Category Archives: 2011 Aussie Author Challenge

Aussie Authors Challenge done and dusted

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This year I went for the True Blue level of the Aussie Authors challenge which requires reading 12 books by Aussie authors during the year (at least 9 by different authors) and am pleased to wrap it up before the mid-way point of the year. I still have a pile of books by Aussie authors left to read though, perhaps I can double this amount by the end of the year?

Books read

  1. Death Mask by Kathryn Fox (4.5 stars)
  2. Document Z by Andrew Croome (4 stars)
  3. Cold Justice by Katherine Howell (4.5 stars)
  4. Line of Sight by David Whish-Wilson (4 stars)
  5. The Tower by Michael Duffy (3.5 stars)
  6. The Black Russian by Lenny Bartulin (3.5 stars)
  7. The Wreckage by Michael Robotham (4 stars)
  8. Naked Cruelty by Colleen McCullough (2 stars)
  9. How the Dead See by David Owen (4 stars)
  10. Beyond Fear by Jaye Ford (3 stars)
  11. Violent Exposure by Katherine Howell (4.5 stars)
  12. The Pericles Commission by Gary Corby (3.5 stars)

Although these are all crime fiction novels there’s quite a range of sub-genres including police procedurals, a comedy caper, a romantic suspense novel and several works of historical fiction. Six of these are by new (to me) authors and I feel lucky to have found some great new authors to follow.

As I only count a book towards one challenge I didn’t count these other books by Aussie authors that I’ve also read this year but that shouldn’t stop you from reading them :)

 

 

 

Review: Cold Justice by Katherine Howell

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My third book for this year’s Aussie Authors challenge is also Katherine Howell’s third novel, which I only realised recently I had somehow missed on its release in February last year. Of course I had to read it before embarking on her fourth book which has just been released.

Tim Pieters’ body was found hidden in bushes not far from his home 19 years ago. His killer was never found. Now his cousin is a Member of Parliament and has enough clout to arrange for the case to be re-opened. Detective Ella Marconi is assigned to the cold case as her first job back at work after being shot. Among the many investigative avenues she takes is the need to track down Georgie Daniels who was Tim’s school classmate and was the one to stumble over his body. She is now a paramedic who has recently undergone some workplace troubles and is being assessed for fitness to work.

This is one of the most cleverly plotted novels I have ever read. I had some issues with plotting in this book’s predecessor but here Howell has excelled at creating a complex, taut drama that is also easy to follow. The story is told mainly in two alternating threads from Georgie and Ella’s points of view but when necessary to fill in details no one else could know there are also chapters from other key players’ perspectives, including Tim’s cousin Callum who is responsible for the case being re-opened. The way these threads are woven together is outstanding and the result is a totally gripping novel full of suspense. This is one of those books that genuinely deserves the ‘unputdownable’ label as I read it over the course of a single day/night and only stopped when circumstances positively demanded I do so.

A feature of this series is that although the Detective is consistent across the books there is always another lead character who is a different paramedic each time. Howell is a former paramedic herself so brings an authenticity to her depictions of this high-stress workplace which are always fascinating and provide lots of drama. Using a different character each time keeps the series genuinely fresh by having someone other than the Detective lead us through some of the important action. It also gets rid of the credibility problem that can sometimes happen in long running series where awful things keep happening to the same poor sod. Importantly though the characters are always well-drawn, whether they are long-running ones or only to appear in a single book. Ella, who we have come to know over three books, has a near-obsession with work which impacts her personal life in various ways. The characters new to this book, including Georgie and the family of the murdered boy who have all struggled in various ways to come to terms with his death and the lack of closure on the case, are all sensitively described and people whose stories I felt quickly drawn into.

I loved the way this book approached the idea of people’s pasts and how they might feel differently about events they witnessed or took part in with the benefit of age and distance. There are multiple characters, major and minor, who Howell uses to explore some variation of this idea and it really does give some insight into how real world cold cases might be solved years after the event even if there isn’t new evidence.

In short the book is brilliantly plotted, full of compelling characters and can be just as easily read by people new to the series as it can by existing fans. It’s Howell’s best book to date and is highly recommended to all.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Cold Justice has been reviewed at Aust Crime Fiction

I read Howell’s first book, Frantic, in my pre-blog days but have reviewed the second book, The Darkest Hour.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
My rating 4.5/5
Author website http://www.katherinehowell.com/index.htm
Publisher Pan Macmillan [2010]
ISBN 97814055039277
Length 329 pages
Format trade paperback
Book Series #3 in the Ella Marconi series
Source I bought it

Review: Document Z by Andrew Croome

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If you ignore the fact that we (literally) lost one of our serving Prime Ministers in the 1960′s, relative to most countries in the world Australia’s political history is uneventful. We’ve had no civil wars, no major coups, our lone armed rebellion lasted a single day and for most of the 223 years of our political history you’d have had to look awfully hard to find more than six people holding anything approaching radical political beliefs. It is little wonder then that when a genuine political upheaval does occur it receives an enormous amount of attention. What is known colloquially as ‘the Petrov Affair’ is one of these events. Taking place in 1954 it involved the defection of a senior official from the Russian Embassy in Canberra and his wife who had both also been operating as spies. This sparked the Royal Commission on Espionage which in turn led to the severing of diplomatic relations between Australia and Russia until the end of the decade.

In Document Z Andrew Croome has provided a fictional account of these events from the point of view of the primary ‘players’: Vladimir Petrov, his wife Evdokia and the Polish/Australian spy who orchestrated Petrov’s defection. Croome says that using fiction allowed him to put his characters in every-day scenarios in a way that factual historians cannot For me, someone who has never been able to take the subject of spying seriously due to an early and prolonged exposure to Get Smart, I found this particularly effective as it showed that the art of spying is subject to the routines, mistakes, ordinariness and petty rivalries familiar to any workplace.

The story that Croome tells is personal rather than political. Vladimir is depicted as a womaniser, a petty thief and fairly unsuccessful spy. His decision to defect has a lot less to do with any deeply held beliefs than it does vested personal interest. His betrayal of his wife is in keeping with that character. Defecting alone, without telling her what he was up to, put Evdokia in an impossible situation because she had family in Russia whose safety she was worried for. Her story is just sad. Having lost her first husband to a Russian gulag she marries Vladimir more out of necessity than anything else. She appears to spend her entire life dealing with the real or imagined death of loved ones and, though she is stoic, it is quite heart breaking to read.

I have never been much engaged by the study of history as a series of dates and events to be remembered. In this confidently written novel Croome has provided the kind of history that is intriguing even if it is not entirely true (though the factual basis for his imaginings is evident). He shows us a reality that might very well have been. One in which there were innate problems in maintaining strong Marxist principles while living in a place that demonstrates daily that capitalism has its advantages and one in which people’s fears and worries don’t always (often?) lead them to do the laudable thing. As someone who has plowed through a considerable amount of the non-fiction available on this subject I found this fictional account offered the much-needed human element that is missing from so much historical writing.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

You can hear a 15-minute discussion with Andrew about the book on our national radio network’s Book Show here. He talks, among other things, about making use of the extensive documentary archive as well as ignoring it when it did not suit his narrative needs.

Document Z has been reviewed at The Resident Judge of Port Phillip and Guy Salvidge

Document Z has won many awards including the 2008 Vogel Award (for best debut fiction by an Australian awarded by The Australian newspaper) and was shortlisted in the best first fiction category at the 2010 Ned Kelly Awards.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
My rating 4/5
Author website http://www.andrewcroome.com/
 Publisher Allen & Unwin [2009]
ISBN 9781741757439
Length 346 pages
Format paperback
Book Series standalone
Source I bought it

Review: Death Mask by Kathryn Fox

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The first book I will count towards this year’s Aussie Authors challenge is Kathryn Fox’s fifth novel which I was curious to read because it tackles a very topical and complex issue that has certainly had its share of media attention in recent years.

When Sydney-based forensic physician Anya Crichton is asked to consult a patient who has returned from her honeymoon with sexually transmitted infections she believes she’s being unnecessarily involved in a simple case of infidelity. Given the woman’s husband has tested negative for the infections, Anya assumes that Hannah Dengate is lying when she claims to have had no sexual partners other than her husband. However the case soon turns into something all together more unsavoury and leads Anya into a new field of research: the psychology of male team sports players and their attitudes to sexual assault. She is then asked to go to the US to discuss her research and provide information about what constitutes sexual assault to elite footballers but soon becomes embroiled in another case of possible sexual assault by a group of sports stars.

It’s not my place to tell writers how to do their jobs but I thought the first 50 pages of Death Mask was a bit like a long, slightly lecturing prologue. If instead the book had begun with Anna in the US and then introduced her previous experience with the relevant issues via flashbacks or some other mechanism I think the story would have held more suspense from the outset. However, once the book does get going it flows very smoothly and quickly and almost always manages to avoid being preachy. There were a couple of sections where this was not so but with such sensitive material it would have been difficult to avoid all together. The book not only explores the attitudes to women by some sports stars (and their fans) but also looks at the exploitation of the players themselves by team owners and others whose aims conflict with the best interests of the players’ health and wellbeing. This is one of those instances where fiction has examined complex social issues in more depth and with more acuity and balance than I’ve ever seen in the talk-radio fueled hype of mainstream media when similar events happen in the real world.

I have read all of the books featuring Anya Crichton but I must admit I have never particularly liked her as a character. Here though Fox seems to have toned down Crichton’s superwoman traits and made her more human and believable. Perhaps it is because for most of the book she is in the unfamiliar environment of New York dealing with participants of a game she knows nothing about and so can’t be quite so superior as she has been in previous novels. Her genuine empathy for all the victims she encounters, including those who are in turn perpetrators of violence gives the book a real warmth. The book is also populated by other very credible characters, including both victims of and perpetrators of sexual assault.

After its first 50 pages Death Mask has one of the most compelling and creative storylines I’ve encountered in ages. In many ways is a much broader book than pure crime fiction as it examines the psychology of team sports from all angles in a thought-provoking way that is far-removed from the way we normally the subject addressed in the media. It is balanced not only in the way it looks at these issues but also in the mixture of fiction and fact that are incorporated into the story. I’d recommend this novel to anyone, especially those with any kind of involvement in or fascination with professional team sports though, sadly, the people who most need to read something like this will probably never do so. A final point in the book’s favour is that it could easily be read independently of the previous novels in the series.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Death Mask has also been reviewed at Aust Crime Fiction

I have read all of Kathryn Fox’s previous novels but only 2 since starting this blog Skin and Bone (a standalone novel) and  Blood Born (the third to feature Dr Anya Crichton and predecessor to Death Mask)

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating 4.5/5
Author website http://www.kathrynfox.com/
Publisher Pan MacMillan Australia [2010]
ISBN 9781405039956
Length 352 pages
Format trade paperback
Book Series The 4th book featuring Dr Anya Crichton
Source I bought it

The 2011 Aussie Authors Challenge

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Having successfully completed this year’s Aussie Authors Challenge I am keen to participate in next year’s challenge. It is once again being ably hosted by Joanne at Booklover Book Reviews. Next year there is a new True Blue level of the challenge which carries a requirement to read 12 books by Australian authors. Given that I have just finished my 19th book by an Aussie for this year I hope to maintain a similar pace. As part of my overall aim to reduce my TBR piles I have at least 15 books on my shelves (or devices) that would qualify

  • Alex Palmer – The Tattooed Man
  • Angela Savage – Behind the Night Bazaar
  • Emma Tom – Deadset
  • Felicity Young – Harum Scarum
  • Fergus Hume – The Mystery of a Hansom Cab
  • Garry Disher – Snapshot
  • Kathryn Fox – Death Mask
  • Kel Robertson – Dead Set: An Inspector Chen Novel
  • Lindy Cameron – Bleeding Hearts & Blood Guilt (Kit O’Malley Mystery Series)
  • Maria Simms – The Dead House
  • Meredith Whitford – Shakespeare’s Will (this one’s not even crime fiction and I’m still going to read it)
  • Michael Robotham – Bombproof
  • P D Martin – Kiss of Death & Coming Home (Sophie Anderson books #5 and #6)

Plus there’s a new title out by Katherine Howell that I haven’t yet gotten hold of and Sulari Gentil will be publishing her second Rowly Sinclair book next year and hopefully there’ll be new titles from Leah Giarratano and P M Newton. I will also be very curious to see what 2011 brings from Lindy Cameron’s new publishing house, Clan Destine Press, which she says will be publishing ‘a couple of gritty crime novels’ .

Of all my ‘challenges’ this one should be the easiest to complete but also the most fun as I do enjoy highlighting great local talent.