Monthly Archives: April 2009

Review: Prince of Fire by Daniel Silva

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Title:Prince of Fire (the 5th of 9 Gabriel Allon novels)prince-of-fire

Author: Daniel Silva

Publisher: Michael Joseph [2005]

ISBN: 0-7181-4849-5

No. of pages: 366

When the Israeli Embassy in Rome is attacked by suicide bombers the Israeli Secret Service investigate. They discover that this attack is only one in a chain planned against Jewish targets and one of their former agents, Gabriel Allon who now works as an art restorer in Venice, is under threat of assassination as part of the campaign. Allon and his girlfriend, a field agent for the Service, are brought back to Israel where Allon becomes involved in the search for the terrorists.

The thriller is told in several distinct parts that roughly coincide with Allon’s movement from one country to another as he either leaves a place due to the risks he faces or enters a new country to go on the offensive. This starkly demonstrates the compartmentalised nature of his life and adds an intellectual dimension that isn’t present in many thrillers. The heart of the story, the search for one particular terrorist, is skillfully told and the incorporation of real figures into the fiction, such as a meeting between Allon and Yasser Arafat, add to the realistic feel of the story. As always though with this series the thriller element is only part of the content. The other is the provision of a sense, one view among millions, of the conflicts, dreams and sadness that have defined Arab/Israeli relations for decades. Towards the end of the book Allon has a conversation with his friend and mentor about the way Arabs within the borders of the newly partitioned Israel were dealt with in 1948 and it is saddening to realise how little things have changed in the intervening 60 years.

As well as good stories Silva writes some of the best male characters you’ll read in thrillers. Gabriel Allon is a marvellously layered person: artist, assassin, husband, chameleon. He’s always introspective but in this book he questions his own actions and those of the country he loves more than ever and it’s very thought provoking. Ari Shamron, former Director-General of the Service and now adviser and friend to Gabriel is a harsher warrior and provides a different kind of insight as well as much of the historical context regarding activities that take place. The female characters are less well developed although here there are glimpses of some quite intriguing women including one of the terrorists who is as psychologically damaged by her past as Allon is by his.

I have read most of the Gabriel Allon novels but for some reason have read them out of order. I have a quite disjointed view of the story threads that run across more than one book, but for the most part they are self-contained stories and they can be read independently.

Silva is a journalist by training and demonstrates something of a cross-over in skills. His writing is tight and while there is a real depth to his observations about the human condition he never forgets that to tell a story you have to keep people reading right to the end. Prince of Fire does this admirably.

My rating 4/5

Review: The Broken Window by Jeffery Deaver

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Title: The Broken Window (the 8th Lincoln Rhyme novel)

Author: Jeffery Deaver

Publisher: Hodder [original edition 2008, this edition 2009]

ISBN: 978-0-340-93724-2

No. of pages: 512

Lincoln Ryhme is a quadriplegic forensic specialist working with the New York Police. His cousin, Arthur, is arrested for a rape and murder that he did not commit. When Arthur’s wife asks Lincoln for help, he and the team of police and other specialists that Rhyme can command soon uncover a trail of identity theft that has ramifications for more than one supposedly solved crime. The scope of data that is created and kept about average citizens by governments and private corporations, and the damage that someone with evil intent and access to that data can do, is fully explored here.

There is a decent yarn buried in this book but I’m getting a little tired of 500+ page books that contain 300 page stories. It’s particularly ironic in the case of The Broken Window because one of its continuing themes concerns the concept of signal to noise ratio. A good third of this book is noise rather than signal. Partial threads of minimal interest (such as the one about a completely different case that took place in a previous book and will, presumably, return in a future one) are interruptions and never form a sensible part of the narrative.

The plot’s other problems stem from the factual inconsistencies. For example, the investigative team has access to some of the most sophisticated technology barely invented but had never heard of something called RFID which I happen to know has been around for decades and even in my little back water of the world moved from shadowy government applications to mundane things like tracking library books, recording road toll payments and making sure surgeons don’t leave implements inside their patients way back in the 1990′s. I only notice things like this when I’m not completely engaged by a story.

For fans of this series all the usual elements, and characters, are present. I’ve always enjoyed some of the minor players in Rhyme’s world, such as his acerbic aide Thom and the gruff Detective Lon Sellitto, and I enjoyed meeting up with them again. The solid forensic detail, including the whiteboard lists that regular readers would be familiar with, and the frenetic pace (the story takes place over only 2 or 3 days) are present in abundance. In this book some of Rhyme’s childhood is explored which I don’t recall happening before, and it was interesting to see part of Rhyme’s life before the accident that made him a quadriplegic.

I should have really liked this book. Identity theft and personal privacy in modern times are subjects I am very interested in both professionally and because they appeal to my inner conspiracy theorist. But somehow Deaver managed to suck some of the suspense and intrigue out of these subjects by including lots of unnecessary filler and I didn’t become nearly as engaged in the ‘what if’ as I would have liked. The last third of the book is a pretty good thrill and there’s lots of good stuff for the fans but it’s not my favourite Lincoln Rhyme novel.

My rating 2.5/5

Other Stuff

Reviewed at Ms Bookish

Author chat with Jeffery Deaver at Lesa’s Book Critiques

Review: The Good Friday Murder by Lee Harris

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Title: The Good Friday Murder

Author: Lee Harris

Publisher: Fawcett Gold Medal [1992]

ISBN: 0-449-14762-2

No. of Pages: 1999

At 30 Christine Bennett has left behind her life as a nun and moved into the house she inherited from her Aunt. The town she’s moved to is debating whether or not to allow an institution for mentally handicapped people to move into the area. People’s biggest objection is that one of the residents of the institution may have murdered his mother 40 years before and their is fear that he might still be dangerous. Christine offers to do some research to see if the man, whose twin brother was also thought guilty of the crime but who lives in a different institution, was really guilty of the crime or not. The townsfolk agree that if he wasn’t guilty (and therefore isn’t dangerous) then the institution’s application will be approved.

The first of what has become a 16-series book of holiday-themed mysteries, The Good Friday Murder has an engaging, fairly credible plot (although the number of people who can remember with clarity events of 40 years ago is a little unbelievable). There wasn’t anything particularly unique about the resolution to the mystery and it was the thread relating to the twins and their reliance on each other that was fascinating and kept me turning pages.

An ex-nun as protagonist is certainly an unusual device for a cosy and Harris has treated the subject well: making Christine a quite believable character. Being the first novel in the series there are lots of other characters introduced, several of whom could easily become ongoing players in the series.

For me, everyone was a little too earnest and a little lacking in odd traits to be truly memorable and the complete lack of even a hint of humour means I won’t rush to look for more in the series but if you enjoy a tightly written, quick read with nice wholesome characters then this is for you.

My rating 2.5/5

Review: Overkill by Vanda Symon

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Title: Overkill

Author: Vanda Symon

Publisher: Penguin [2007]

ISBN: 978-0-14-300665-7

No. of pages: 320

The book opens with young mother Gaby Knowes being murdered: the killer threatening Gaby’s baby daughter to ensure the murder goes smoothly. Although Gaby does what she can to leave clues that her death is not the suicide it is supposed to look like, the lone Police Constable in town, Sam Shephard, at first assumes Gaby did take her own life. However discrepancies soon appear and and Sam calls in the assistance of a full investigative team from a nearby city. Shortly afterwards Sam is thrown of the case but continues to investigate matters on her own.

Sam Shepherd is a likable and quite engaging character. She reminds me of Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone in many ways. She shares the doggedness and disregard for her own safety in the pursuit of answers and can also be a little childish to her own detriment. Sam had a personal connection to this particular case and the way she dealt with her feelings over the course of the book was very thoughtful. There were a lot of other characters glimpsed but not many were terribly well fleshed out and I thought the book would have benefited from another ‘major’ character to participate in the action and help develop the plot. For me Symon did a better job of depicting the small farming and manufacturing town of Mataurain New Zealand. There’s a nice combination of local flavour and shared traits with isolated communities the world over: people look after their own, are distrustful of strangers and love a good gossip about their neighbours.

In the end the plot held together although I found myself struggling with elements of it during the middle of the story. There were things that didn’t ring true, such as the ferocity with which Sam was removed from the case and the interactions between Sam and the murdered woman’s husband who is Sam’s own ex lover. Possibly due to everything being told from Sam’s perspective there were parts of the story that were undeveloped. Why, for example, were Sam’s colleagues so willing to accept the possibility of her own guilt when, normally, Police are slow to accept the guilt of ‘one of their own’? However the last third of the book was quite a page turner and the ultimate resolution was both well crafted and very credible.

Overall this was an entertaining debut novel and I will certainly look for the next in the series which looks to move Sam to a bigger city which is a smart move on the part of Symon as there’s a limit to how many interesting crimes can take place in a small town (Cabot Cove excluded of course).

My rating 3.5/5

Other Stuff

Reviewed by Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise

Review: Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith

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Title: Child 44

Author: Tom Rob Smith

Publisher: Whole Story Audio Books

ISBN: N/A (digital download via audible)

Length:14hrs 23mins

Narrator: Steven Pacey

It’s the early 1950′s in Russia and Leo Demidov is a war hero and high-ranking officer in the security services (specifically the MGB). He is asked to handle the delicate issue of a fellow MGB officer whose son has just died and who is claiming the boy was murdered rather than dying in accident as the official paperwork claims. Leo must convince the boy’s parents to stop making the claims of murder or risk their own arrest because, as everyone knows, senseless murders only happen in Corrupt western countries. At the same time Leo is investigating whether or not a Moscow vet, Anatoli Brodski, is a traitor as has been alleged. Both cases turn out to have unexpected impacts on Leo’s life when he’s thrown out of the MGB and he and his wife Raisa are punished for their transgressions.

In his debut novel Smith has painted a bleak picture of Stalin’s Russia where blind faith in the State, or pretence of it, is the norm. Across the disparate parts of this story people’s actions and decisions are fuelled by paranoia, desperation and vengeance. Many people abuse whatever power they have and many others live in constant fear of that abuse. The few acts motivated by love, friendship or hope are memorable for their rarity. In some ways this is a familiar picture of Russia during this era but I thought Smith did a better job than many writers in demonstrating the subtle differences in people’s behaviour and exploring the reasons behind that behaviour rather than portraying everyone in as stereotypical good and evil as is often the case.

Few of the characters are likable however understandable their actions may be. But likable characters aren’t necessary for me to find a book engaging: far more important is their believability and I found these people very credible in the context of the world Smith has depicted. I did though, in the end, grow quite fond of Leo even though many of his actions were abhorrent and I’m not entirely convinced that the kind of redemption explored in the novel is possible in the real world.

The writing is breathtaking in the way it depicts scenes so vividly that you’re transported to the places where action takes place and can feel the emotions of those involved. The opening passage for example, in which two young brothers catch a cat so they can eat a proper meal during a time when their entire village is literally starving to death, is stunning. By the end of it I swear my own amply full stomach was growling in sympathetic hunger pangs. Smith uses rich descriptions and exquisite details to provide a vivid picture of a time and place I’m very happy to have only visited in fiction.

For the most part the structure of the book is good too. Rather than the story unfolding in a linear fashion readers are shown events in various people’s lives which, at first, seem to have nothing to do with each other but later turn out to be related in unexpected ways. This piecing together gives the book an epic feel which is unusual for a book that takes place over the period of only a few months. My main criticism of an otherwise terrific book is that in the last third the plot moved from credible to silly with the number of ‘in-the-nick-of-time’ escapes and coincidences used to get to the ending. The sudden shift from nicely paced narrative to edge-of-your-seat thriller was jarring and unnecessary: these people’s stories were gripping enough without the addition of the ‘Hollywood’ elements and a resolution in keeping with the rest of the novel would have made much more sense.

There was a lot of hype about Child 44 when it was published (it was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize) which made me wait a while before reading it but it turned out to be a pleasant surprise. It’s an evocative portrayal of a time and place that’s been demonised many times in literature and movies but rarely explored in such a thoughtful and thought-provoking way.

Audio book Specific Comments: A couple of times the narration crossed the line from reading into performance although it was only with the voices of a couple of minor characters so it wasn’t too jarring. Listening to this book provided an unexpected advantage too. When reading books set in non English speaking places I, being woefully monolingual, usually have to come up with some anglicised version of people and place names to keep everything clear this can interrupt the flow of my reading. Having the many names pronounced perfectly for me removed this frustrating element and I found it much easier to keep track of all the places and people than I normally do with foreign names.

My rating 4.5/5

Other Stuff

Reviewed at It’s A Crime (Or A Mystery)

Reviewed at Euro Crime

Review: The Raphael Affair by Iain Pears

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Title: The Raphael Affair

Author: Iain Pears

Publisher: Harper [originally 1990, this edition 2007]

ISBN: 978-0-00-722917-8

No. of Pages: 246

Jonathan Argyll, an Englishman in Rome, is arrested for breaking into a church. But he makes some wild claims about why he was at the church so Flavia di Stefano of the Italian National Art Theft Squad is sent to interrogates him. He tells her that he was at the Church to look for a painting which he believes, due to his art history studies, is covering a previously unknown work by one of Italy’s 16thCentury Masters: Raphael. When the painting goes missing from the church and turns up as the property of an English art dealer the world becomes engrossed by the possibility of a ‘new’ Raphael painting.

This is a fairly simple story but it’s very well told. It’s full of wonderful detail about Italy, the art world and how forgery scams work but there’s a decent plot, containing the requisite amount of red herrings and wrong turns, too. As is the way with cosies, there’s not too much focus on the nastier elements of crime and, instead, the reader gets taken on a romp through the madness of Italian politics and the outrageous things people will do in the name of art (or love) (or money). Silly scenes, such as the one where Flavia and Jonathan hide in a toilet for several hours, could be trite if not done well but here it was amusing.

The characters are charming. As well as Argyll, something of a bumbling though clever Englishman, and the sometimes-sarcastic, mostly hard-working Flaviathere’s the ‘shade overweight’, coffee-loving Generale Taddeo Bottandowho is in charge of the Art Theft Squad. All of them are people you’d like to sit in a café with while sipping an espresso and discussing the meaning of life.

As with most cosy mysteries the success factor lies in a combination of vaguely plausible story, fun characters and a back drop that interests the reader. One of the reason I struggle to find cosy books I like is that many of the backdrops don’t interest me that much (so many seem to involve anthropomorphised cats and/or cooking) whereas The Raphael Affair’s focus on art history and Italy was a winning combination for me.  If Donna Leon and Alexander McCall Smith wrote together I think the product would be something like this delightful book.

My rating 4/5

Other stuff

My thanks to Susy of the 4 Mystery Addicts online book group for recommending this series.

There are 6 other books in the Jonathan Argyll series with the last one published in 2000. Pears has written several standalone novels, including a historical thriller, as well and has a novel entitled Stone’s Falldue out (at least in the UK) next month.

Sunday Salon 2009-04-19: Quiet Solitude

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…as was his habit, [Bottando] had passed ten minutes in the bar opposite the office drinking two esspresso coffees and eating a panino filled with fresh ham. The habitués of the bar had greeted him as befitted a regular breakfast customer: a friendly ‘buon-giorno’, nods of acknowledgement, but no attempt at any more conversation. Waking up, in Rome as in any other city, is a private matter that is best done in quiet solitude. [The Raphael Affair, Iain Pears, pg1]

Most days I walk to work. It’s a bit more than 5 kilometres and takes me a bit under an hour. The walk is through inner-city streets so I leave home early, around 6am, to avoid having to walk alongside roads congested with noisy cars. 

My rewards for this are many. An hour a day to listen to a favourite podcast or audiobook. Some gentle exercise. A smug feeling of virtue for the rest of the day. And, best of all, my end-of-journey ritual.

I stop for 20 minutes of coffee,  reading and contemplation at my favourite café. The street where I stop has numerous cafés but I stop at this particular one because 

  1. the coffee is always excellent
  2. the place is not part of a chain
  3. they use good old-fashioned washable china to serve their coffee in instead of disposable cups
  4. there’s no expectation I will participate in noisy, pointless conversation

This last point is very, very important. Both the staff and the other early morning regulars would concur with the sentiments of the quote above. They understand that the process of waking up has it’s own rhythm and is largely a solitary activity even when there are other people around. We’ll nod to each other and may even venture a “lovely day” or a hopeful “might rain” (hopeful because this is a city ravaged by drought) but we don’t converse.

We sit, we read, we sip, we listen, we wake up and ready ourselves for the day ahead.

But     we     do     not     converse.

This week all that changed. A woman who I’d never seen there before came every morning.

And she talked. A lot.

To me: “What are you reading?”, “Is it any good?”

To the dread-locked bloke who always reads The Australian “What do you think about that news story?”

To the chain-smoking Ad Exec who’s always on his laptop “Nice computer…is it a good one?”

And on she went. No one answered her with more than a grunted, two-word response but she seemed not to notice. Every day there were more loud, pointless questions preventing us all from enjoying our individual wake-up rituals.

By Friday tensions were a little high. We all sat, sipped and waited. Teeth gritted in anticipation of the unpleasantness to come.

She didn’t turn up.

There was a palpable collective relief.

One of the two construction workers, who each drink several short blacks in the space of a few minutes as part of their ritual, ventured a “she must have got the point”. We all smiled.

I’m hopeful that tomorrow thing will return to normal.

Review: The Writing Class by Jincy Willet

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Title: The Writing Class

Author: Jincy Willett

Publisher: Scribe [2008]

ISBN: 978-1-921372-11-7

No. of pages: 326

Amy Gallup is a writer-turned-teacher who runs an evening fiction-writing course. Her current class is turning out to be surprisingly enjoyable for Amy as the students are clever and seem willing to enter into the spirit of critiquing each other’s work. However an undercurrent of hostility creeps in when someone who Amy christens The Sniper starts playing nasty pranks on both the teacher and fellow students.

I nearly didn’t read this book because when I got it home from the library I discovered that one of the prominently placed pull quotes on the cover was something gushing by David Sedaris. I am, apparently, the only person on the planet who doesn’t find Sedaris’ own writing amusing and assumed that if he liked it I would not. As I had dragged it all the way home I set out, albeit with low expectations, and happily, enjoyed it spite of myself (and Sedaris) and vowed, once again, to wage a campaign to rid the world of publicity blurbs on books because they do more harm than good.

The characters are terrific. Amy is a loner afraid of being alone, a writer with the misfortune of having had her first book published and has a dozen more quirks. Often I find fictional people with loads of oddities to be unbelievable but I didn’t experience that with Amy. Her foibles and peculiar behaviours were all explained naturally and I not only found her credible but I liked her. A lot. She’s witty, self-deprecating but not depressingly so and clever. Her students fulfil more stereotypical roles but as that is partially their purpose it doesn’t detract from the story and they do manage to surprise on occasion. I was thoroughly enthralled by the depiction of the shifting group dynamics and the development of the characters, much of which is done via their writing and the critique of it. Of course as Amy delivers her mini lectures about what makes good (and bad) writing I was applying that information to what I was reading and, for the most part, found Willett had taken her own character’s advice.

Structurally the book tries several different things and most of them work. The backbone consists of chapters for each class and these include snippets of each student’s writing which are discussed and dissected. In between there are chapters told from Amy’s point of view, extracts from Amy’s blog and diary entries from The Sniper. This could have been confusing but Willett has done a good job of pulling all these elements together to form a narrative. There is one part, a mystery play that one of the students has written that is acted out by the other students, that I failed to see the point of and found incongruous with the rest of the story but it wasn’t jarring enough to detract too much.

In pure mystery terms the plot is less successful than the character development and structure. The police show no interest in any of the nastier events that take place which is not terribly credible and the traditional whodunit with an ever decreasing pool of suspects isn’t done all that well. There’s never more than a vague suspicious shadow cast over any one person and when the villain was finally revealed there wasn’t a huge amount tying them back to an intricately woven trail of evidence. However I really didn’t care about this too much as I was enjoying the non-mystery elements of the story and all the rest the book had to offer.

So I’m not sure this book is really crime fiction although as I seem to be saying that rather a lot lately maybe I just don’t understand the term anymore. Still, I can imagine recommending this to people I know who don’t like reading traditional crime fiction and wouldn’t suggest it for hard core mystery lovers at all. There were aspects of a decent ‘chic-lit’ (I hate that term) title such as Jane Green’s The Beach House but it also reminded me of Ben Elton’s Dead Famous in the way it cleverly deals with archetypes and applies a liberal does of satire to events. Whatever genre it might be I found it a thoroughly entertaining and witty book.

My rating 4/5

Other stuff

Reviewed by Helen at It’s Criminal

Review: Pandemic by Daniel Kalla

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Title: Pandemic

Author: Daniel Kalla

Publisher: Tor Books [2005]

ISBN: 975-0765-35084-8

No. of Pages: 407

In China’s Gansu Province there’s an outbreak of a deadly virus similar to the Spanish Flu that killed 20 million people in 1919. Dr Noah Haldane and a team of experts from the World Health Organisation (WHO) are called in to help the authorities identify and contain the virus. Just as things seem to be under control there are further outbreaks in Hong Kong and London. On top of having to address the medical issues the authorities are worried that the disease may not be spreading naturally.

This is a fairly standard thriller with a  serviceable but not terribly unique plot. Virulent disease outbreaks, the threat of terrorism, doctors running around saving the world in the nick of time have all been done before. But more familiar than that is the roles and attributes assigned to various groups and people. The main characters are all good-looking, the Chinese are horribly authoritarian, the bad guys are all fundamentalist Muslims and the Americans are all heroes. The cliché ratio was just a bit too high for me. That aside, the book moves along at a good pace and there’s lots of action scattered across the globe. The ending is a little predictable but there’s only so many places a thriller can go so that’s far more forgivable than the cliché count.

Kalla’s made a valiant attempt to make the characters more than two-dimensional but, at least as far as the main characters are concerned, hasn’t really succeeded. As well as being a hard-working, brilliant, emerging pathogens expert Noah Haldine is a loving father going through some marital troubles but the threads dealing with his personal life all felt a bit forced to me. The other main character is the American ‘bug czar’: the female head of Counter-Bioterrorism who’s also a brilliant, sexy, workaholic going through a marriage breakdown. You don’t need me to actually write the phrase ‘sexual tension’ do you? Kalla’s done a much better job with the minor characters such Noah’s fellow WHO doctor and the Egyptian policeman who plays a pivotal role in uncovering the terrorists’ activity. For me they were far more engaging and interesting although their appearances were too brief.

This is Kalla’s first novel and he’s written four more since then. Because I’ve been struggling to feed my medical thriller habit since I gave up on the rubbish Robin Cook writes these days and because there are some elements here that show potential I’m prepared to give him another go. But only if I can mooch something.

My rating 2.5/5

Other stuff

On a slightly off-topic note I’m going to rant about the author’s website. I’ve ranted about the issue of bad author websites before but, seriously, I don’t think it gets much worse than this. Why bother? There’s a nice photo of the author in his scrubs (in case you missed the fact he’s a doctor) and a whole load of over the top pull quotes from reviews and some extremely dull video. There’s not even a synopsis of any of his books (presumably you have to click on one of the dozens of links to online stores for that but I metaphorically stomped off and didn’t click anything).

Review: Diamond Dove by Adrian Hyland

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Title: Diamond Dove (alternative title Moonlight Downs)

Author:Adrian Hyland

Publisher: Text Publishing [originally published 2006, this edition 2007]

ISBN: 978-1-921145-92-6

No. of Pages: 322

In her mid-20′s and after travelling around the world Emily Tempest goes back to the place she left as a teenager: Moonlight Downs. A run down property in Australia’s Northern Territory, nine hours drive from Alice Springs. It’s where Emily spent her childhood after her mother died and where her dad sent her to the city from when she got into too much trouble. With the Moonlight mob having only recently returned to the property after securing ownership in a Land Rights claim the place is not what it was when Emily left but she still feels drawn to it. Sadly, not long after she arrives one of the mob’s leaders is killed and Emily seems to be the only one interested in finding out who killed him.

I’m not convinced this is crime fiction, at least not in its purest sense. There is a crime, and an investigation of sorts, but, for me anyway, that element of the plot wasn’t particularly important, although in the end it had its share of suspense. At the risk of making this sound like some kind of schmalzy personal-journey tale (schmaltzy this definitely isn’t) solving the mystery played second fiddle to the book’s other themes. Half-Aboriginal, half-white Emily Tempest’s search for somewhere to belong and someone to belong to is engrossing because it isn’t schmaltzy. Indeed all the characters’ search for ‘home’ and ‘family’ ,whatever those terms might mean to them, makes compelling reading. And the exploration of outback Australia after land rights claims started being awarded to Aboriginal groups feels very realistic. I used to be an archivist for a state government here and I did a swag of research for claimant groups and members of the stolen generations so have some small sense of those issues and Hyland’s portrayal of them felt very realistic to me.

The best thing of all is that all of these issues are treated with a total absence of the brand of political correctness so prevalent these days that involves some group being offended on behalf of some other group. The book shows the good and the bad of everyone involved without once unduly condemning anyone or praising anyone. Things are what they are and the reader gets to draw their own conclusions. For that alone I would love the book.

However there’s more to love. There’s wonderfully dry, very Australian Emily. Although I have little in common with Emily I feel a far greater feminine kinship with her than with any of the fictional women I am supposed to ‘relate to’ (e.g. any character in Sex and the City or the insufferable Bridget Jones). Not bad for a woman created by a bloke. And the other characters are equally memorable: her childhood friend and soul mate Hazel, the neighbouring station owner Earl Marsh, the cops, the hunters are all vividly depicted.

Then there’s a depiction of a country which, for this city girl, is as foreign as northern Europe or southern Africa. But it’s spectacularly drawn and could tempt even me from my creature comforts. At least for another visit (I have ventured to the Territory a couple of times).

There’s also the funny, very irreverent, very evocative writing that made me smile a lot, cry a little and read whole chunks out to anyone who would listen. With a few words Hyland can create lasting imagines in your head.

I should have read this book ages ago but the copy I bought was filched by a friend before I got to read it and it’s done the rounds since then. Being a cheapskate I couldn’t bring myself to buy another copy so I waited patiently for my copy to return. The good thing about having done it this way is that everyone I know has read it so I won’t have to loan it out again. Which is just as well ‘cos this one’s a keeper.

My rating 5/5

Other Stuff

Reviewed by Maxine at Petrona

Reviewed by Sally at Books and Musings from Down Under

An interview with Adrian Hyland at Barbara Fister’s Place