Australian Fiction

In her fourteenth novel, in a career that began in 1980 with Fortress, Gabrielle Lord returns to the series of books that feature the troubled and trouble-attracting private investigator, Gemma Lincoln. Shattered, the fourth in the series, is the most densely and effectively plotted of them. Gathered here are key people from earlier novels: Gemma’s lover, the undercover policeman Steve Brannigan; her best friend, Sergeant Angie McDonald; a former street kid called the Ratbag; Gemma’s sometime colleague Mike Moody. Still shadowing Gemma’s life are the memories of the murder of her mother and, much later, her successful but nearly fatal efforts to clear her father of that crime.

Making Noises is the second self-published novel from Melbourne author Euan Mitchell, and follows in the footsteps of his best-selling début, Feral Tracks (1998). Like Feral Tracks, Mitchell’s new book is partially inspired by his own life experiences, in particular his time spent playing in pub bands and working at Ausmusic.

The naturalist has been something of a recurring figure in recent Australian historical fiction: there is Ingrid in Jessica White’s A Curious Intimacy (2007), Lindsay Simpson’s Lady Jane in The Curer of Souls (2007), and now the real-life William Caldwell, from Nicolas Drayson’s Love and the Platypus. The novel opens in 1883 with the young British naturalist arriving in Queensland. In search of the elusive platypus egg, he crosses overland to the Burnett River, where he sets up camp and begins his investigation.

Genna de Bont’s first novel draws on her experience in working with children and adults with disabilities. Her gaze is drawn to moments of human frailty, which she renders with empathy and precision. The prevailing tone of The Pepper Gate is autumnal, placing us in a profoundly reflective world, one in which the weight of the past is more pressing than the demands of the present.

There is something of the Famous Five about this book, largely due to the central character. It is the 1870s and botanist Ingrid – ‘a woman in trousers’ – is on her horse, Thistle, collecting specimens in Western Australia. She and her father, who dearly misses her back in Adelaide, are writing and illustrating a book on wildflowers. Ingrid is practical and can fix a broken water pump; even though she is considered eccentric, people seek her advice.

Drift is a complex and ambitious piece of young adult fiction that attempts, and partially achieves, an exploration of myriad existential themes. Through the tale of Undine, the adolescent daughter of an idiosyncratic family, claustrophobically trapped between magical realms and reality, Penni Russon embarks on a sometimes baffling journey through parallel universes, string theory and the physics of chaotic coexistence.

Sucked In, the sixth instalment in Shane Maloney’s Murray Whelan series, is just what fans will be hoping for – a fast-paced mystery (with the obligatory dose of political wheeling and dealing) that never lets blackmail, violence or possible murder stand in the way of a laugh.

Inspector Anders, the one-legged anti-terrorist expert, is back. In Marshall Browne’s new novel, he returns to Italy after being sent to the safety of a Europol desk, away from the southern Italian mafia, who had sworn, and attempted, to kill him. Outspoken right-wing politicians are being murdered, and all the signs point to serial killings with deep-seated motives.

A young Kenyan-born white man called Jason Conway has a revolutionary idea: he will save the African elephant from extinction by transporting the animal to the sparsely inhabited Kimberley region in Australia. Sounds far-fetched? In fact this idea, which forms the basis of Ivory to Australia, is less implausible than some of the action that surrounds Jason’s attempt to fulfil his wild scheme. Early in the novel, Jason foils an attempted robbery in a Nairobi restaurant by disarming and shooting one of the gunmen, only to go home to bed wondering if he should sneak in next door and conquer his one-time girlfriend, Jane. The action doesn’t stop there, as Jason, full of idealism, battles against Somali Shifta poachers and sceptical politicians in order to get his beloved elephants safely onto Australian shores.

A conversation about an anachronism led Rodney Hall to this new novel, Love without Hope. He acknowledges his wife as the person who informed him that until the 1980s there was a Department of Lunacy in New South Wales, with an asylum superintendent titled the Master of Lunacy.