Finished a good one today. Darkness Runs Deep by Claire McNeel.
Bess is a teacher, mid-20s, brought up in Geranderoo (small town in Victoria) but teaching in Melbourne. She comes home, struggling to overcome her home town problems which have massively divided the town, but aren’t specified but you sort of absorb the issues. Even though the town’s men’s team, the Demons, can’t field a side this year, She makes a “dare” with her old school friend that they can organise a women’s match versus their old rival, the bigger neighbouring team, the Denby Cats.
Her brother, Tom, has disappeared as a result of the “incident”. Her father, Ian, is struggling because Tom didn’t want to play. Half the town don’t want the girls (and women) to play.
All sorts of obstacles are in their way but they finally get to play the game. Thankfully, the author eschews the American ending.
First half dawdles a bit building your understanding of what happened a year ago, but the last 30 odd percent is great writing. Might even cause a little bit of moisture around the eyes.
The main action was set in 1993, with reference to the Essendon Adelaide prelim, which makes sense with the prevailing attitudes to some key events in the book.
Just about to finish ‘The McCartney Legacy’ (Volume 1). Fascinating for Beatles trainspotters and anoraks keen to know what Macca got up to in his immediate post-Fab Four period of 1969-73. A hefty 680 pages of Mark Lewisohnesque detail on pretty much everything he was doing including the lawfare he, John, George and Ringo visited upon each other.
Been reading this bloke for ages…good enough to avoid my Yank boycott list.
Robert Crais, with Elvis Cole, an LA detective with his backup Joe Pike. He’s probably up to 20 books by now and this is his first in a while.
Unintentionally, he lives across the canyon from Harry Bosch. When the two authors discovered this, they did insert a random meeting into their subsequent novels.
Elvis is hired by a 23yo girl, who has a major league baking TikTok channel. Her father disappeared when out at a job outside LA ten years ago and there are no clues to what happened to him, and when Elvis gets a bit close, he’s badly beaten up. But…he’s got everything arse-end about.
Of course, her family doesn’t want anything to do with the search.
Dervla McTiernan has a newie 'The Unquiet Grave’ out this week. Thankfully, this one features Cormac Reilly in what I hope is a return to her best form.
Also looking forward to the new Margaret Hickey ‘An Ill Wind’ due out in early July.
edit: Just discovered new releases by Shelley Burr ‘Vanish’ and S. R. White ‘Pacific Heights’ which are both auto-buys for me.
Made a start on this one today and it’s shaping up as a most intriguing whodunnit.
A young woman is found dead in the courtyard of an apartment building and five residents are witnesses. However, police interviews reveal that they all saw something from a different angle, nobody saw everything and none of their stories match.
I remember reading a book with a similar theme to that, written by one of the 1950’s English ex-barristers, A P Herbert or Mr Cecil.
a barro was arrested for driving into a fatal collision. All the witnesses agreed that it was him, and he kept on the idea. Then he proved that it was his wife driving, just showing that eyewitness evidence can be reconstructed when the witnesses were present but only reacted when they heard the noise, and everyone had a different memory, not close to 100% accurate.
Henry Cecil was in fact His Honor Judge Leon and wrote Brothers in Law and a number of other successful and quite funny books. AP Herbert’s most famous creations were Sir Valentine Swallow, a judge, and Albert Haddock, a litigant whose cases included such oddities as a cheque written on the side of a cow. (It was valid.)
Another author of whodunnits was Cyril Hare, who was actually a County Court judge in England named Gordon Clark. A younger relative of his was a lawyer at Mallesons in Melbourne (surname Gordon-Clark) in the 70s and 80s and was well known around the traps for always wearing the full uniform of black jacket and waistcoat and striped trousers, and, of course, Bowler hat.
Finished this one last night and solved the mystery long before the coppers did.
This is the first of White’s five novels not to feature Detective Dana Russo and, while a decent read, I don’t reckon it’s quite as good as his previous output. A solid 7.5/10 for me.
A big lawsuit in Misleading Cases was suing a neighbour for throwing their snails over the fence. Another was paying your tax by floating it up the Thames. And there was someone protesting the legitimacy of soccer pools because you could argue whether it was using statistics…or something.
A few of these might be on YouTube. I’ve occasionally found 1950’s and 60’s BBC show. The BBC used to wipe the tapes and you’d have to hope that Finland or somewhere still had their copies. Same thing happened here. I know the ABC wiped the Normal Lindsay series.
Anyhow, just finished Dervla McTiernan’s latest, An Unquiet Grave, set back with Cormac Reilly in Galway. There are about 5 different storylines, all of which end satisfactorily. Something didn’t sit right about an author writing police procedurals in her homeland of Galway in Ireland, then relocating to Perth with her family, giving up on her Cormac Reilly novels and writing so-so books set in the US. She’s set up a whole new line with Cormac.
I think I’ve read most if not all DH Lawrence and I think he’s vastly overrated, but Sons and Lovers is a very good book. There’s a lot of autobiography in it; all the poor but smart boy stuff. If you want a recommendation to avoid, Lady Chatterly tops the list for me. The sex scenes in particular are cringe-makingly bad.
And just for the record, I’ve heard of HP Lovecraft and tried one or two of his books but failed to make it past page 2.
I like Tim Winton but his most recent one, Juice, is poor IMO.
Set in the Southern Highlands of NSW, Megan Hunter is a journalist sent to investigate dodgy property dealings in a town pretty much run by the Ashworth family, a family who run hotels and develop property. Isabelle is the youngest and trying to do right, but she’s corralled into getting engaged to a board member who’s 20 odd years older and as shifty as an Liberal MP.
At Christmas, all the kids are recommended to have DNA tests.
It’s not bad at all. There’d be a few members you’d be happy to walk along Sydney’s cliffs to execute the perfect hip and shoulder.
Now onto Darcy Tindale’s latest, Burning Mountain, set in Muswellbrook where a guy walking his dog discovers a skull in the bush. Rebecca Giles has returned home to be with her ex-police superintendent father who’s unwell, and on the case. Not that far in.
Like many of the now-seen-as-classic sci fi/fantasy authors, Lovecraft’s renown is very much based on his ideas and legacy rather than the quality of his prose…
Concur. With the exception of a lack of comeuppance for one peripheral scumbag, it all came together very well at the end and I look forward to seeing the development of Cormac’s story arc. The author has made a wise decision to return to this series. 9/10
Next cab off the rank is Australian crime fiction author Shelley Burr’s third novel, ‘Vanish’. Her first couple were most enjoyable and I have no reason to suspect that this one will be any different. The story again features Lane Holland and is centred on a mysterious farm community which attracts lost souls, some of whom seem to disappear without trace. “Inspired” by a real-life criminal case apparently.