Two books to buy if your flight is delayed
I was flying Qantas Economy, row 10, and all around me were noses in books. My flight turned into a Book Club at 20,000 feet.
There is nothing I can do to help the hugely popular Australian crime fiction writer Michael Robotham sell more books. The fourth and latest in his Cyrus Haven series, Storm Child, was already a number one bestseller while I was still reading it, during a long delay at Sydney airport.
Therein lies the reason we call them airport books and not airplane books.
But delays are certainly good for the book business and by the time we were seated the readers on the plane were already well into their recent purchases.
I was flying Qantas Economy, row 10, and all around me were noses in books.
I spotted James Patterson’s Confessions of the Dead as well as the absurdly successful self-help book, Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. The buyer was presumably intent on reading his way up to business class – or, better, a private jet.
Further down the back of the bus I could see a copy of Danielle Steele’s Resurrection.
But more importantly, in the aisle of my row with an empty seat between us, a young woman was deep in Storm Child.
Not wanting to appear creepy or lonely, or both, I explained to her that I was writing a review of Storm Child and what did she make of it?
She was effusive, “I’ve read them all since Good Girl Bad Girl first came out. And now I’m into Storm Child and I think it’s the best so far.”
“And the characters, how do you find them?”
“Oh, Cyrus and Evie, I know them so well, I love them.”
“I don’t really understand their relationship, but I haven’t read the other books in the series,” I explained.
“Oh no, you need to read the others and in the order they were written. Otherwise, you’ll never get the best out of it,” she said.
Keen to help, my new friend from Brisbane fleshed out what first-time readers should know from the three previous books: Evie Cormac is a damaged young woman who was held prisoner as a child but has repressed the trauma. Her pal Cyrus Haven is a forensic psychiatrist, who is trying to uncover the truth about Evie. But it’s a long process.
Four books with millions of readers, and the mystery mightn’t be solved in this volume. Maybe it will take another book?
“I’m certainly hoping,” the Brisbane reader said. “I don’t want it to end; Michael Robotham is a lovely writer. Read how Cyrus worries about treating Evie’s hidden memories of abuse: ‘The worst of them are buried just below the surface like landmines. One wrong step and they will cripple and maim. My job is not to dig them up, but to mark where they are with tiny flags so that Evie can cross the minefield safely’.”
The Book Club at 20,000 feet ended with her instruction to this reviewer. “I hope you are nice because I can’t wait to read the next one.”
Two Hours Previously, as the chapter headings of some thrillers might put it, I had been killing time in an airport bookshop, where I found the other book I was reviewing, now on special offer. Outrider by Mark Wales was discounted in a mixed two-book deal. Choose one and get the second for 50 per cent off. Robotham wasn’t in the offer. That’s probably because Outrider is the first novel of a relatively unknown author, but it deserves our attention because Wales’s hero, Jack Dunne, is fighting a war which polling shows a majority of Australians believe we will be drawn into.
A war against China on Australian soil.
Dunne, a resistance fighter in an enemy-occupied Australia, is fearless in tackling both the invading Chinese troops and the collaborating Australian forces. The grim military scenario is as often expounded by leading strategists. China invades Taiwan and America and Australia are drawn into conflict. Wales, a former troop commander with the SA, must be no stranger to the most pessimistic assessments in which our side fares badly. The US forces retreat to America and the Chinese invade Australia.
I would have liked an exploration of the psychology of collaboration but it’s not that kind of book. This is all action in a grim dystopian world where George Miller’s Mad Max meets Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.
Jack’s not much of a talker. He and his young son kill some collaborators and survey the battlefield, thus:
Jack looked out the windows at the crows circling the edge of the wheatfield.
“Shooting our own kind.”
“They’re not our kind Dad,” said Harry.
“Yeah, true,” Jack agreed.
They drove on in silence.
Wales doesn’t have the literary skills of Robotham. But this book about war and treachery in familiar landscapes was chilling and disturbing. There’s a particularly unpleasant scene describing a Nazi-style concentration camp in South Australia. If Wales wants to be an international seller like Robotham, I would just for now caution him against going on a book tour of China.
Charles Wooley is a writer, broadcaster, and rusticator.
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Mark Wales joined the Australian Army after high school. He became a troop commander in the SAS and did four tours of Afghanistan. Following retirement from the SAS, he achieved an MBA at the Wharton School of Business in Philadelphia. He met his wife Sam when they were contestants on Survivor in 2017. They welcomed son Harry in 2018, and were married in 2019. In 2021, Mark published his memoir, Survivor: Life in the SAS, with Macmillan. It was shortlisted for the 2022 Margaret and Colin Roderick Literary Award. In 2022, Mark and Sam went back on Survivor as a team, where Mark was named “Sole Survivor” of the series, which came with $500,000 prize money. Mark has a supporting role as “Hefty Brakeman”, Furiosa’s bodyguard in the George Miller Mad Max film, Furiosa.
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