Category Archives: Leah Giarratano (Aus)

Aussie Authors Month

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April has been designated by someone as Aussie Authors Month, a fact I have been neglectful of here at Reactions to Reading. But over at Fair Dinkum Crime, the blog I host with fellow Aussie crime fiction fan Kerrie to focus only on Australian crime, mysteries and thrillers, we have been celebrating in style.

Firstly, we introduced a new feature to the blog, our version of an author interview which we call the Fair Dinkum Baker’s Dozen.  We provide the authors with 13 beginnings and, like the creative geniuses they are, they turn them into sentences (or paragraphs, or full blown essays should the urge arise). We’ve been very fortunate to have a wonderful selection of five Aussie crime writers share their thoughts with us so far. Do head over and learn about their worst jobs, biggest fears and the truly terrible things one of them has done to chickens:

We’re also running a quiz, offering your choice of several recent Aussie crime titles as prizes. The quiz is open worldwide so you’re all welcome to participate. We did go to some effort not to make all the answers entirely ‘googlable’ but we hope you’ll have a go anyway. We’ll give away the prizes even if no one gets all the questions right so you’ve got a decent shot at winning.

Both Kerrie and I are trying to fit in some reading of new (to us) Aussie crime fiction too. So far Kerrie has reviewed Katherine Howell’s Cold Justice and I’ll be reviewing Michael Duffy’s The Tower later this weekend. I think we both hope to finish and review at least one more book by an Aussie Author before the end of the month.

Have you done anything to celebrate Aussie Authors Month? 

Celebrating the women of crime fiction

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March 8 is International Women’s Day and 2011 marks the 100th annual celebration of “a global day celebrating the economic, political and social achievements of women past, present and future”. Interestingly only 4 countries (Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland) celebrated the inaugural day in 1911 while today it truly is an international event and is even a public holiday in some countries. In a world where lots of activism focuses on our failures and the things we humans have yet to achieve, I like the fact this particular day is focused on celebrating the positive strides the world has made in its treatment of women.

In the world of crime fiction women sometimes have a rough time of it. They certainly appear far more often as victims of crime, often brutally tortured and murdered victims at that, but I shan’t clutter up this celebratory post with such dark issues. Instead I shall highlight just a few of my favourite women of crime fiction (in no particular order):

Of course you can’t really celebrate the women of crime fiction without giving a nod to Dame Agatha Christie, if not the world’s favourite crime writer of all time she is, apparently, the best-selling (having sold a rather astonishing 2 billion books in 45 languages). Of course she has her critics but its hard to argue her mastery of the suspenseful plotting of detective stories. The fact that one of her most loved characters is not only a woman but an unmarried, elderly woman is to be congratulated. Even today it’s not that easy to find women over 60 being taken seriously by anyone, so seeing Jane Marple solve a series of crimes and be respected by people that matter has to be seen as a positive achievement for women.

Sara Paretsky and the protagonist of her 15 crime fiction adventures, private investigator VI Warshawski, are both worth celebrating on this particular day. Paretsky was one of the first modern crime writers to create a strong female character who wasn’t ‘a victim or a vamp’. VI is smart, independent and possessed of a social conscience (reflective of Paretsky’s own). She was an eye opener for me as a lover of mysteries in search of just such a character (though I didn’t know what I was looking for until I found her). Some of the books have stepped over the boundary into political rant but the last couple have returned to top form and it’s definitely a series I will keep following.

Denise Mina is a Scottish crime writer who has two different series featuring really strong, vibrant female characters. The Garnethill trilogy features unlikely amateur sleuth Maureen O’Donnell, of whom I wrote in my review of the first book

“Maureen is funnier than Bridget Jones, has better friends than Carrie Bradshaw and is the kind of practical, non shoe-obsessed woman that fiction needs more of. She is ‘pathologically independent’ (Mina has a way of describing things perfectly yet succinctly), a loyal friend, a helpful though perhaps misguided patient (she makes up stories that she thinks will make her therapist happy) and doesn’t define herself only terms of the bad things that have happened to her. In a nutshell she’s fantastic.”

Maureen is so fantastic that I have been saving the remaining two books to feature her for a rainy reading day. Mina’s other series to feature a strong female character is a more conventional procedural series but all of her writing that I’ve read has an interesting combination of gritty reality and humour as well as superbly complex female characters.

The first Scandinavian crime fiction writer I can remember reading (though my notebooks tell me I’ve read others) is Åsa Larsson who has written three intriguing novels which all feature two strong women, lawyer Rebecka Martinsson and Police Inspector Anna-Maria Mella. The novels probably do conform to the stereotype of dark Nordic crime fiction but the characters, particularly these women, are so credible and interesting that you don’t mind being enveloped in blackness for a while. These books always make me feel like I have been invited into another world for a little while.

Australia has produced a crop of really wonderful female crime writers over the past couple of decades but my personal favourite is Leah Giarratano whose first book prompted me to start this blog (I had been thinking about it for a while but when that book came along I knew I wanted a permanent home for my thoughts about what I was reading). Giarratano’s heroine is Jill Jackson, a Sydney policewoman who has been through more trials than any half-dozen mere mortals ought to and while I know that isn’t really credible I love the way she is portrayed as facing her fears head on. So often women are shown as passively accepting their fate that I really like seeing someone who deals actively, if not always sensibly, with the crap life throws her.

So, which women of crime fiction would you celebrate on International Women’s Day?

 

Aussie Authors Aced

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I know the title doesn’t mean much but I had a yen for alliteration. What it means is that I have finished the highest possible level of the Aussie Author Challenge (8 books by Aussie Authors during 2010). And it’s only July.

These are the titles I read counted for the challenge

I have a swag more books by Aussies sitting very close to the top of the TBR pile so this is by no means the end of my aussie reading for the year. Stay tuned.

Books of the Month – June 2010

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That Was Then

I only finished 11 books in June and formally consigned one to the DNF pile. It’s hard to pick my favourite book for the month as both

were terrific. Having read Theorin’s previous book I fully expected The Darkest Room to be excellent whereas I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed Bauer’s debut. It’s always particularly exciting to find a great new author.

Honourable mentions for the month go to a couple of top quality police procedurals from opposite sides of the planet

It’s marvellous to see this sub-genre being so well represented by relatively new authors as some of my old favourites have kinda lost their shine of late.

New Additions

Of the 18 books that made their way into the house this month highlights include

  • Andrea Camilleri’s August Heat (I’ve already started this one, it’s the 5th of 6 books on the shortlist for the CWA International Dagger Award that I want to read before the winner is announced later this month)
  • Elly Griffiths’ The Janus Stone (which I received from my reading fairy godmother and will leave on the shelves for a while as I like to leave it a few months between books in a series and I’ve only read the first book in May)
  • Stuart Neville’s The Ghosts of Belfast (I’ve read a couple of reviews of this that made it sound very, very tempting)

What to Read Next?

In July you’re likely to be seeing reviews for

  • Linda Castillo’s Pray for Silence (I finished it on this morning’s walk to work in 2°C, I read the first of Castillo’s mysteries last year )
  • Deon Meyer’s Thirteen Hours (the last book on the CWA International Dagger shortlist which I need to read before the winner is announced later this month)
  • Adrian Hyland’s Gunshot Road (my copy has been despatched from the UK and I await its arrival eagerly, having thoroughly enjoyed Diamond Dove)
  • Mario Vargas Llosa’s Death in the Andes (thanks to a recommendation from Jose Ignacio at The Game’s Afoot I tracked this one down for the 2010 Global Reading Challenge as it’s set in Peru)
  • Mystery Man by (Colin) Bateman (the subtitle is murder, mayhem and damn sexy trousers and I have Mack of Mack Captures Crime to thank for this funny recommendation)
  • John Hart’s The Last Child (this one’s next up on my audio book playlist, it’s won a bunch of awards so hopefully I enjoy it – a book needs to be especially good to take my mind of chattering teeth these winter mornings)

Chart of the Month

I’ve felt too busy to read as much as I wanted to this month and this chart of how many pages my eyes have scanned and hours my ears have absorbed shows it’s true: June has been my second lowest month of the year for printed pages and the lowest for hours listened :(

What about you? What did you really enjoy in June? What are you looking forward to reading in July?

Review: Watch the World Burn by Leah Giarratano

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Thanks to the author for my copy of Watch the World Burn, the 7th book for my Aussie Author challenge which is the 4th book in Leah Giarratano’s series of novels featuring Sydney cop Jill Jackson.

At a prophetically named upscale Sydney restaurant an elderly woman is dining with her son when she bursts into flames for no discernible reason. The restaurant’s manager, former cop Troy Berrigan, does his best to help but the woman later dies of her injuries. Other incidents which may, or may not, be connected start happening across the city. Jill Jackson is studying for her Master’s degree and is on vacation from her job as a Detective with the Police Force but is drawn into the investigation at first because her boyfriend is leading it and then because the case becomes personal.

Watch the World Burn is the perfect example of a suspenseful police procedural mixed with a psychological thriller. There were enough disparate threads to keep me interested in who has done what and what will be done next but not too many that I lost track. Some threads allowed me to build up a picture of intriguing characters while others offered momentary snapshots but all of them kept me turning pages. In fact the shorter passages, such as the one where a woman hands out leaflets on a train station before coming to a sticky end, are really superb short stories within the larger tale and I really enjoyed these vignettes. It’s hard to talk much more about the plot without giving away huge spoilers but there were not many moments in which the story took me where I thought it would and that is always a satisfying experience as a reader.

As I’ve found with all of the books in this series the characters also standout and demonstrate Giarratano’s eye for observation of human behaviour (she is a practicing clinical psychologist). Jill Jackson has had some pretty astonishing personal problems in her life (these are briefly recapped here for those who haven’t read the previous books) but as Watch the World Burn opens she is more confident and happier than she has been before and it’s nice to see this kind of character growth. Quite realistically though she is not ‘all better in an instant’ and the personal trauma that she experiences in this book does force her to deal with her psychological issues in a more structured way than she has in the past and this entire thread has a very credible feel to it. There are other deft creations too including a terrific middle-aged woman who uses humour to help her through her marriage break-up and Troy Berrigan who is also under pressure because he has guardianship of his younger siblings and struggles to maintain some control over their lives.

The one thing missing from this book that I’ve loved about the others was a detailed picture of the ‘bad guy’. Here we only get brief snapshots of the evil-doer which would usually be fine but I must admit to a somewhat guilty pleasure in reading Giarratano’s excellent dark characters in the past. Even so, it’s a thoroughly entertaining read with a nice mixture of action and reflection which will appeal to fans of the series and is also, I think, a great place to start for those new to the world of Jill Jackson.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating 4/5

Publisher Random House [2010]; ISBN 9781741668148; Length 389 pages

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I’ve reviewed all three of the earlier books in this series

Review: Black Ice by Leah Giarratano

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Title: Black Ice (the 3rd Jill Jackson novel)

Author: Leah Giarratano

Publisher: Random House [2009]

ISBN: 978-1-74166-809-4

Length: 323 pages

Jill Jackson is working undercover as Krystal Peters in Sydney’s Fairfield. In a long term operation she’s gathering intelligence on the area’s drug dealers and their suppliers in an effort to help clean up they city’s drug scene. At the same time Serendipity (Seren) Templeton is due to be released from prison after spending more than 12 months in jail for a drug related crime she did not commit. All she wants is to be reunited with her young son. And to extract revenge from the man responsible for her imprisonment. There are other forces at play too: Jill’s sister Cassie, a top class fashion model, has a new boyfriend and is living the high life in the harbour city and a young Chemistry student is learning that you can’t always stop what you start.

I’m sure part of the meaning of the title of this book relates to the drug at the heart of the tale. But as I started reading I was reminded of the winter I spent in the North-East of the US (i.e. a real winter as opposed to its rather laughable cousin we have here in Adelaide). As someone new to walking and driving in the conditions I was warned often of the black ice which was virtually transparent and so invisible until you were right on top of it (which in my case generally resulted in falling over or sliding off the road). There are elements of this story that are hidden in the same way: Jill’s undercover alter-ego whose personality is very different from Jill’s, Seren’s second persona which she uses to embark on the revenge she’s been plotting for months. Even air-headed Cassie, towards the end of the book, shows hidden depths. The unpredictable way all three of these strong female characters are revealed over the course of the story is utterly captivating.

It’s always the characters I love most about Giarratano’s books and this time I think it’s Serendipity who will stay with me after the rest of the book starts to fade. Her life of abuse, teenage pregnancy without any support, and betrayal when the one good thing that’s ever happened to her turns sour is painfully but beautifully depicted. In what might be a new record I was crying by page 38 when her two cellmates turned on her. Then each other. From that point on all I wanted to know was how would life treat Seren and how, or if, she would cope.

Jill is more mature in this book and at times takes a back seat to the other characters although she’s still quite a presence and it is interesting to watch her behaviour change and normalise over time. Aside from her and Seren there are Giarratano’s usual assortment of odd but memorable bit players who manage to leave lasting impressions even if they only appear for a few lines or a few pages. I won’t forget poor Damien who should have known better than to experiment or the nastily bureaucratic parole officer any time soon. And in this book the city itself plays a strong role. Two of its sides, rich and privileged versus limited by poverty, are shown inhabiting the same physical space yet practically operating as if on separate planets and it has quite a realistic feel for this former Sydney-sider.

Rather than answering the question ‘who committed that crime’ this book seems instead to be pondering the reasons why crimes happen and so is far less of a police procedural than its predecessors. Although some of the scenarios were completely foreign to my middle class existence with my happy childhood memories I found myself often wondering what I would have done in the scenarios being described. Although ‘turning to a jelly-like wreck’ is the most likely answer for most instances in this book I always enjoy reading that offers me any kind of vicarious living. And although parts of the book are bleak it’s not uniformly so. Call me an old softie if you like but I enjoyed it more because of that: there are limits to how much bleakness I want in my life.

I probably shouldn’t have liked this book. At least in part it’s about the drug scene (almost my least favourite plot theme ever for reasons I won’t bore anyone with) and, more importantly, it’s quite a departure from its much-loved predecessors. I was anticipating more of the same from Black Ice as I had enjoyed about the two earlier Jill Jackson novels: the creepiest of villains and a put-upon but valiant heroine. I didn’t have to hide under a blanket once here and the heroine wasn’t really who I expected her to be. However, despite that departure, or perhaps because of it, I found the book an emotional and satisfying read. It has retained the essence of what made the first two books great: wonderfully drawn characters and an exquisite build-up of tension towards the climax. But it’s also taken me somewhere unexpected, given me new ideas to think about. A thoroughly great read that I’d recommend to both fans of the previous books and people new to the series.

My rating 5/5

Other stuff

Having raved about Leah Giarratano’s first two books (Vodka Doesn’t Freeze and Voodoo Doll) I was contacted by Leah a couple of weeks ago to ask if I would like a copy of her new book (absolutely no strings attached). While supremely chuffed at the contact and excited to get my hands on a pre-release copy I was also a little worried: what would I say if I didn’t like it? Anyone who has known me more than about 3 days knows I am not good at hiding my feelings. Would I be able to say nothing at all? I can tell you I breathed quite a sigh of relief as I closed the book and realised I wouldn’t have to deal with that particular social awkwardness .

At the time of posting this I haven’t been able to locate any other pre-release reviews of the book but feel free to leave a link in the comments section if you have one.

Sunday Salon: Web not on publishing radar?

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When I post a book review I usually include a link to the author’s website. Perhaps because I’ve read more books than usual this week or perhaps because I’m seriously involved with web design in my work right now I’ve been struck by how few authors have decent websites.

  • The first review I posted this week was of Alex Barclay’s Blood Runs Cold. Barclay’s website commits one of the cardinal sins of web design by having a slow to-load flash gizmo that you can’t skip through and for your trouble you get three lousy links to PDF extracts of Barclay’s books. Ho hum.
  • My next review led me to Alexander McCall Smith’s website which contains some useful information but would not win any design awards in 2009, especially not from anyone with even a slight vision impairment given that its standard font seems to be about 6 or 8pt.
  • At least those authors have some kind of web branding of their own whereas the only site I could find for Leah Giarratano when I posted a review of Voodoo Doll was a short blurb at her publisher’s site.
  • Finally, yesterday’s review of The Red Dahlia led me to Lynda La Plante’s website and prompted this posting. Why on earth in this day and age would a successful author have a website that hasn’t been updated in nearly three years?

In some ways I guess Giarratano has got it right: if you can’t maintain a website properly then don’t have one at all. That’s certainly a better alternative than La Plante’s outdated site or Barclay’s singularly uninformative one. But the phenomenon of bad author websites got me thinking: why are there so many authors without a decent web presence? Do they, or the publishing industry in general, still believe that if they close their eyes and wish it to be so the Internet will disappear in a puff of smoke? Do they not realise that the old selling models are crumbling in the web 2.0 world and that making the most of social networking and new media will increasingly be the difference between putting food on the table and having to work a second job to pay the bills? Does no one see that today’s consumers want a little more than hundreds of advertisements for the books?

Of course I’m generalising. There are authors with web savvy including the six authors who collectively blog at The Kill Zone and talk about everything but where to buy their books. These are people whose work I will seek out because of their interesting web presence. Irish crime writers also seem to ‘get it’ if Declan Burke’s Crime Always Pays blog and Gerard Brennan’s Crime Scene NI are anything to go by. And new generation thriller writers like Scott Sigler and J C Hutchins are so enmeshed in new media that they don’t even bother with traditional publishers. They blog and podcast and participate fully in a range of online communities and are, undoubtedly, models for the new millennium.

What about your favourite authors? Any of them have a web presence to be proud of?

Review: Voodoo Doll by Leah Giarratano

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Title: Voodoo Doll

Author: Leah Giarratano

Publisher: Bantam [2008]

ISBN: 978-1-86325-614-8

Sergeant Jill Jackson has been promoted since the first book in which she appeared, 2007′s Vodka Doesn’t Freeze, and moves from beach-side Maroubra to Liverpool in the heart of Sydney’s western suburbs to work on a newly established Task Force investigating a series of violent home invasions. The Task Force brings together a range of new characters and Jackson is paired with a Federal Police Officer who has a knack for observing body language and the two lead the investigation in new directions when they re-interview victims and learn new information about the incidents.

I find it difficult sometimes to put my finger on the difference between a good book and a great one. But whatever that intangible thing might be, this book is well and truly in the second category. To try and define what makes this book better than good I’ll start with the story. It’s genuinely suspense-filled and surprisingly delicately constructed given the subject matter. Although it features a seriously twisted criminal it’s far more believable than the serial-killer-making-a-suit-from-human-skin type of thriller. And things you believe could happen are always scarier than fantasy. Believable makes you look at your neighbours a little more closely. Believable makes you pull the bed covers over your head even though it’s 40C. Believable makes you check the locks. Three times.

Then there are the characters. I love Jill Jackson and enjoyed seeing her deal with a case that had less of a personal involvement than in the first book. She’s not in nearly so much turmoil here and seems more centred and smarter about the way she works and the decisions she makes. The victims too are very well depicted. Even if they appear only briefly, such as the teenage Justine who struggles to voice what happened to her, they seem to leap off the page and sit in the room with you. There’s nothing two-dimensional about the people in this book. Again though Giarratano excels herself in creating the creepiest bad guys in crime fiction. As with Jamaal Mahmoud, who still occasionally troubles my sleep some six months after reading Vodka Doesn’t Freeze, Henry ‘Cutter’ Nguyen is a masterpiece of evil in human form. The thought that Giarratano may have encountered a non-fictional version of him in her work as a clinical psychologist working with, among others, trauma victims and in the prison system, is a sobering one.

To top it all off the book demonstrates the increasingly rare art of knowing when enough is enough. Unlike the many 500+ page bricks that pepper the shelves these days it’s a tightly written 300 pages and didn’t once make me wish I had a red pen in my hand. All that remains is to wait with much anticipation for the next offering from Ms Giarratano. And perhaps buy an extra deadbolt or two for the back door. Just in case.

My rating 5/5

More stuff

Kerrie’s review on Mysteries in Paradise

Damien’s review on the Australian Crime Fiction Database

Helen’s review on Aust Crime Fiction

2008 a year in reading

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Before I list my best books of the year a few statistics that sum up my reading year:

tbr-20081227

  • I started 94 books this year and finished 82 of those. That’s a few more DNFs than I usually have but I did try a lot of new (to me) authors so some uncompleted books are to be expected.
  • I acquired 158 books which is worrisome not only because it’s far more than I read but also because it is indicative of my growing ‘problem’. This time last year my TBR pile sat comfortably on a corner of my nightstand and now occupies its own separate bookshelf (see photo)
  • I bought less than half of those books and acquired the rest via mooches, gifts, review copies and borrowing
  • I tried 47 authors for the first time (a definitive personal record)
  • I joined four online reading groups and one new face-to-face one

Although it’s my favourite genre I don’t only read crime fiction and thought I should include a couple of my other great finds this year:

  • Shakespeare: A Short Life by Bill Bryson (a witty, beautifully observed ode from one word craftsman to another and I devoured it)
  • Blind Faith by Ben Elton (this saw Elton back at his best and offered a funny, if depressingly possible, vision for our collective future that is scarier than anything a crime fiction writer has ever written)
  • Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks (detailing the events of a fictional English village which isolates itself to control an outbreak of plague in 1666 it brings alive one of the most vividly depicted fictional worlds I’ve ever had the good luck to stumble into)

And now on to my 10 favourite crime fiction reads of the year. Looking at the list, which has been mulled over extensively in the last week or so, there are some common elements to all the books: fascinating characters of one sort or another and the creation of a strong sense of location being chief among them.

As I rarely read books in the year they’re published (I’m too cheap to buy them at the exorbitant new release prices in Australia)  only one of these was actually published in 08. As I wasn’t blogging all year only some of the books have been reviewed here (links where available):

  • The Broken Shore by Peter Temple (which does, without trying, a far better job of representing Australia than the film of that name which was released this year and has oodles of dry humour and wonderfully sparse writing as well)
  • The Savage Altar (a.k.a The Sun Storm) by Asa Larsson (my first foray into Scandinavian crime fiction and a thoroughly suspense-filled, unpredictable story)
  • Blue Heaven by C J Box (a book that made me feel like I’d been to North Idaho by the time I’d finished reading it)
  • Still Waters by Nigel McCrery (the book with the most disturbing opening image I read all year which continued on to do something unique with this genre I love so much)
  • Devil’s Peak by Deon Meyer (yet another innovative approach to crime fiction with marvellous characters and great scene-setting imagery)
  • A Certain Malice by Felicity Young ( the second of three new-to-me Australian authors appearing on this list who can tell gripping yarns in a recognisably Australian voice without making me cringe and pretend to be Canadian)
  • Earthly Delights by Kerry Greenwood (a book with such warmth and great characters that reading it made me want to pack all my worldly belongings and move into the apartment building at its heart)
  • The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by  Stieg Larsson (a book I was pleased to have been bullied gently encouraged to read by Kerrie due to the wonderfully unique and captivating Lisbeth Salander) (I’ve even bought book 2 in the series at new release prices!)
  • Vodka Doesn’t Freeze by Leah Giarratano (not relying on a sole protagonist this book is brimming with strong, memorable voices including the villainous Jamaal Mahmoud with his simmering violence and pull-the-blankets-over-your-head terror inducing contempt for everyone he meets)

And my number one read of the year

#1  The Collaborator of Bethlehem by Matt Beynon Rees (published as The Bethlehem Murders in the UK and Australia but I got mine from the US).

I didn’t have to look at my reading notes for this book when preparing this article. I remember it most vividly both for its content and the way it made me feel. Though reading it made me so sad I struggled to finish it through streaming tears it’s the book I reflect most upon since finishing it. There’s a reasonably straight-forward plot about a flawed but morally strong and stubborn man trying to clear the name of his friend and stand up to the bullies around him. On another level there’s the depiction of Palestinian Bethlehem which is simply breathtaking. I’ve travelled in the Middle East and do keep up with news from there as much as I can but headlines, even in-depth reporting, never tell the whole story. This book humanised the news and events I hear so much about and provided what I think, sadly, is a fairly realistic picture of the day-to-day lives of displaced refugees in the region. It wasn’t a book I could put back on the shelf and forget. I’ve picked it up countless times to re-read passages, some of which still make me cry, and have badgered others silly until they agreed to read it too. I’ve yet to meet anyone who isn’t moved by it.

*****

In some ways this list is a little arbitrary. Perhaps the fact that these stuck with me a little more than the others is more an accident of timing than anything else because there are another 35 or so excellent books that I read this year that I had to weed out of this best reads list.

They are all, in combination, the collective reason I’m so happy that I’m one of those people who can enjoy the simple pleasure of losing myself in a great book and am very grateful to authors everywhere for supplying me with an abundance of choices in which to get lost. Bring on 2009.

Review: Vodka Doesn’t Freeze

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Title: Vodka Doesn’t Freeze

Author: Leah Giarratano

Publisher: Bantam 2007

ISBN: 978-1-86325-583-7

This is one of those books. One of those mega-marketed, multi-stickered books that I put off reading because I figured it couldn’t possibly live up to the hype and I’d end up disappointed. Again.

Happily I was wrong.

Not that the book is a happy one mind you. The subject matter is skin-crawlingly awful enough to make any sane person consider the merits of the death penalty and/or becoming an armed vigilante. When several men are brutally bashed to death Police discover the men have all been accused of child molestation at some point. The somewhat reluctant investigation into the murders uncovers an entire club of such men who swap photographs, movies and children amongst themselves for their particular sick and sordid pleasures.

The plot is logical and contains no extraneous material which is an increasingly rare thing in this age of books the size (and weight) of house bricks. There are one or two passages, e.g. the incident at the prison, that almost push the story into “I can’t believe all that would happen to one human being” territory but they’re only short and they stretched my credulity rather than breaking it. Irrespective of them the build-up of suspense is perfectly timed and kept me awake long past my bed time. Besides, it’s all set in one of my favourite places on earth and Giarratano has captured the feel of the beachside suburbs of inner Sydney to a tee which makes up for any slight imperfections.

But it’s the characters in this book that are truly memorable. There’s Jill Jackson: an imperfect but very believable heroine who tackles the things she is afraid of despite her fears. Her white eyed companion is also perfectly written. But Giarratano hasn’t stopped with her main character. She’s written totally credibly in the voice of a kidnapped 11-year old boy, a transvestite and the most disturbing bunch of villains you’ll ever meet. For the record it will be Jamaal Mahmoud with his simmering violence and contemptuous hatred for every person he encounters who will inhabit my nightmares. Every passage in which he appears is terrifying. The kind of terrifying where a reader might close her eyes tightly while humming Walking on Sunshine and imagining pictures of puppy dogs before the dark thoughts consume her (I’m not saying I did that, just that some other, fraidy-cat reader might react that way).

For once the marketing was right: this is a killer read. It’s my new favourite book of the year (so far).

Rating: 5/5

(this review was originally posted to my Good Reads account when I read the book on 19 Aug 2008, I’ve included it here in readiness for the discussion about the book at the Oz Mystery Readers yahoo group in November 2008)