Category Archives: Lindy Cameron

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.

Review: Redback by Lindy Cameron

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I think I could have saved myself some trouble for the Global Reading Challenge and just read this one book from my TBR, though Antarctica is about the only place on earth it doesn’t visit.

Political thrillers which loosely base their settings and characters on real world players run the risk of having the work become outdated quickly but Redback reads like it could just as easily have been ripped from today’s news headlines (and conspiracy websites) as those of four years ago. It is a romp of a tale that I can’t seem to summarise intelligently. It involves a team of ex-soldiers and other specialists who retrieve hostages, kidnap victims and hapless travellers from the trouble spots they find themselves in. The team of Australians (and the odd Canadian), known as Redback, have to perform several rescues throughout the novel while at the same time a world-wide terrorism plot is being played out. Thanks to the work of an American journalist researching the computer games that governments develop as recruiting tools it becomes obvious to Redback and others that the terrorist activity is being orchestrated, or at least plotted, via versions of a game which are far more sinister than the original programmers envisioned.

Earlier this year, after being put to sleep by half of a fairly un-thrilling thriller, I thought at length about what I like in a thriller and Redback ticks virtually all of the boxes I came up with at the time. The plot is terrifically fast, being played out in short chapters set in various exotic locations. We move from a Pacific Island where a group of hostages has to be rescued by Redback to France and Texas and Pakistan and a half-dozen more places besides at quite a breakneck speed but I didn’t once feel as though it was all going too fast and Cameron is a master at providing just the right amount of exposition and background to hold the many threads together. There’s also a good mixture of the big events themselves, exploding trains and the like, and the impact of those events on the families of those killed and the government players who feel impotent at not being in control. In this thriller at least there are human consequences of killing, even if it’s one of the good guys doing the killing.

The Redback team is headed by the woman who came closest to being accepted to the Australian Army’s SAS unit, Bryn Gideon. She is highly physically and intellectually capable for the job at hand but also has a sense of humour which means, for me at least, that she is not as annoying as so many thriller heroes can be. In fact the whole Redback team is full of capable, funny people and the banter between them all is a highlight of the novel and picks up beautifully on some truly Australian characteristics. Other characters of interest are Jana Rossi, one of the original hostages rescued at the beginning of the book who goes on to maintain her relationship with the team and the American journalist Scott Dreher who becomes involved due to his investigations into computer games.

Aside from the overt humour in the book there is additional fun for readers in pondering which real-world political players some of the characters are based on. You don’t have to be a super politics junky to spot some traits of a recent US President for example and Aussies will have fun too picking out which players might be modelled on which members of the former Howard government. There are even some nods to issues which continue to this day, such as Australia’s absurd obsession with the notion that smart, rich terrorists would be entering the country via leaky boats when it’s far easier for them to fly in virtually unchallenged.

It’s not until you read a thriller that isn’t populated by American ex-soldiers and/or English spies saving the world that you realise how much of this genre is populated by those voices. It’s a nice change to see this kind of story played out by people with a different world-view. The fact that it is superbly plotted, has tremendously funny dialogue and engaging characters is icing on the cake. All I need now is the sequel.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Redback has also been reviewed at Aust Crime Fiction

Lindy Cameron has been writing Australian crime fiction for years and has turned her hand to one of my favourite amateur sleuth novels (Golden Relic which I first encountered when it was published to coincide with an international museum curator’s convention being held here some years ago) and a private detective series as well as this thriller. She has also written true crime. Redback was re-released earlier this year by Cameron’s own new Australian genre publisher Clan Destine Press.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating 4/5
Publisher Mira Books [2007]
ISBN 9781741165722
Length 402 pages
Format trade paperback
Source I bought it