Review: WATCH THE WORLD BURN, Leah Giarratano

• published by Bantam 2010, Random House Australia
• 388 pages
• ISBN 978-1-74166-814-8
• source: borrowed

Synopsis (publisher's)

Miriam Caine, aged seventy, is dining with her son when she bursts into flames in the restaurant of a five-star hotel. The restaurant’s manager, Troy Berrigan, is first to her aid, but the woman later dies of her injuries. When investigators find accelerants on the victim’s face and clothing, the incident becomes a police matter, and attention is turned to Berrigan, a fallen hero cop, who fits the arsonist profile. Berrigan knows he’s not the killer, but he also knows that at the time of the incident, he was the only person close enough to have set her on fire. When he’s connected to another death, Troy must do all he can to discover what really happened to Miriam Caine.

Her death preludes a spate of apparently unconnected acid and arson attacks around Sydney. Is it the beginning of an orchestrated campaign of terror? And is Troy Berrigan the perpetrator or an innocent bystander caught up in a terrible train of events?

While on study leave, Detective Sergeant Jill Jackson becomes caught up in the investigation. Working with Federal Agent Gabriel Delahunt, she is determined to find out what happened to Miriam Caine, because this case for her is not only about murder and maiming in Sydney: this case will change Jill Jackson’s life forever.

My take

WATCH THE WORLD BURN was one of those books that I enjoyed more, the more I read. The opening "hook" was great though - an elderly woman bursts into flame, just when the manager, aboriginal ex-cop Troy Berrigan, was standing right next to her, but not looking at her.

WATCH THE WORLD BURN is full of intriguing little stories, starting with the one about why Troy Berrigan is no longer a cop. Then there is also the continuing story of Jill Jackson, the thread that connects all Giarratano's novels so far. And then the story of politician Erin Hart campaigning for the installation of CCTV in public places such as railway stations. Underpinning it all is the ongoing investigation into Miriam Caine's not-so-spontaneous combustion, and questions that elude answers.

This is a book that keeps the reader on their toes, testing out hypotheses. For me the final answer came out of left field, but then I could see that the clues had been there all along.

My rating: 4.6

If you are new to Giarratano, then I agree with Bernadette that you could begin your reading here. There is enough back story from earlier novels.

If you have an e-reader Amazon has all titles for your Kindle and Random House Australia can help you with all the e-pubs.

Earlier titles in the series - linked to my reviews
VODKA DOESN'T FREEZE (2008)
VOODOO DOLL (2008)
BLACK ICE (2009) 

Review: RING OF FIRE, Peter Klein

• was to have been published by Pan Macmillan Australia 2011.
  Recently removed from the publishing schedule.
  I certainly hope another publisher picks it up.
• ISBN 9781742610146
• 308 pages
• Source: advanced review copy supplied by Pan Macmillan Australia.

Publisher's blurb  (from the dust jacket)

A fire takes no prisoners, has no conscience and destroys indiscriminately. So, too, does the 'Barn Burner'.

When horse racing steward Ryan Carlisle is banished to a long, hot summer on the bush racing circuit, he's devastated. Even though this is a chance to get away from his unbearable boss, his career is at a crossroads and his divorce has left him feeling insecure.

But Ryan has no time to dwell on his misfortunes: an arsonist begins torching racing stables in a string of seemingly random attacks.

As the tally in human life and horses rises, it's clear to Ryan the Barn Burner will not stop until caught. The police are baffled, racing officials are ducking for cover and when Ryan starts digging into his father's past and is seconded to the Arson Squad, his involvement in the case becomes very personal. And suddenly, he needs to find the answers before he, too, is caught up in the ring of fire.

My take

I'm still reeling a bit from the information that RING OF FIRE has been removed from Pan Macmillan's publishing schedule. I think it is a nice solid read by an established Australian author and certainly hope it gets placed somewhere. 

Peter Klein has branched out a bit in RING OF FIRE. The central character is not the gambler John Punter who featured in the three titles in the Punter series (see below). Ryan Carlisle is a steward and so we see horse racing in Australia from a different and largely unfamiliar perspective.

The publisher's information that I was sent also says

Australians are terrified by fires; they take no prisoners, have no conscience, and destroy lives indiscriminately. Klein was heavily influenced by the tragic Black Saturday bushfires of 2009 and after visiting the worst hit areas of Kinglake and Marysville some months afterwards, he decided to write a novel about a fire starter.

At first it is thought that the fires that engulf training stables, and kill both trainers and horses, are accidental or perhaps even insurance scams. But as the number of fires rise, then the authorities realise there is an arsonist at work targetting those connected to the racing industry.
Perhaps a weakness in the plot structure is that I worked out who the arsonist was about half way through the story. Klein attempted to lay a couple of red herrings in my path, but they just didn't really work.

Peter Klein also gives Ryan Carlisle a great interest in fishing, like himself, and these passages have an authentic ring to them.

RING OF FIRE is a nicely paced novel. It attempts to get past the "who" and to explore, less successfully and credibly I thought, "why". The ending was a bit predictable.
Peter Klein still isn't Australia's answer to Dick (and now Felix) Francis but he is doing well.

My rating: 4.3

Other Peter Klein titles reviewed on MiP
PUNTER'S LUCK
PUNTER'S TURF
4.5, SILK CHASER

Review: THE DIGGERS REST HOTEL, Geoffrey McGeachin

• Publisher:Viking (Penguin) 2010
• ISBN 978-0-670-07273-6
• 316 pages
• Source: my local library

Publishers Blurb (Penguin Australia)

In 1947, two years after witnessing the death of a young Jewish woman in Poland, Charlie Berlin has rejoined the police force a different man. Sent to investigate a spate of robberies in rural Victoria, he soon discovers that World War II has changed even the most ordinary of places and people.

An ex-bomber pilot and former POW, Berlin is struggling to fit back in: grappling with post-traumatic stress disorder, the ghosts of his dead crew and his futile attempts to numb the pain.

When Berlin travels to Albury-Wodonga to track down the gang behind the robberies, he suspects he's a problem cop being set up to fail. Taking a room at the Diggers Rest Hotel in Wodonga, he sets about solving a case that no one else can – with the help of feisty, ambitious journalist Rebecca Green and rookie constable Rob Roberts, the only cop in town he can trust.

Then the decapitated body of a young girl turns up in a back alley, and Berlin's investigations lead him ever further through layers of small-town fears, secrets and despair.
The first Charlie Berlin mystery takes us into a world of secret alliances and loyalties – and a society dealing with the effects of a war that changed men forever.

My take:

For me, Geoff McGeachin has hit on a winner with this new series and I hope we see more of Charlie Berlin. It appealed to me on several fronts - historical, crime fiction, Australia.

Set in post-war Australia, this time post World War Two, with a policeman returning to work in a world that will never be the same, THE DIGGERS REST HOTEL reminded me a lot of the Charles Todd series. Like Ian Rutledge in that series Charlie Berlin was in the police force before the war. Although the police force was an exempt trade he volunteered for service and was posted to the RAF in Britain. He took off on 30 missions over Germany, but, in his words, landed only 29 of them and ended up a P.O.W.
Now two years after the war he has returned to work, and found that those who didn't go are now in charge, in positions he should be occupying. He feels like a square peg in a round hole, and, like Rutledge, is sent from the city to the country to solve a crime. He is still suffering from post-war stress and has blackouts and nightmares. Like Rutledge too Charlie is met with local suspicion and hostility and demands for quick results from his superiors back in Melbourne.

McGeachin has taken care with the historical detail and it gives the novel a great feeling of authenticity. (You get the feeling that McGeachin is describing a world he knows well.) Berlin has come back to a world fractured by the war. Australian society is trying to absorb the returnees, women who took on men's jobs during the war are expected to relinquish them, and for some of the returned servicemen there is no work. There is no excitement either. Areas like Albury-Wodonga where THE DIGGERS REST HOTEL is set are littered with munitions and equipment from abandoned army camps and weapons stashes. Some of the ex-servicemen do not believe the government is doing what it should and private militias appear to provide an answer to many problems.

You can probably tell that I very much enjoyed Charlie Berlin's initial case and hope we see more.

My rating: 4.8

This is a very different novel to McGeachin's D-E-D DEAD! which I also reviewed.

Other reviews of THE DIGGERS REST HOTEL to check

• Weekly Times Now
• Good Reads

Geoff McGeachin's website

Review: THE WRECKAGE, Michael Robotham

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 762 KB
• Print Length: 448 pages
• Publisher: Hachette Digital (May 5, 2011)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services
• Language: English
• ASIN: B004WJRT4K
• Source: an ARC e-copy supplied by the publishers Mulholland Books to NetGalley.com.

Product Description (Amazon)

In London, ex-cop Vincent Ruiz rescues a young woman from a violent boyfriend but wakes next morning to find that he’s been set up and robbed. As he tracks down the thieves, he discovers the boyfriend’s tortured body and learns that powerful men are looking for the girl. What did Holly Knight steal that is so important to them?
Meanwhile in Baghdad, the bank robbery capital of the world, billions of dollars in reconstruction funds has gone missing and Pulitzer prize-winning Journalist Luca Terracini is trying to ‘follow the money’. The dangerous trail will lead him to London where he teams up with Vincent Ruiz and together they investigate the disappearance of an international banker and a mysterious ‘black hole’ in the bank’s accounts.

My take

THE WRECKAGE introduces a new character, investigative journalist Luca Terracini. In Baghdad Luca teams up with UN auditor Daniela Gardner. Someone is blowing up banks, the 18th so far for the year. Consignments of US dollars worth billions have disappeared.

In London our old friend Vincent Ruiz is mugged by a girl he took pity on in a bar. He wakes to find some of his things are gone - an iPod, his camera, his police medal, his passport, and some jewellery intended for his daughter Claire who is getting married on Saturday. His determination to locate the girl and retrieve his belongings has unexpected consequences that prove for us just how few degrees of separation there really are in modern Western society.

THE WRECKAGE is a contemporary thriller set against the background of both the world financial crisis and the attempts to build Iraq in the face of both greed and terrorism. It reflects both Robotham's meticulous research, and his ability to create great fictional characters. He describes the main characters in a way that makesd you really care about what happens to them.

Robotham seems to have begun using a crisper, more immediate, style of narrative that mostly uses the present tense. It gives a cinematic impression of events happening as you watch.

This is a great read, both for those who have been waiting for the next in this fractallated series featuring retired London detective Vincent Ruiz and clinical psychologist Professor Joe O'Loughlin, and for those new to Robotham's work.

My rating: 5.0

See Michael Robotham's site and download the first chapter.
Review by Bernadette (Reactions to Reading)

Reviews of other Robotham titles on MYSTERIES in PARADISE
BOMBPROOF
SHATTER
SHATTER (audio)
BLEED FOR ME

Review: DIAMOND EYES, A. A. Bell

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 783 KB
• Print Length: 544 pages
• Publisher: Voyager (November 1, 2010)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services
• Language: English
• ASIN: B0047O2JB8
• Source: I bought it

Product Description (Amazon)
Mira Chambers has an unusual gift for solving mysteries ... Blind, institutionalised and frustrated by her loss of independence, Mira has been driven to the brink of insanity by medications that make her life unbearable. When she astounds two medical scientists by 'seeing' the impossible, they begin an exploration of Mira's strange perspectives. Together with Bennet Chiron, an enigmatic ex-con, Mira becomes entangled in a dangerous adventure of self-discovery that leads them to a killer -- and exposed to a manipulative sociopath whose own unique talent is more than a match for Mira's. Layers of secrets are about to be peeled away ... and no one will be safe from what is revealed.

My take

I chose to read DIAMOND EYES because it is on the Best First Fiction Nominations list for the Ned Kelly Awards for 2011.

Despite the product description there is little that marks the early stages of the novel as crime fiction and I found it hard to place the novel. Perhaps futuristic fiction I thought. Although I did come to appreciate why it has been nominated for a Ned Kelly, but I am not convinced it should be there. There is evil, crime, and even murder, but for me the threads strayed more into science fiction.

There are just too many layers in this story for me. Mira's affliction, Fragile X syndrome, allows/forces her to see events from the past  that have taken place in the rooms and settings she is in. The colours of her glasses determines what she sees. Sometimes what she sees are memories, while other visions are conjured up by her imagination.

She becomes part of an experiment to enable a comparison of delusions with reality and one of the assessors sees her as a "goldmine" whose case will attract funding to their project by drawing media attention to the medical misdiagnosis she has been subjected to over the last 10 years. In addition, many of the characters, even those in authority in the mental institution Mira is in, are "damaged goods" and some are just plain corrupt.

I think this is a book you will either relish or dislike. For me it was a very long read and not one that I particularly enjoyed. I felt the author had changed her mind several times in relation to what DIAMOND EYES was about.

My rating: 3.9

In 2008, DIAMOND EYES won Highly Commended in the Fellowship of Australian Writers Awards (for an Unpublished Manuscript). It was first published in Australia by Harper Voyager in 2010.

I'm adding this to my lists for Aussie Author Challenge, e-book challenge, as well as new-to-me authors.

Review: COLD JUSTICE, Katherine Howell

Published by Pan Macmillan Australia in 2010
ISBN 978-1-4050-3927-7
329 pages
Source: my TBR

Publisher's blurb

A teenage girl stumbles across the body of her classmate, Tim Pieters, hidden amongst the bushes. His family is devastated, the killer is never found.
Eighteen years later, political pressure sees the murder investigation reopened. Detective Ella Marconi tracks down Georgie Riley, the student who found the body, and who is now a paramedic. Georgie seems to be telling the truth, so then why does Ella receive an anonymous phone call insisting that Georgie knows more? And is it mere coincidence that her ambulance partner, Freya, also went to the same high school?

My take

Paramedic Georgie Riley and Detective Ella Marconi are travelling similar paths, returning to work after traumatic incidents that resulted in hospitalisation and being off work for some months. As a result both are under scrutiny. Georgie has been transferred from the country to the ambulance station at The Rocks in Sydney. She will undergo assessment to see if she can manage the job. She is staggered to see that her assessing partner is Freya, her best friend from high school. Georgie hopes she has left some of the problems she had at the country station behind her, and it seems she has, until she sees a familiar face in the crowd.

Ella Marconi is returning to work after a gunshot wound, and has been assigned to the Unsolved Cases unit. Technology has advanced since Tim Pieters was murdered in 1990 and items from his file have been sent off for DNA testing.  Ella too is hoping that some of the demons of her past don't surface, but both her parents and her boyfriend Wayne are anxious that she may have returned to work too soo. Ella is determined to prove she has what it takes.

In COLD JUSTICE Australian author Katherine Howell has used a formula similar to the one she used successfully in both THE DARKEST HOUR, and her debut novel FRANTIC (see mini-review below): parallel plots that advance in tandem, each generating their own sense of suspense. The link between the two plots is Detective Ella Marconi. Again the paramedic characters are new, while Marconi provides the common thread from one novel to the next.

My rating: 4.8

I am very much looking forward to reading the next in the series: VIOLENT EXPOSURE - it is already on my TBR shelves.

Mini-review of FRANTIC (rating 5.0)

FRANTIC is Katherine Howell's debut in writing and well worth your attention. Set in Sydney. Sophie Phillips is a paramedic whose husband Chris is a police officer who was assaulted recently. Their son Lachlan is still a baby. Their lives are very busy because Sophie often works nights. Marriage-wise things have not been going so well lately and Chris and Sophie don't seem to be talking much. And then Chris is shot in the head on the doorstep of their house and Lachlan is abducted. The action ramps up quickly and events spiral to a catharsis that I didn't even see coming. I found myself holding my breath and thinking "she's not really doing that!".

Katherine Howell's website

I am listing COLD JUSTICE in the Aussie Author Challenge

Review: THE SERPENT and THE SCORPION, Clare Langley-Hawthorne

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 461 KB
• Print Length: 304 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (September 30, 2008)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services
• Language: English
• ASIN: B003RWSKSC
• Source: I bought it

Blurb from author's site:
It's nearly two years since her father's death and Ursula Marlow is embroiled in personal and professional struggles. Her relationship with Lord Wrotham has cooled since she rejected his marriage proposal and she continues to fly in the face of society's conventions as to the appropriate role of a woman in Edwardian England. Now she is besieged on all fronts as she struggles to succeed as an independent businesswoman, despite financial difficulties, labor unrest and arson attacks on on her mills and factories.
While on a business trip to Egypt, Ursula witnesses a friend's murder in Cairo's Khan el-Khalili bazaar, and embarks on her own investigation, convinced the Egyptian police and Scotland Yard are mistaken in assuming the death was politically motivated.
Days later a young woman dies in a fire in one of Ursula's factories in England.....

My take:

This sequel to CONSEQUENCES OF SIN seemed to start off a little slowly, but then there was quite a bit for us to learn. Most of the action is set in 1912, and the author provides several pointers to the period, including the testing of the Bleriot biplane, the sinking of the Titanic, the preparations for war, and descriptions of fashion. There are references also to events from the first novel when Ursula's friend Winifred was accused of murder. Both Winifred and Ursula are suffragettes participating in the militant activities of the WSPU, particularly the window-smashing that characterised 1912. Ursula too is trying to do her best for women by providing safe employment conditions for women from poor socio-economic circumstances. Interesting too was the preoccupation with the effects of Bolshevism in England.

THE SERPENT AND THE SCORPION is quite long and detailed, but picks up momentum in the last third. The romance element between Ursula and Lord Wrotham is sustained throughout, although I felt his character still remained a bit obscure. I did feel like shaking them both at times!
The ending is a cliff hanger that ensures there will be a 3rd title in the series. We are not out of the woods yet!

My rating: 4.3

About the author:
Clare has some biographical details on her site, but has, since writing them,  returned to live in Australia.
THE SERPENT and THE SCORPION is Clare's second novel.

Other reviews to check:
Reactions to Reading

This is my contribution to this week's Crime Fiction Alphabet (the letter L), and in addition I'm listing it in the following reading challenges:
Historical Fiction Challenge
Aussie Author Challenge
e-book challenge 

You can see my progress on my reading challenges on Reading Challenges Update

Review: DARK WATER, Georgia Blain

published 2010
ISBN: 978 1 86471 983 3 (pbk.)
Target audience: For secondary school age
Read on my Kindle but also available as ePub from publisher Random House Australia.
Source: I bought it.

Publisher's Blurb:
Amanda Clarke is dead.

Her body was found floating facedown by the riverbank, and no one knows what happened. As rumours fly and fear grows, it seems that everyone suspects Lyndon, one of Amanda's friends. He's known for his temper, his cruelty and his criminal family - and now the police want to talk to him.

It's the end of summer, 1973, the heat is enough to melt asphalt and a sleepy riverside suburb is losing some of its innocence. Fifteen-year-old Winter went to the same school and hung out in the same places as Amanda. As she finds herself alone in trying to defend Lyndon, Winter learns that you can never really know someone - and the answers she has been looking for are closer than she has ever wanted to believe.

My take:
The story is told in the first person by Winter Blair and is set on "the peninsula" which I mentally set in Victoria. Winter is the younger sister of Joe who was in Amanda's class and was just one of the boys who had the "hots" for Amanda.

DARK WATER, once the police designate Amanda's death as "suspicious", becomes a murder mystery laced with threads about the perils of growing up. Winter becomes a self-appointed investigator, concerned first of all to prove that Joe could not be guilty of Amanda's murder, and then extending her protection to his friends. In the background, Winter's mother Dee is leading an environmental protest about saving Greenwood Bush from the predations of developers who want to clear the land for factory development.

I'm far from an expert in young adult fiction but it seems to me that this age group would find DARK WATER a good read.

My rating: 4.2

About the author

Georgia Blain, an Australian author, has published five novels: CLOSED FOR WINTER, CANDELO, THE BLIND EYE, NAMES FOR NOTHINGNESS and the young adult novel DARKWATER.
She was named one of the Sydney Morning Herald's Best Young Novelists in 1998, and has been shortlisted for the NSW Premier's Literary Awards.
Two of her novels have been optioned for feature films, including CLOSED FOR WINTER, which was filmed as Elise in 2007.
She has been published internationally, with her work appearing in publications such as Granta and The Independent Magazine.
Her most recent book for adults BIRTHS DEATHS MARRIAGES was shortlisted for the Nita B Kibble Award in 2009.

I'm listing this title in the Aussie Author Challenge, the Cruisin' thru Cozies Reading Challenge and  the e-book challenge.

Review: WYATT, Garry Disher

Text Publishing 2010
ISBN 978-1-921656-02-6
274 pages
Source: my local library

Publisher's blurb

Wyatt’s been away. Now he’s back.
Garry Disher’s cool, enigmatic anti-hero has been, uncharacteristically, out of action for a while. Now there’s a new Wyatt—and his legion of fans will not be disappointed.
The job’s a jewel heist. The kind Wyatt likes. Nothing extravagant, nothing greedy. Stake out the international courier, one Alain Le Page, hold up the goods in transit and get away fast.
Wyatt prefers to work alone, but this is Eddie Oberin’s job. Eddie’s very smart ex-wife Lydia has the inside information. Add Wyatt’s planning genius and meticulous preparation, and what could possibly go wrong?
Plenty. And when you wrong Wyatt, you don’t get to just walk away.

My take:

I came to WYATT not having read any of the earlier novels in the series, not surprising really as the last one was published a decade ago:
1. Kickback (1991)
2. Paydirt (1992)
3. Deathdeal (1993)
4. Crosskill (1994)
5. Port Vila Blues (1996)
6. The Fallout (1997)
7. Wyatt (2010)

As a result I had little idea about what I would find.
What I did know was that WYATT won the 2010 Ned Kelly award for Best Fiction.

Disher brings to his writing a polished style that is gritty, bare, and yet flowing. It suits the character of Wyatt who is also gritty, clever, prepared, focussed. He doesn't hesitate to kill if he has to, and there are times when he does, seemingly without compunction.

The novel feels firmly embedded in its Australian environment, Victoria in particular. I don't think non-Australian readers will need a glossary or translation service though.
One aspect that some readers may not like is that we are seeing crime from the criminal's point of view.
In many ways Wyatt is evil, and he wins! Some would say, a very suitable Ned Kelly winner.

My rating: 4.7

Garry Disher's page on Text Publishing.

Review: D-E-D DEAD! Geoffrey McGeachin

Published by Viking (Penguin Group)2005
ISBN 0-670-02931-9
283 pages
Source: Local Library

From the back cover:
From the moment Alby drops his gun on a St. Kilda tram he knows he is in for a bad day. Then his partner Harry is gunned down in a Double Bay coffee shop. By lunchtime Alby realises someone wants him dead - and they want him dead now.

My take:

Alby Murdoch is a famous photographer working for WorldPix International, a front for an Australian ultra-secret government department  D-E-D, the Department for Extra-territorial Defence. He and his partner Harry are supposed to be doing the biannual positive vetting on US personnel at Bitter Springs, a US-Australian Joint Defence Facility out in the middle of nowhere. Harry it seems found something wrong with the CIA's list of 300 names and dates of birth of people working at the Springs.

On the surface D-E-D DEAD! has all the hallmarks of a conventional spy thriller - assassins, bombs, car chases, and the obligatory beautiful female CIA agent. But the irreverent and comedic treatment that emerges at times shows that it is a spoof. Alby and his new friend Mary Travers flee to Bali and hitch a boat ride to Broome.

An unconventional and enjoyable read if you don't mind a bit of Australian laconic humour and slang mixed into your thriller. Not entirely my cup of tea, but I still rated it at 4.4.

McGeachin's first novel, FAT, FIFTY & F***ED! won the inaugural Australian Popular Fiction Competition and was published by Penguin in August 2004.

D-E-D DEAD! introduced Alby Murdoch and was nominated for a Ned Kelly Award.
It was followed by SENSITIVE NEW AGE SPY in 2007, also nominated for a Ned Kelly Award.
In 2009 #3 DEAD AND KICKING was published.

I am including D-E-D DEAD! in my list for this year's Aussie Author Challenge

Review: THE HALF-CHILD, Angela Savage

Publisher: Text Publishing Melbourne Australia 2010
ISBN:978-1-921656-54-5
322 pages
Source: Local Library

Publisher's blurb
Jayne Keeney is a fiesty thirty-something Aussie who has been living in Bangkok for many years. She has been hired to investigate the alleged suicide of a young Australian woman in a seedy Thai coastal town. Maryanne Delbeck was happy and harmless, her father refuses to believe she took her own life. Jayne immerses herself in the case, navigating the backstreet world of Thai ladyboys, monks, strippers, expats and corrupt officials.
Maryanne’s death is not the only mystery awaiting Jayne among Pattaya’s neon signs and go-go bars. While working undercover at the orphanage where Maryanne volunteered, Jayne discovers something far more sinister. Now her life is in danger, her case is still unsolved and she barely has time for dinner with her handsome new love interest, Rajiv. With love and death both circling, Jayne now has two cases to crack and very little time to do it.

My take:

Maryanne Delbeck was a twenty-one-year old Australian volunteer working for Young Christian Volunteers in Bangkok. The year is 1996. Less than five months after her arrival in Thailand Maryanne jumped from a hotel rooftop in Pattaya, falling fourteen storeys to her death. She had found work at the New Life Child Centre in Pattaya, an orphanage that prepares babies for international adoption.

Jayne Keeney decides the best way to investigate what caused Maryanne to jump is to volunteer at the orphanage herself.  In her gathering of relevant information she calls in favours from a friend at the Australian Embassy, from a new Indian friend Rajiv, and from Police Major General Wichit whom she assisted in a case involving his own daughter. As Jayne extends her net she realises she is looking at something much more organised than a young woman's suicide.

I'm not an expert in Thai culture by any means but I have been to Thailand several times in the last 30 years, and spent time not only in Bangkok but also Chiang Mai and Kanchanaburi. Angela Savage's settings and descriptions rang very true for me, and I thought a very credible flavour of Thailand came through.

The plot in THE HALF-CHILD is very credible, and well threaded. Angela Savage shows how a crime fiction author can get under the skin of another culture, and focus on social issues as well as a crime fiction theme.
A very good read from an Australian author worth your while to look for. I think you can read these books out of order - I had rather hazy memories of the previous title in the series, BEHIND THE NIGHT BAZAAR. See my mini review below.

My rating: 4.5

About Angela Savage (from Text Publishing)
Angela Savage travelled to Laos on a six-month scholarship in 1992 and ended up staying in Asia for six years. She was based in Vientiane, then Hanoi and Bangkok where she set up and headed the Australian Red Cross HIV/AIDS subregional program. Her love affair with Asia continues and she has returned many times since. Behind the Night Bazaar won the 2004 Victorian Premier's Literary Award for an unpublished manuscript. Angela lives in Melbourne.

Angela Savage writes (on her blog) about the launch of THE HALF-CHILD

Mini-review of
BEHIND THE NIGHT BAZAAR  (published 2006) My rating 4.5
Jayne Keeney, fluent in Thai language, is an Australian private investigator living in Bangkok. Her last investigation into a marital infidelity resulted in her being severely wounded and two weeks later, stitches out, she has arranged to visit her friend Didier de Montpasse living in Chiang Mai. Didier is gay and works on an HIV/AIDS awareness program. He and Jayne get on very well, drawn together by a love of crime fiction. Jayne and Didier go to meet someone in a gay bar behind the Night Bazaar in Chiang Mai. There Didier has an argument with his Thai lover who has a gambling problem. Later that night Nou, Didier’s lover, is discovered dead, in the bar, butchered and mutilated. Soon Didier is also dead, shot at home by the police who say he was attempting to escape arrest. Jayne is determined to prove Didier’s innocence and to find out who really killed Nou. The content of story seems to stem from Savage’s own experience in South East Asia when she worked for the Australian Red Cross in setting up an HIV/AIDS program in Bangkok. In some senses it presents a stereo-typed view of Thailand, particularly of Bangkok and Chang Mai, where the under-age sex industry seems to flourish, with Australians amongst those who feed it. On the other hand, there is an unmistakeable tone of authenticity, raising issues that we need to think about.
A Victorian Premier’s Literary Award Winner in 2004, shortlisted for the Ned Kelly Best First Crime Fiction in 2007.

I am going to "count" THE HALF-CHILD in

• Aussie Author Challenge
• 2011 Global Reading Challenge (Asia - Thailand)

Review: PRIME CUT, Alan Carter

Publisher: Fremantle Press, 2011

Awards:  Shortlisted, Crime Writers’ Association Debut Dagger Award, 2010 (as Chinese Whispers)

ISBN13: 9781921696503

HB/PB: Paperback

Pages: 320

Source: e-copy of the (Proof Read version) on my Kindle, supplied by the publisher for review purposes.

Sample Chapter: PRIME CUT extract.pdf

Book Club Notes:  View Book Club Notes

 

Publication date: February 2011

Publisher's blurb

Meet Cato Kwong — disgraced cop and ex-poster boy for the police force. Banished to the stock squad after the fallout from a police frame-up, Cato is brought in from the cold to solve the case of a torso washed up on the wild shores of the Great Southern Ocean. But Cato faces powerful opposition when his investigation lifts the lid on the exploitation of migrant workers and disturbs an even darker criminal mind.

My take:

This really is a remarkable novel. Two main stories are told in tandem. The first begins in the Prologue with the murder of a woman and her son in Sunderland, England in 1973, the day of the FA Cup. What Detective Sergeant Stuart Miller sees at the scene of the crime will stay with him for the rest of his working life and in fact contributes to him emigrating to Busselton in Western Australia. 35 years later he still has nightmares.

The second story begins in Western Australia in October 2008. Detective Senior Constable Cato Kwong and Detective Sergeant Jim Buckley are part of Western Australia's Stock Squad and are also at a crime scene. In Cato's view they are "washed-up has-beens recycled as detectives.... The Laughing Stock Squad." And then they are called to a murder scene, at HopeToun: a headless torso in the shallows on the beach. The local policewoman is Senior Sergeant Tess Maguire, recovering from sick leave after being beaten up. HopeToun is a laid-back holiday or retirement spot for wheatbelt farmers, not a place where you expect murders to happen. In recent times though HopeToun has become a mining town.

What makes this novel remarkable is the way the author forwards these plot strands in tandem. It took a bit of getting used to at first. There is little to tell the reader that you've changed from one plot to another, just a change of characters. Often, but not always, the plots are basically at the same point, like the interviewing of a suspect.

But there's much more than that to keep the reader involved. There are prior links between some of the characters which are gradually teased out for us. There are genuine murder mysteries with lots of attendant red herrings. There's a good feel for the climate in Western Australia, both physical and economic. And there is some excellent characterisation.

My rating: 4.7

I'm already looking forward to Alan Carter's second novel - I hope there is one!

PRIME CUT will be available from Fremantle Press

About the author:
Alan Carter was born in Sunderland, UK, in 1959. He holds a degree in Communications Studies from Sunderland Polytechnic and immigrated to Australia in 1991. Alan lives in Fremantle with his wife Kath and son Liam. He works as a television documentary director. In his spare time he follows a black line up and down the Fremantle pool. Prime Cut is Alan Carter’s first novel. He wrote it while he was living in Hopetoun as a kept man.

2011 Challenges:

• 2011 Global Reading Challenge:
• Aussie Author Challenge
• e-book challenge

Review: THE PERICLES COMMISSION, Gary Corby

Publisher: Penguin Group Australia 2010
ISBN : 978-0-14-320591-3
322 pages
Source: Local Library

Publisher's blurb:

Athens, 461BC.  A dead man falls from the sky, landing at the feet of a surprised Nicolaos.
It doesn't normally rain corpses.  This one is the politician Ephialtes, who only days before had turned Athens into a democracy.
Rising young statesman Pericles commissions Nicolaos to find the assassin.  Nico walks the mean streets of Classical Athens in search of a killer, but what's really on his mind is how to get closer - much closer - to Diotima, an intelligent and annoyingly virgin priestess, and how to shake off his irritating twelve year old brother, Socrates . . .

My take:
This novel had me hooked from the beginning.
How could I resist this opening paragraph?

A dead man fell from the sky, landing at my feet with a thud. I stopped and stood there like a fool, astonished to see him lying where I was about to step. He lay facedown in the dirt, arms spread wide, with an arrow protruding out of his back. He'd been shot through the heart.

Nicolaos recognises the body as Ephialtes, the man who had brought full democracy to Athens. He doesn't however recognise the man who turns the body over, Pericles, part of Athenian aristocracy. Pericles is convinced that his friend and mentor Ephialtes has been murdered at the instigation of the Council of the Areopagus whom he had taken power from.

Nicolaos is just twenty, just finished ephebe training, and not really the best person Pericles could have chosen to investigate the death of his friend, but the two seem to hit it off right from the beginning. Athens has no police force (really a modern phenomenon) and such investigations are usually undertaken by families or tribal districts. And so Nicolaos begins his political education, finding out how the Athenian city state really works.

In the blurb on the back cover Kelli Stanley calls THE PERICLES COMMISSION "a rollicking romp" and I enjoyed both that aspect and the detailed background of Athenian history, from the "Timeline to Democracy" and the list of "actors" in the opening pages, to the thoughtfully provided Glossary at the end. In the Author's Note at the end Gary Corby says "Perhaps the greatest joy of writing a book like this is interweaving fiction into the fabric of truth" and I think he does that very well.

This is Gary Corby's debut novel, seemingly at least to have a sequel, if the implications of the final pages come to fruition.

My rating: 4.4

About the author:
Gary Corby has long been fascinated by ancient history, finding it more exciting and bizarre than any modern thriller.  He's combined the ancient world with his love of whodunits, to create an historical mystery series set in Classical Greece.  Gary lives in Sydney, Australia, with his wife and two daughters.  He blogs at A Dead Man Fell From The Sky, on all things ancient, Athenian, and mysterious.

I debated with myself for quite a while about which of my "challenges" I would count this novel against.
I have decided on

• 2011 Global Reading Challenge: 7th continent
• Cruisin' thru Cosies Reading Challenge: perhaps this is the most doubtful but Nicolaos is after all an amateur
• Aussie Author Challenge: in fact this is my first Australian author for the year
• Historical Fiction Challenge