Day 4
A session with Ian McEwan at the beginning of the day.
And later in the day a session that includes Geraldine Brooks looks good.

Day 5
All looks a bit cultural for me - maybe I'll have a day home just reading

Day 6, last day, 7 March
Meet the author Marshall Browne looks good
But what klutz makes me choose between Gabrielle Lord and Garry Disher??
But then at the end of the day we get all 3 in a panel session, so I guess I'll be happy.

However with 2 timetable clashes of crime genre writers, can't help feeling it could have been done better.

Just need nice weather now - not a lot of hope of rain so we should be ok there. It can be hot in March though.