By Sue Turnbull
Meet four crime writers with significant runs on the board, three Australian and one from across the ditch who is raising the bar when it comes to representing the culture of first nations people in the genre.
Vanish
Shelley Burr
Hachette, $34.95
When She Was Gone
Sara Foster
Harper Collins, $34.99
First up, Shelley Burr, who has given the private detective an appropriate Antipodean twist by putting him in prison. We first met Lane Holland in Wake, which won the British Crime Writer’s Association debut award in 2019. In Vanish, Lane’s almost at the end of his sentence (don’t worry, he’s a good guy), when the governor calls on him – again – to help find his daughter, Matilda, who vanished 20 years ago.
Author Shelley Burr.Credit: Yen Eriksen
The details of life inside are convincingly awful. Although the inmates have access to laptops, these are so buttoned down that Lane is largely confined to sites that tell him how to file an appeal or how to do a self-check for herpes. To circumvent this problem, Lane is recommended for a work and study release program on a communal farm in New South Wales, the place where Matilda was last sighted. The governor knows how to pull the right strings when it matters.
The remote setting serves as a useful plot device since everyone Lane meets is a potential suspect, especially when another member of the commune (or is it a cult?) is killed.
Burr drip feeds the clues while Lane navigates increasingly dangerous terrain as he endeavours to hide his main purpose. There’s not a dull moment and a surprising left-of-field conclusion.
This is also true of Sara Foster’s latest stand-alone thriller, When She Was gone, dedicated to “all daughters, who make everything worth fighting for”. This is a book in which family relationships are front and centre, especially when they involve domestic violence.
The moral centre of the story is Rose, a former British police officer, whose traumatic encounter with domestic abuse early in her career effectively frames the narrative. She’s since completed a PhD, written a bestselling book and is volunteering at a refuge while also compiling a report to parliament on this pressing social issue in hopes of changing the legislation for the better.
It therefore comes as a shock when Rose is informed out of the blue that her estranged daughter has gone missing with her two small charges while working as a nanny for a wealthy family in Western Australia. Rose’s obnoxious ex-husband is immediately on the phone begging her to find the daughter she barely knows. But is it too late for them both?
Although our attention is initially on Rose, Foster also introduces the endearing detective, Mal Blackwood. On the cusp of retirement, Blackwood is desperately trying to save his marriage of 38 years, but is unable to resist the lure of a big case: a propensity his long-suffering wife Margie knows only too well.
While Blackwood leads the official investigation, Rose follows her own line of inquiry with the two narrative threads converging in an effective, and affecting, dénouement.
What lifts this thriller to another pitch are the keen observations of the many family lives upon which it touches. They may be very different but they are similar in their complexity and pain.
Carved in Blood
Michael Bennett
Simon and Schuster, $34.99
The Ladies Road Guide to Utter Ruin
Alison Goodman
Harper Collins, $34.99
New Zealand writer Michael Bennett is also writing about family life, but from the rather different perspective of former detective senior sergeant Hana Westerman. Hana has recently left the force to return to her home town of Tātā Bay after several bruising cases that feature in the two earlier books in this always compelling award-winning series.
Crime series characters often carry a lot of baggage and Hana is no exception, although all you need to know is telegraphed in the opening paragraphs as she faces down a mako shark while swimming in the bay. Although brave and calm under pressure, Hana inevitably has her breaking point.
New Zealand crime writer Michael Bennett.
This arrives when her ex-husband, another detective, is gunned down while buying champagne to celebrate their daughter Addison’s engagement to her non-binary partner PLUS-1. While this appears to be a random incident, it’s anything but. Hana therefore offers her services to the investigating officer, a young female Pasifika detective, who Hana perceives as the kind of much-needed cop who might eventually effect systemic change.
Bennett doesn’t labour the point while providing telling insights into Māori culture. As Hana watches a group of Māori teenagers who have just passed their driving test chasing her ex-husband’s cop car round the rugby oval, her cousin points out that it’s “Nice to see a bunch of Māori kids chasing the cops instead of the other way around”. Ouch.
Carved in Blood concludes with the promise of a sequel and a whole lot of new trouble for Hana, whose work is hardly done. Catch up with her soon.
Looking for something different again? Then I can suggest nothing better than Alison Goodman’s entertaining Regency romp, The Ladies Road Guide to Utter Ruin. If you loved the TV series Bridgerton, then you will love this book, although there is far less sex and a lot more unrequited passion.
As a component of her PhD in creative writing, Goodman meticulously researched the period before completing two novels, of which this is the second. Rest assured, while the historical detail is impressive, the author never lets pedantry get in the way of a rollicking good story that also has its more serious side.
As in Bridgerton, there’s a swag of feminist and political revisionism. Lady Augusta and her twin sister, Julia, are harbouring two women on the run, essentially for their same-sex union. Although this might seem a stretch, Goodman introduces the reader to the true case of the Ladies of Llangollen, two women who flouted convention by setting up a home together in North Wales and who are now considered to be an iconic queer couple.
The often testy-with-each-other sisters, Gus and Julia, are also in love despite being considered to be old maids at the venerable age of 40. While Gus has fallen for Lord Evan Belford, who has been framed for murder and is also on the run, Julia is enamoured of a Bow Street Runner, a man considered far beneath her in social stature. The pair are also exceptional sleuths, largely because of their cultural invisibility as older women.
Although the adventure that ensues may be less of a road guide and more of cautionary tale in which Gus breaks every imaginable rule to save her lover, there’s rather more to The Ladies Road Guide to Utter Ruin than romance.
As is suggested in the dedication to “all the women whose ideas and opinions have been talked over, interrupted, denigrated, or dismissed”, there’s an important lesson about courage couched in a witty period drama that might just be addictive. Book Three can’t come fast enough.
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