The Drowning Girls, by Veronica Lando
Port Flinders is a sad and shabby seaside town in Queensland. It is stinking hot and conceals a cesspit of sordid secrets. In what passes for the town, at the laundromat once again “someone’s pissing in one of your washing machines”. The place has one attraction: the annual “festival” of the creepy commemoration to mark the sacrifice of a dead girl to the sea. If a girl drowns, the town’s languishing fishing industry will revive. An effigy, designed to be toppled into the water on the last day of the festival, is erected at the end of the wharf. Tourists come and get pissed. It’s just a bit of fun. But there is a 25-year-old mystery: the tragic drowning of a local teenager who died while trying, and failing, to save a young girl. The tragedy had an upside for the town: the fish came back. A relief teacher, Nate, arrives in town. He becomes entangled in trying to solve that old mystery, and a new one – another drowning. A bonza yarn all the way to its tricky, twisty end.
(HarperCollins, $34.99)
The Interpreter, by Brooke Robinson
Revelle Lee is an interpreter who specialises in translating for those accused of horrible crimes, or the witnesses. At home, she is attempting to interpret the language, the nuances, of the boy from a disturbed background she has adopted, Elliott. In court, she is supposed to do the same for the accused. “To me, all the words must taste the same. I will say whatever is demanded of me. In this room, I have no personal morals of my own. I am not really here.” She is supposed to be impartial.
Until she isn’t. She has, under the immense stress of being a working mother, with no support system and a misguided sense of being a one-woman judge and jury, begun to twist words. She changes crucial words in the evidence of the accused she has decided are guilty.
It is a sort of stalking. Meanwhile, she, too, is being stalked. Somebody is breaking into her home. She suspects the drug-addicted mother of her adopted child. It’ll do your head in. It’s terrific.
(Harvill Secker, $37)
The Glasgow Smile, by Chris Stuart
Detective inspector Robbie Gray and Constable Phillip MacMahon, known to all as Mac, are Melbourne-based coppers. They are both outsiders. Robbie is a lesbian who wears Doc Martens and blue streaks in her hair.
Mac is the only indigenous officer at their St Kilda cop shop. He is kind and quiet. She’s steely and opinionated. They are loners, and lonely. Robbie has been sidelined to the cold cases department. She has exposed corruption in the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation and so is mistrusted. Mac has just returned to Melbourne from his home town, Darwin, after testifying at a royal commission of inquiry into the detention of Aboriginal children.
The pair are assigned to the case of a woman found dead, posed against a piece of graffiti: the face of the deranged clown of the Joker movie. The Glasgow smile of the title refers to his cross-stitched mug, made from a cut used by the city’s gangs to disfigure their enemies. The victim is a perfectly ordinary woman, according to anyone who knew her. But she comes from a family that oozes seething sibling enmity.
This is a strange book. Written by a New Zealander, it veers, not always successfully, between steering you towards the injustices of indigenous issues and towards a cleverly paced police procedural. At its best, it is a moving portrayal of an unlikely friendship, as well as showing the gritty underside of Melbourne.
(Original Sin, $35)
- Michele Hewitson
Double Jeopardy, by Stef Harris
Twenty years after he published his second crime novel, Motueka policeman and film-maker Stef Harris makes a welcome return to the page for a third outing with a muscular, “old school” crime thriller. It’s inspired by his time on set with Mel Gibson and Kiwi director Martin Campbell during the shooting of Edge of Darkness.
While Harris’ own police pedigree is completely Kiwi, here he soaks his protagonist in the gun-heavy culture of American law enforcement.
Frank Winter is a retired county sheriff and former Boston detective whose family shattered many years ago. Now he’s working as a late-night janitor while visiting his ex-wife as she slips deeper into dementia in her care home.
When Bruno Krupke is released on parole after 20 years, the question is will Frank deliver on his well-televised promise to shoot the man who killed his daughter? Timid detective Nunzio Arabito is charged with ensuring Frank does not.
Harris delivers an action-packed tale laced with humour and some fascinating characters who are easy to envisage on screen. It’s the sort of thing Clint Eastwood or Gene Hackman might have starred in 15 years ago as the cantankerous lead. Well worth a read.
(Quentin Wilson, $37.50)
The End of Us, by Olivia Kiernan
Irish author Olivia Kiernan has built a reputation and readership through her engaging series starring DCS Frankie Sheehan of Dublin’s Bureau for Serious Crime. Now she takes readers in a new direction with a twisty psychological standalone set in a gated community in Wimbledon.
Myles and Lana Butler are living a sweet life, but have financially stretched themselves to afford it. When an investment fails, disaster looms. An after-dinner conversation with wealthy and ambitious neighbours Gabriel and Holly Wright leads to a laugh-it-off solution: life insurance fraud by faking Lana’s death.
But when Lana vanishes one night and the police start digging into the situation, Myles begins to worry something else is going on. Readers used to Kiernan’s likeable series heroine may struggle to find any characters to admire in The End of Us, but it’s a compelling tale nonetheless. In a torrent of domestic noir, Kiernan weaves an intricate storyline that feels fresh and surprising.
(Quercus, $37.99)
Killing Jericho, by William Hussey
British kids’ and YA author William Hussey conjures up a fascinating sleuth who feels undeniably fresh and authentic – ie, not try-hard – in his first adult thriller. Like his creator, Scott Jericho is a gay man who grew up in a travelling fairground community. Unlike Hussey, Jericho is an ex-cop recently out of prison, penniless and disgraced after beating an arsonist suspected of killing kids.
The fairground fun and colour can hide dark secrets, and while Jericho honed his uncanny observational skills and ability to read people through years on the circuit, he has now retreated into a haze of booze and pills to quieten his ghosts. That’s until a surprising encounter lures him to dig into a series of bizarre deaths linked to fairground folklore.
Hussey crafts a superb tale full of dark and light, a gritty thriller with a vivid and colourful cast that takes readers behind the frivolity and fun of dodgems, Ferris wheels and candyfloss, into the hard-scrabble slog and prejudice faced by travellers.
(Bonnier Zaffre, $37)
- Craig Sisterson
