Leah Giarratano

Clinical psychologist and best-selling author Leah Giarratano is known for exploring various criminal and/or psychological behaviours in all of her books, and in WATCH THE WORLD BURN, the fourth in the Sergeant Jill Jackson series, she's exploring family, along with extreme psychopathic behaviour.  Whilst earlier books clearly demonstrate Giarratano's own background in her deft handling of the extremes of human behaviour, somehow, WATCH THE WORLD BURN is more assured, more informative, more affecting and profoundly unsettling.

Readers of the earlier books will know that Jill Jackson had an horrendous experience as a young girl - kidnapped, raped and tortured.  Her ongoing battle to cope and move on is an underlying thread in all the books in this series, but in WATCH THE WORLD burn we see Jill put under the most extreme personal pressure and we watch as she completely falls apart, and starts to put herself back together again.  

We also watch as a series of different sorts of families cope.  Jill's family continue the struggle to support both of their daughters - both victims of Jill's childhood experience in their own ways.  We also watch as a young Aboriginal ex-cop struggles to rebuild his life after he was shot, wounded, pushed from the force after he became a whistleblower.  As the sole carer for his much younger brother and sister, Troy Berrigan has a family that was torn apart by so many of the problems in Aboriginal society, being put back together by their individual and collective strength.  Then there is the family of Miriam Caine. Her son and granddaughter are pulled into Troy and Jill's circle after Miriam bursts into flames one night the very up-market restaurant that Troy manages, dying a painful and seemingly inexplicable death.  Followed by a spate of seemingly unconnected acid and arson attacks around Sydney, the police investigation slowly weaves the stories of Jill, Troy and Miriam's families together.  

Balanced well between the police investigation and the various personal stories, WATCH THE WORLD BURN quickly becomes an emotional rollercoaster, although don't for a moment think that means that the reader is left feeling manipulated or over-wrought.  It's searing in its portrayal of desperation, pain, suffering, madness and hope.  There's humour and great humanity here as well, there are strong and safe characters balancing out the damaged.  And in creating a bad guy who is somewhat elusive Giarratano has created what seems to be a pitch perfect portrayal of a psychopath - distant, illogical, slightly out of focus even, but ultimately inexplicable.

Readers of Giarratano books need to be aware that they aren't going to be in for an easy read, but they are absolutely guaranteed to feel something.  You may also learn something about the slender threads that some people balance on every day.  But you cannot come away from WATCH THE WORLD BURN unaffected by the characters created, the pain that they feel, and the nature of nurture.

Leah Giarratano, forensic psychologist, crime fiction writer and consummate storyteller has just released her third novel - BLACK ICE.  As with both of the earlier books, Giarratano takes the reader deep into a specific world of crime and criminal behaviour, the theme in BLACK ICE is illegal drugs.

Readers of the two earlier books will know about DS Jill Jackson, a survivor of child sexual abuse, she has fought her way back from despair and continues, ever so gradually, to get control of her life and to deal with the memories of what happened to her.  BLACK ICE adds another dimension to the story with the introduction her sister Cassie - famous model, one half of a glamorous society couple, a cocaine addict.  Her boyfriend Christian, a highly successful lawyer and drug dealer has a past which is about to catch up with him.  Cassie inadvertently steps into an investigation into illegal drugs that Jill is working undercover on, and in even more difficult circumstances, Christian's past, when a young mother, just out of jail is hell-bent on vengeance.

One of the strongest aspect's of Giarratano's books is that she is obviously writing about people and behaviours that she knows all too well.  DARK ICE draws a picture of both sides of drug addiction.  The sheer ruthlessness of the "business" side of drugs - the totally amoral behaviour of the dealers and the people who make obscene amounts of money.  The ease with which that money can buy the cooks, the dealers, the trappings of the lifestyle.  The craziness that takes over when there's turf to protect and supply and demand chains to maintain.  Finally the depths to which the addicts themselves can sink.  Even as part of the so called "beautiful people", addicted people do terrible things.

The introduction of Jill's own sister under threat provides Giarratano with an opportunity to explore the relationship between the sisters.  There's an age difference, and then there's the problem of the affect of abduction and abuse on the siblings of the victim.  The relationship between these two sisters is very fragile, and a lot of the difficulties go back to the way that their family coped with what happened to Jill.  Hopefully this is an area that Giarratano's going to get further into as this was a particularly interesting aspect of the affects of dreadful crimes that isn't overly explored in crime fiction.  Slightly less successful for this reader was the story of Seren - the young mother jailed for drug offences, who is so keen to achieve revenge.  To this reader it seemed the author was seeking to create another character who, despite enormous odds against them, triumphs over circumstances which seemed a little to co-incidental with Jill, despite the specific experiences being very different.  Perhaps it was simply a personality thing - but readers who find a connection with Seren will undoubtedly be able empathise with her strongly.  

As always with Leah Giarratano's books, the reader is going to come away from BLACK ICE thinking just a little bit more about the consequences behind the headlines on the nightly news.  That's a very good thing.