Review: A FEW RIGHT THINKING MEN, Sulari Gentill

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  • first published Pantera Press 2010
  • ISBN 978-0-9807418-1-0
  • 349 pages
  • Source: my local library
  • #1 in the Rowland Sinclair series

Synopsis (Pantera Press)

In Australia’s 1930s, the Sinclair name is respectable and influential, yet the youngest son Rowland – an artist - has a talent for scandal.
Even with the unemployed lining the streets, Rowland lives in a sheltered world… of wealth, culture & impeccable tailoring with the family fortune indulging his artistic passions & friends… a poet, a painter & a brazen sculptress.
Mounting political tensions fuelled by the Great Depression take Australia to the brink of revolution. Rowland Sinclair is indifferent to the politics… until a brutal murder exposes an extraordinary & treasonous conspiracy.

My take

As the 21st century rolls on, and events that made us in the 19th and 20th get further away, Australians are in desperate need of good story tellers whose fictions are firmly embedded in an authentically drawn past. Last year Geoff McGeachin did it for me with THE DIGGERS REST HOTEL set in an Australia recovering from World War II, and now comes Sulari Gentill’s series featuring artist and gentleman Rowland Sinclair, set in the period leading up to that war.

A FEW RIGHT THINKING MEN is #1 in the series, and now there are two more for me to track down, A DECLINE IN PROPHETS, and MILES OFF COURSE.

Gentill does a wonderful job of embedding her fictional protagonist Rowland Sinclair into authentic historical detail: Australia in the Great Depression; the Premier of New South Wales seeking to distract the people by building a great bridge across Sydney Harbour; and widely disparate political groups who want to roll time back to the 19th century, or to adopt Communism, or to install Fascism.

Coming from a wealthy landed family Rowly Sinclair is caught in a cleft stick between the old values and his friends who have joined the Reds. And then his uncle Rowland Sinclair is murdered and Rowly’s quest to find the culprits takes him into the third group.

This was an excellent read: well constructed plot, vividly drawn characters, and reminders of the historical events that occupied Australia’s “premier state” in the early 1930s.

My rating: 5.0

Other sites to check:

A strong start for Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries

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Essie Davis as Phryne Fisher

There are a lot of crime shows on our television screens and not quite all of them are American or English. But it is very rare for there to be an Australian-made TV drama series based on an Australian series of crime novels. So there was a bit of excitement in the air at Fair Dinkum HQ last night when the first episode of Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, based on Kerry Greenwood’s Phryne Fisher novels, went to air.

Happily I was not disappointed. The show captured the spirit of the books very well, ably assisted by Essie Davis as our larger than life heroine Phryne and Ashleigh Cummings as her confidential maid Dot who are the standouts of the regular characters for me. And if this first episode is anything to go by the guest stars for the weekly episodes will be a parade of some of Australia’s best actors with Miriam Margoyles and Miranda Otto both making appearances.

But with period dramas the acting is only part of the story, the setting has to be evocative too and this one looks the goods. There’s a bit of noticeable CGI in some of the outdoor scenes (the port scene!) but the close-up building exteriors and the indoor scenes look pretty authentic and some of Melbourne’s historic buildings are used to great effect. I’m sure there are loads of people who play a role in getting the look of the show right but I’ll single out costume designer Marian Boyce. I might be biased as it’s probably my favourite era in fashion (really the only era I know anything about) but the clothes all look great, especially Phryne’s seemingly bottomless wardrobe. I wish I’d been born in an era when women wore hats on a daily basis.

As far as plots go this first episode didn’t slavishly follow the book it is based on but did have a lot to fit in with a mystery to solve and a fair amount of Phryne’s back story to squeeze into 56 minutes (in fact more back story than you get in the first book of the series). I don’t have a problem with TV shows slicing and dicing the storylines of books because timing demands it and I don’t think anything here was detrimental to the basic facts and overall feel of the Phryne Fisher stories. Writer Deb Cox has achieved the same slightly over the top feel and fun-filled dialogue as the books contain and to me that’s more important than following a plot line precisely.

Most of the reaction to the show has been positive which is encouraging to see. It did very well in the ratings (even edging out the cricket which is almost un-Australian) and having aired on a Friday night I imagine it will pick up a lot of viewers via ABC’s iView (sorry this is only available to Australian viewers, though in good news for us it looks like it will be on line for several months rather than the two weeks most shows are available). Reviews in The Australian and at Change the Channel and Film Blerg all have mostly nice things to say about the show too.

Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries is a little bit camp, delicious to look at and loads of fun. It is also a showcase of great Australian acting talent, especially of the female variety which is something of a rarity. That’s not to say the men in the show aren’t good, merely that the female characters do have the best roles. For once. It’s a show that could be enjoyed by both fans of the books and those new to the characters and I’d recommend you watch it (or if you’re overseas watch out for it as rights have been sold into several markets already).

 

Review: SILENT FEAR, Katherine Howell

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Synopsis (author site)

On a searing summer’s day paramedic Holly Garland rushes to an emergency to find a man collapsed with a bullet wound in the back of his head, CPR being performed by two bystanders, and her long-estranged brother Seth watching it all unfold.

Seth claims to be the dying man’s best friend, but Holly knows better than to believe anything he says and fears that his re-appearance will reveal the bleak secrets of her past – secrets which both her fiance Norris and her colleagues have no idea exist, and which if exposed could cause her to lose everything.

Detective Ella Marconi suspects Seth too, but she’s also sure the dead man’s wife is lying, and the deceased’s boss seems just too helpful. But then a shocking double homicide related to the case makes Ella realise that her investigations are getting closer to the killer, but also increasing the risk of an even higher body count.

My Take

Katherine Howell has really cemented herself as an Australian crime fiction author of international note.

SILENT FEAR follows the pattern set in earlier novels: the main plot involves a paramedic working in the ambulance service in Sydney. In this case a young man collapses in the parklands and is then discovered to have been shot. The investigating officer is Detective Ella Marconi. Ella is the thread that connects the series.

As in the other novels, there is also a thread that connects the paramedic Holly Garland and Detective Ella Marconi. In this case there is something in Holly’s past that gives a colleague a hold over her, while a new detective is making Ella’s life a little unpleasant.

Howell strikes a nice balance between descriptive detail, and an authoritative view of both paramedic and police procedures.  In the five novels in the series so far she has established an interesting character for Detective Ella Marconi, and yet it doesn’t feel like the reader can’t break into the series at any point. The result is a tightly constructed, fast paced thriller.

My rating: 4.8

Other reviews to check:

My other reviews of books in the series
THE DARKEST HOUR
4.8, COLD JUSTICE 
- includes a mini review of debut novel FRANTIC
4.8, VIOLENT EXPOSURE

Katherine Howell’s website

About Katherine Howell
Katherine Howell worked as a paramedic for fifteen years while completing her Bachelor and Masters degrees in creative writing. Her first novel, Frantic, was published in 2007 by Pan Macmillan and set a paramedic alongside Sydney police detective Ella Marconi in ‘an adrenaline rush of a thriller’ (Sydney Morning Herald). It won the 2008 Davitt award for best crime fiction. Her second book, The Darkest Hour, continued the pattern with Ella and another paramedic in ‘a finely paced and engrossing novel’ (Guardian UK). The third in the series, Cold Justice, made the Australian bestseller list, saw Katherine travelling on a P&O cruise as guest author, and was described by NYT bestselling author Tess Gerritsen as ‘one of my favourite books of the year’. It also won the 2011 Davitt award for best crime fiction, making Katherine the only author to have won twice. more

Review: COCAINE BLUES by Kerry Greenwood

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In preparation for the start of Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, a new TV show which starts on Australian television this Friday (February 24), I thought it an opportune time to re-read the first book in the series on which the television show is based. In 2010 the 18th book in the Phryne Fisher series, DEAD MAN’S CHEST, was published but the series’ first book introduced the glamorous heroine 21 years earlier.

It is the late 1920′s and when COCAINE BLUES opens the Honourable  Phryne Fisher is attending a dinner party in England where she has lived since the age of 12. A guest’s valuable jewelled necklace disappears but almost before the distressed owner has finished screaming Phryne identifies the thief and arranges the discrete return of the item. This deductive prowess prompts a couple attending the party to ask Phryne to travel to her native Australia and investigate the case of their daughter who, they think. might be being poisoned by her husband. Phryne agrees, though on her own terms, and so heads to a country she last saw as a poverty-stricken child. In addition to investigating the issue that brought her home Phryne gets involved in the case of a backyard abortionist and sundry other activities.

COCAINE BLUES is. primarily, a fun book to read. Phryne is an engaging mix of glamour, intelligence and sass. She jumps into life’s adventures with gusto, is kind to those who deserve it and cutting to those who don’t and takes people as she finds them rather than as society dictates particular ‘classes’ should be treated. It’s difficult not to like her. Here she meets some of the people who will become stalwarts of the series including Dorothy, or Dot, who becomes Phryne’s confidential maid (with other duties as directed) after Phryne prevents the young girl from carrying out her plan to murder her former employer with a kitchen knife. Dot is a bit wide-eyed at some of Phryne’s more outrageous behaviour but she is pragmatic about what she sees and is forceful enough to stand up for herself. There are some other good characters including two cab drivers who become involved in both of the main cases Phryne investigates and a female doctor who is appalled at the treatment of women at various levels of society.

And there’s the hint hat COCAINE BLUES is not all about fun and frivolity as it does explore some deeper issues too. The female doctor has had to fight extraordinary prejudice just to become a doctor and now battles constantly to ensure women are treated properly by the medical profession in general. It never hurts us to remember how relatively recent it was that life was a grim prospect for many women and the way Greenwood incorporates this theme into the story here is interesting without once feeling like a lecture on the status of women.

The mystery itself is a romp in the best sense of the word. There’s Russian royalty, a dodgy copper, an undercover outing and a near-death experience for Phryne and a ballet dancer before all is resolved satisfactorily. The series already has loads of fans but if you’ve not yet indulged you could do a lot worse than step back into 1920′s Australia with Phryne and her entourage.

The first of 13 episodes of Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries airs on ABC1 at 8:30 on Friday 24 February. It stars Essie Davis as Phryne Fisher, Nathan Page as DI Jack Robinson (whose role will be larger in the TV series than the books I think) and Ashleigh Cummings as Dot. For international fans of Phryne I believe that rights have been sold into several markets so you should be seeing Phryne on screen soon.

The first books in the series are being re-released this year with delicious new covers to tie-in with the TV series.

I’m counting this as my fourth book of the Australian Women Writers Challenge for 2012

My rating: 3.5/5 stars (rating scale is explained here)
Publisher: Allen & Unwin (this edition 2010, original edition 1989]
ISBN: 9781742373874
Length: 165 pages
Format: eBook (ePub, part of 3 volume eBook entitled INTRODUCING PHRYNE FISHER)
Source: I bought it
Creative Commons Licence
This work by http://fairdinkumcrime.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Review: WATCH OUT FOR ME by Sylvia Johnson

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Hannah, Richard and Lizzie Woods and their cousin Toby are kids enjoying the quintessential 1960′s Australian summer holiday in Bradleys Head on the north shore of Sydney Harbour.Their long, school-free days are spent exploring the town’s parks and isolated buildings and playing complicated games with the children of other holidaying families. One day a baby goes missing from a park in the town and the children are interviewed by police as they were seen in the park. Their shared secret about that day has dramatic and far-reaching consequences.

This book is a little bit sneaky in that it starts out being a fairly simple (though compelling) story about a missing baby and the children who might have known something about it but it morphs into something more complex as it explores the ramifications of those half-forgotten events on all involved when they are adults. In a series of very short chapters we see events in both 1967 and 2005 unfold from the various perspectives of Toby, Hannah, Lizzie and other less frequent contributors and are slowly able to piece together what happened when the children were young and what effect this has had on them all. As adults in particular their self-examination of their perceived character flaws including cowardices and fears really does make for very engaging characters.

While in both time periods readers are generally focused on the individuals involved in the story, Johnson has done a great job of depicting the wider social conditions of both periods. In the 1960′s things are fairly relaxed and idyllic, though there are some tensions creeping into the community which are brought to the foreground when the baby disappears. Although mine were a few years later than the summer holiday enjoyed in this book I could recognise almost everything about the place, people and sensibilities being depicted here from my own childhood summers. In 2005 the events are taking place in the post-September 11 world in which the fear of terrorist acts or the desire to prevent them has led to monumental changes in society. Johnson has chosen the specific time of the visit to Australia by the then American President which was, to put it bluntly, a pain in the neck as an entire city was locked down and hundreds of foreigners (Americans) were allowed unprecedented privileges to brandish weapons and engage in many other activities which once would have been unthinkable. Again I could easily recognise the setting as accurate in both generalities and small details.

Several of the characters are completely mesmerizing, particularly Hannah and Toby who have both coped (or failed to cope) with the fallout from that summer very differently. I particularly enjoyed the sense that Johnson provides that when we meet them as children we are seeing glimmers of the adults they will become. As a child Toby is quiet, nervous and desperate to be accepted by his older cousins and we wonder if he will break away from this pattern as an adult or still allow himself to be ensnared by his cousins. Hannah on the other hand is a confident child who turns into an irascible adult barely able to believe the changes she sees in her world but brought undone when she recognises her own human failings.

There are a few minor things that didn’t work quite as well as they might have done (a couple of unnecessary minor threads and very rapid changes of perspective which made it a book you really had to concentrate on) but overall this is a very confident début novel which I enjoyed very much. The sense of time and place is outstandingly nuanced and realistic and the characters and story both continue to surprise through to the end. I’m not sure it qualifies as crime fiction, being more of a suspenseful thriller, but whatever label it falls under I highly recommend it

Syliva Johnson answered Booktopia book store’s Ten Terrifying Questions last year and the book has been reviewed at Aust Crime Fiction

I’m counting this as my third contribution towards the Australian Women Writers reading challenge for this year.

My rating: 4/5 stars (rating scale is explained here)
Publisher: Allen & Unwin [2011]
ISBN: 9781742376707
Length: 3818 kindle locations (whatever that means)
Format: eBook (kindle)
Source: I bought it
Creative Commons Licence
This work by http://fairdinkumcrime.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Review: THE COLD COLD GROUND, Adrian McKinty

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Book Description (Amazon)

There may be troubles ahead…Northern Ireland. Spring 1981. Hunger strikes. Riots. Power cuts. A homophobic serial killer with a penchant for opera. And a young woman’s suicide that may yet turn out to be murder. On the surface, the events are unconnected, but then things – and people – aren’t always what they seem.

Detective Sergeant Duffy is the man tasked with trying to get to the bottom of it all. It’s no easy job – especially when it turns out that one of the victims was involved in the IRA, but last seen discussing business with someone from the UVF. Add to that the fact that as a Catholic policemen, it doesn’t matter which side he’s on, because nobody trusts him – and Sergeant Duffy really is in a no-win situation. Fast-paced, evocative and brutal, “The Cold, Cold Ground” is a brilliant depiction of Belfast at the height of the Troubles – and a cop treading a thin, thin line.

My take

At the end of the book, in an “About” section, Adrian McKinty says the story “is a police procedural, but a procedural set in extremely unusual circumstances in a controversial police force cracking under extraordinary external and internal pressures…“

THE COLD COLD GROUND is set in Carrickfergus, Northern Ireland, where McKinty was born and grew up. At the time the novel was set, 1981, he was a teenager. He draws much from this background that was so close to him. The result is vivid description.

The novel transports the readers to circumstances that are part of our recent world history, but that many of us are glad we didn’t experience first hand. In fact it is difficult for those who have known only tranquillity to imagine what living in Belfast heartland must have been like.THE COLD COLD GROUND helps a little with that.

This is a novel that makes you think. What is the relevance of a police force investigating a murder or a disappearance when so much death and destruction is happening everywhere as the result of terrorist activities? But then also, here are policeman who never know if they are going to come home after a day’s work. Ignoring procedures such as checking under your car before starting out could well be fatal.

I think Sergeant Sean Duffy is some one I would like to meet again.  He emerges from his first outing a hero, although a very complex character, and not afraid to deliver his own form of justice. Through him comes a touch of McKinty’s quirky black humour. I believe THE COLD COLD GROUND is to be the first in a trilogy, with the next called I HEAR THE SIRENS IN THE STREET.

My rating: 4.6

Other reviews to check:

There is really no shortage of reviews of McKinty’s work and this latest novel. McKinty has listed many of them in the sidebar of his blog.

You can read a review of my latest novel, The Cold Cold Ground, in The Guardian, here. You can peruse the review from the Irish Independent, here or the review in The Times, here. The Glasgow Herald‘s verdict is here and The Sydney Morning Herald chips in, here. If you want to know what all the extraordinary fuss is about you can be a good chap and get The Cold Cold Ground on Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Audible.com or at your local bookshop.

Closer to home see Bernadette’s review on Fair Dinkum Crime and Peter’s at Detectives Beyond Borders

I have also reviewed FIFTY GRAND

About the author

Adrian McKinty is currently living in Melbourne. Check his blog here.
You might also like to read this post.
Amazon.com lists 11 titles by McKinty, although Fantastic Fiction lists 12.

Australia Day Quiz Answers and Winners

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Our Australia Day quiz focused on historical crime fiction or the history of crime fiction in Australia.

Q. Which author is the current holder of the Ned Kelly Award for best novel and what time period does the winning novel take place in? (2 points)
A. Geoffrey McGeachin won the 2011 Ned Kelly Award for The Diggers Rest Hotel. The novel is set in 1947. Here at Fair Dinkum HQ we loved this book, here’s Kerrie’s review and mine.

Q. Who won the first Ned Kelly Award and in what year was it awarded? (2 points)
A. The first Ned Kelly Awards were in 1996 and there was a tie between Barry Maitland for The Malcontenta and Paul Thomas for Inside Dope.

Q. An Australian author who published 34 detective novels between 1926-66 gave his part-aboriginal detective the name of a famous figure from history. Who was the author and what was his detective’s full name? (2 points)
A. Arthur Upfield created the character whom he named Napoleon Bonaparte after the French Emperor and well known short bloke.

Q.Australia’s first crime novel was published in 1865. Who wrote it and what was it called? (2 points)
A. Ellen Davitt published a book called Force and Fraud: A Tale of the Bush (But we accepted Force and Fraud on its own too as this is its better known title).

Q. In what way is that author acknowledged by the modern crime fiction community? (1 point)
A. The Australian arm of Sisters in Crime awards the Davitt awards each year to the best crime writing by Australian women. Check out last year’s list of winners.

Q. Which novel by Charles Dickens (published before 1865) featured the first Australian criminal in a novel? (1 point)
A. Great Expectations published in 1861 featured a character called Abel Magwitch, a totally unsavoury chap who was an unwilling Aussie, being sentenced to life as a convict and sent here from England (though he eventually becomes a rich businessman). This question proved a contentious one with some respondents suggesting 1838′s Oliver Twist  because the Artful Dodger is sent to a penal colony but from what we’ve been able to glean (no I didn’t re-read the book) it is never explicitly stated in the novel that he is sent to Australia whereas Magwitch is definitely sent to New South Wales.

Q. America’s prestigious Edgar Award for best novel was first issued in 1954 to which Australian author and for what novel? (2 points)
Charlotte Jay’s Beat Not the Bones.

The winner of Sulari Gentill’s MILES OFF COURSE is Stan Lanier of somewhere in America (we’ve sent you an email asking for your snail mail address Stan). I hope you enjoy the book as much as I did and if you need any help with translations from Australian just ask.

Thanks to everyone for entering and stay tuned for another quiz some time soon.