Category Archives: Fergus Hume (Aus)

Crime Fiction Alphabet: V is for Victoria (the bit of Australia not the Queen)

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I have neglected the last couple of alphabet letters but it can’t be helped: day-job workload and a dead computer reduced my blogging in recent weeks. Unfortunately I’ve chosen to return to the meme for a pesky letter of the alphabet for which I could think of only two subjects to discuss. One is a theme common to crime fiction but is a word I can never spell correctly and the other is a state in Australia that I am meant to be at war with. I’ve chosen to go with Victoria, the state of Australia that we South Australians are taught to hate from birth (it’s all to do with sport which is a subject that bores me witless) but which is home to some of the best crime fiction in the country. Victoria is a small state in the south-east of the country and its capital city is Melbourne.

As far as I know Carolyn Morwood only wrote two novels featuring Marlo Shawe who is a professional cricketer and amateur sleuth based in Melbourne but I enjoyed them both and would like to know what happened to this author. In the second of the books, 2002′s A Simple Death, Marlo finds a homeless man who has been bludgeoned to death and her boss becomes a suspect in the case.

One of the world’s earliest mystery stories is Fergus Hume‘s 1893 tale Mystery of a Hansom Cab in which a hansom cab driver finds his passenger has been poisoned and has died during their journey. I think I read this book many years ago but I picked up a new copy last year when a new publisher released it in a spiffy leather-ish binding.

Garry Disher has two crime series which are both set in Victoria. The novels featuring Detective Inspector Hal Challis and Sergeant Ellen Destry take place in and around the Mornington Peninsula, one of the state’s holiday destinations. The first novel of the series is 1999′s The Dragon Man which involves the investigation into a series of assaults on women and takes place across a blistering Australian summer (fans of the series take note, Disher’s website says there’s a new instalment of this series with a working title of Whispering Death due this year)

Jarad Henry has written two books set in Victoria. I haven’t read the first, Head Shot, which is about a drug squad detective who is accused of murdering a gangland figure who killed a policeman but I did read the second novel to feature the same detective as its central character. Blood Sunset takes place across a sweltering Melbourne summer in which bushfires ring the city and detective Rubens McCauley investigates the death of a young runaway. Melbourne, warts and all, is a distinct character in this terrific novel (more rumours, via tweets from the emerging writer’s festival held in Melbourne recently, are that Jarad Henry’s third novel will be out later this year)

Kerry Greenwood’s historical series starring Phyrne Fisher features the Melbourne of the 1920′s while her Corinna Chapman series takes place in the present day, inner-city version of the place. While the series is definitely at the lighter end of the crime fiction spectrum it does present a very recognisable Melbourne, including some of its darker elements (fact this time, Greenwood’s historical series and its Victorian setting will be brought to television next year).

Leigh Redhead‘s protagonist is Melbourne based former stripper Simone Kirsch. In her first outing, 2004′s Peepshow, Kirsch has enrolled in a course at security college (she won’t be accepted into the police force due to her former career) and becomes involved in the hunt for the kidnappers of one of her old dancing colleagues. This series shows off the seedier side of life in Melbourne .

Lindy Cameron‘s trilogy featuring Melbourne-based private detective Kit O’Malley is a treat. The first book in the series, Blood Guilt (1999), uses another sweltering Australian summer (trust me this is an almost annual occurrence so it’s not surprising to see the weather as a recurring theme) as the backdrop for a philandering husband investigation which turns into a hunt for a murderer.

Peter Klein brings the world of Victorian horse-racing to life in his series of novels featuring John Punter, a professional gambler and amateur detective. These novels have a real ring of authenticity due to Klein’s long history with the racing world in which he started as a strapper. Although racing takes place everywhere in the country (we are a nation of gamblers after all) it is the Melbourne Cup that, quite literally, stops the country on the first Tuesday each November and Klein draws out this aspect of Victoria’s life very well in novels such as Punter’s Turf.

Peter Temple made his home in Victoria after leaving his native South Africa and spending time in several places (including Sydney) and most of his crime fiction is set in the state. His quartet of novels featuring lawyer/gambler/private detective Jack Irish paint a picture of Melbourne that you’d swear could only have been drawn by someone born and bred there. It’s the little things, like the lamenting of the old-timers for the loss of the football clubs they knew and understood, that make Temple’s Melbourne come alive.

Melbourne is also home to one of the few writers of Australian crime caper novels I can think of. Shane Maloney‘s series featuring political aide and bumbling amateur sleuth Murray Whelan is based in Melbourne. Melbourne certainly seems to be the home of comedy in Australia (it boasts one of the world’s largest and most influential comedy festivals) so perhaps it’s not surprising it is also home to some fictional crime comedy.

Have you read any of these crime tales set in Victoria? or have I missed your favourite crime fiction set in Victoria? Do tell in the comments

Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise is hosting the crime fiction alphabet meme which requires the posting of an article relating to the letter of the week. Do join in the fun by reading the posts and/or contributing one of your own. You don’t have to write every week.

A Classic Crime Curriculum

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Rob Kitchin needs the assistance of crime fiction readers everywhere. He wants your suggestions for the ten classic* crime fiction books that a fan of the genre who is more familiar with contemporary fiction than the older stuff should read.

As I mentioned in my review of the Patricia Moyes book the other day I’m fairly ignorant of the classics myself but surely we all know by now that I’d never let a lack of knowledge get in the way of having an opinion.

Last year I prepared a ‘Dartmoor Dozen’ list of books in a variety of mysterious sub-genres and three of those are books I would recommend to Rob

  • Edgar Allan Poe’s The Murders at the Rue Morgue (blame my mother, when she got through the poetry she started reading Poe’s murder mysteries to baby Bernadette assuming that it was tone of voice rather than content that was important)
  • Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Adventure of the Final Problem (actually I have a giant volume of Doyle’s collected works and if I had the power I’d make Rob read the whole thing – it’s a delight)
  • Ngaio Marsh’s The Nursing Home Murder (published in 1935 it tackled weighty political issues like pre-Israel Palestine among the murder and mayhem)

From my own reading I would only add another three to the list

  • Rex Stout’s Fer-de-Lance (it’s his first and one of the best and does a great job of introducing all the players)(plus Rob might enjoy the plot of a university professor being killed)
  • Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile (we’ve talked about this book before)
  • Erle Stanley Gardner’s The Case of the Vagabond Virgin (legal procedurals are a sub genre of crime fiction that seem to be out of favour these days but Gardner’s 85 Perry Mason books were damned good crime solving yarns)(I could have chosen any one of several books but seriously aren’t you just dying to know what the heck a vagabond virgin is?)

That’s it. I can’t come up with four more classics I’ve read that I would recommend (I have actually read a few more than this but not all old books are great) (sorry Dashiell Hammett and Arthur Upfield but …well…”ugh” on both counts).

However I’ve been preparing my own list of classics to read and I’m planning to read

  • Fergus Hume’s The Mystery of a Hansom Cab (Hume was arguably Australia’s first writer of detective fiction and this 1886 novel was discussed on a local radio show last year and was said to influence the great detective writers including Arthur Conan Doyle) (though this may be hogwash, we Aussies tend to believe we’ve had more influence on the world stage than is actually the case)
  • Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White (I’m pretty sure I have read this before as it’s one of a collection of 20 leather bound books I inherited from my paternal grandmother and I read them all as a teenager but I cannot recall a single detail of the Collins)(which is every sad because Collins was a protégé of one of my favourite writers ever, Mr Charles Dickens)
  • Patricia Highsmith’s Strangers on a Train (does it count that I’ve seen the film a bunch of times?)
  • Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep (It’s highly unlikely I will like Chandler but stranger things have happened)
  • Something by Margery Allingham (I’ve no idea what as to be honest none of the titles immediately appeal but I feel I ought to read something)

Actually ‘planning to read’ sounds a bit more organised than I really am. So far all I’ve done is make the list. But I’m in no great rush and I’m not going to devote oodles of reading time to books that are decades old when there is so much new stuff that intrigues me. I don’t mind delving sporadically into my favourite genre’s heritage but I’m not about to devote my life to such pursuits.

Please head over to Rob’s site and leave him your suggestions and I’ll check them out too. I am open to the idea of adding some more titles to my own ‘crime fiction to read before I die’ list.

*Rob defines classic crime as anything published before 1970. I define it as stuff published before I was born (spot the self-absorbed one). Oh and my date is 1967 (I have plenty of hang-ups but you knowing how old I am isn’t one of them).