5 books in 5 minutes

FIVE stars for a thriller set in the Middle East and a children’s picture book that explores grief for a lost brother.

Thriller

THE GIRL IN GREEN

Derek B. Miller

Scribe, $32.99

English journalist Thomas Benton meets US soldier Arwood Hobbes during the first Gulf War, when both are involved in an incident in which a young Iraqi girl dies.

They go their separate ways but 22 years later Hobbes phones Benton to tell him he has seen the girl being killed in Kurdistan again. Benton, now aged in his 60s and with his marriage in tatters, agrees to meet Hobbes in the desert to find the girl.

It’s funny, sad, enlightening and upliftingly hopeful as the two scarred men navigate the chaos of the Middle East and the bureaucratic world of NGOs on their mission of redemption.

Miller writes with a languid simplicity and has a keen eye for the absurd. As more about the men’s lives in the intervening years is revealed, the story and the characters wrap around you like a cloak that you never want to let go.
IAN ORCHARDêêêêê

Fiction

THE LAST PHOTOGRAPH

Emma Chapman

Picador, $29.99

It was six decades ago, but the war in Vietnam seems never too far from public consciousness. Chapman, a British writer who lived for a time in Australia, thoughtfully constructs the life of a celebrated war photographer, Rook, who fell into a plum job in London in the 1970s because back
then anything was possible.

Married to the beautiful actor June, he goes to Vietnam where he is caught up in the rivalries and friendships forged in intense conditions. His exclusive image of a self-immolating monk throws him into the thick of a worsening war, just when he should be at home tending his marriage.

It is partly the story of an old man ruefully looking back but comes into its own as a vivid depiction of war correspondents and the normality they must sacrifice.
PENELOPE DEBELLEêêêê

Crime

THE TWISTED KNOT

J.M. Peace

Macmillan, $29.99

In a country Queensland town where all the residents know each other, one man is ostracised. “Pete the ped” is blamed for the suicide of a young girl he allegedly molested.

Then rumours start flying that another girl has fallen victim to his attentions and the police are besieged, especially Constable Samantha Willis, pulling desk duty after a too-close brush with a serial killer (in the author’s debut novel).

When Pete’s body is found hanging in a barn, the list of suspects is long and includes his brother and sister-in-law, who can’t be found.

Peace’s second police procedural is not so much a whodunit — or even whydunnit — but rather an exploration of the justice system. It’s all the more germane because Peace herself is a serving police officer.
SHELLEY ORCHARDêêêk

History

THE MINISTRY OF UNGENTLEMANLY WARFARE

Giles Milton, John Murray, $35

If Operation Sea Lion had succeeded and Nazi Stormtroopers had landed in Kent they would have found their way impeded by a group of highly trained saboteurs and guerrilla fighters. That’s just one insight in this entertaining account of sabotage operations ordered by Winston Churchill.

Under the auspices of the Military Intelligence Research unit, men were trained for daring raids including the ramming of the St Nazaire dry dock, the sabotage of the Norsk Hydro heavy water plant and destruction of the Gorgopotamos viaduct.

The unit even had its own weapons research section which helped develop the PIAT handheld antitank weapon. There is also the suggestion that the bomb it developed to assassinate Reinhard Heydrich had been laced with botulinal toxin.

DAVID BRADBURYêêê

Picturebook

My Brother

Dee Huxley (with Oliver
and Tiffany Huxley)

Working Title Press, $24.99

Intended for mid-primary rather than pre-school readers, this beautiful picturebook is plangent with pain and loss as it traces a metaphorical path through grief.

An emblematic horned creature, designed by Huxley’s son Oliver with mingled overtones of cuddly human, wombat and bear, deeply mourns his missing brother and sets out with a faithful companion duck to look for him.

A tiny donkey moving across the foot of the expansive white text pages stages the journey, while on the facing pages the creature visits fantastical landscapes all created in shades of grey. Eventually an exhausted sleep brings
on a glimmer of dawn and the journey ends in joyful sunlight and an assuaging new understanding of a changed relationship with the once-lost brother.

KATHARINE ENGLAND êêêêê

Originally published as 5 books in 5 minutes