A good detective series depends on the author’s ability to devise canny plots with attendant clues and blind alleys, but of greater importance is the central detective who acts as a charismatic guide through the miasma of murder and mystery. There are many compelling detectives in crime fiction: think of Inspector Maigret, Hercule Poirot, Adam Dalgliesh, Kay Scarpetta and Stephanie Plum. However, with the exception of Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson, and, more recently, Stieg Larsson’s Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist, memorable couples are rare in the sleuthing game.
Cath Keneally’s second novel, Jetty Road, is set in the beachside suburb of Glenelg, South Australia. Her subject is the relationship between two sisters in early middle age, and the narrative is fabricated from the daily happenings of their lives. Evie, the older sister by several years, has no children and ekes out a living in a number of part-time jobs as a child-care worker. Paula, matron of an aged care home, has two children: Bert, aged nineteen, and Rosie, six. Neither of the sisters is married.
If you believe the hyperbole surrounding her novel – Christos Tsiolkas has pronounced it ‘masterful, poignant, powerful and true’ – Kalinda Ashton is, at thirty-one, her generation’s answer to Helen Garner: a novelist of everyday Melbourne who makes sad, daily truths pleasurable to read because her writing is so easy to consume.
In life and in literature, Peter Carey has been as attracted by the pull of the past as by realities of the present. Then there is his recurrent fascination with the two-country divide, where the lure of exile vies with the sentiment of ‘home’, and the schism between country of choice (or country that ‘chooses’ you) and country of birth means that neither is ever fully suitable.
George Alexander’s new novel opens with a racially motivated murder, committed on Australia Day, 1998. A gang called the Cleaners abducts and executes Sly Bone, an Aborigine, whose body they dump in country New South Wales. We then jump forward a year. Australia Day looms, and the Cleaners have another target in mind. Meanwhile, journalist Alex Tolman and his colleague Larry Sheridan, investigating the crime, anticipate more violence.
‘You can say a lot more in fiction than you can say in the paper,’ Caroline Overington, journalist and author of two non-fiction books, has remarked of her decision to write a novel. In Ghost Child, she uses this extra scope to consider difficult questions often overlooked in the fast-moving news cycle.
In the vein of classical Hollywood films such as The Lady Eve and All About Eve, Airlie Lawson’s début novel recounts a familiar narrative involving a mysterious career woman named Eve. A kind of The Devil Wears Prada for the publishing industry, Don’t Tell Eve scrutinises the dealings of Papyrus Press, ‘a respectable, old-fashioned publishing house’ – until the arrival of the new boss, that is.
Alex Miller has been named as a finalist in the 2009 Melbourne Prize for Literature, a rich award given triennially to a Victorian author for a body of work. It is hardly surprising that a writer who has twice won the Miles Franklin Award and frequently been the recipient of, or short-listed for, other prizes should be among ...
In Peter Temple’s phenomenally successful The Broken Shore (2005), detective Joe Cashin wonders what the right result might be in the case of murdered businessman and philanthropist Charles Bourgoyne. Lawyer and romantic interest Helen Castleman’s answer is succinct: ‘The truth’s the right result.’ The truth of The Broken Shore was murky, disturbing and came with a price ...
Paradise Updated, Mic Looby’s first novel, is a scathing satire on the tourism industry, in particular the guidebook business. Looby, who worked for many years as an editor and author at Lonely Planet, seems to know his stuff; his novel reads like a thinly veiled dig at his former employer, now a global enterprise.
