Philip McLaren

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Sweet Water Stolen Land

Submitted by Karen on

Author's Home Country: 
Australia
Category: 
Crime Fiction

Blurb from the Book

Sweet Water Stolen Land is intriguing. Completely fictional with elements of true history interwoven, the book delves immediately into the issues of black resettlement and the church's involvement in removing Indigenous people from their traditional lands for the purposes of rural development.

Sub Genre: 
Police Procedural
Special Interests: 
Indigenous Issues
ISBN: 
1875641777
Location: 
Australia
Publisher: 
Magabala

Scream Black Murder

Submitted by Karen on

Author's Home Country: 
Australia
Category: 
Crime Fiction

Blurb from the Book

Human flesh decays five times more slowly when wet. The rain began at two in the morning; by three, the naked bodies which lay in the shallow stormwater drain beside the railway track were half covered by a fast-running stream.

Sub Genre: 
Police Procedural
Special Interests: 
Indigenous Issues
ISBN: 
1875641
Location: 
Sydney
Australia
New South Wales
Publisher: 
Magabala

Murder in Utopia

Submitted by Karen on

Author's Home Country: 
Australia
Category: 
Crime Fiction

Blurb from the book

Doctor Jack Nugent never liked looking at dead people and he hated touching them.  In spite of this, he acquired detailed knowledge as to what happened to human remains.  In the small community of Utopia, in the middle of Australia, he'd picked up skills he simply never could have learned by staying in New York:  Aboriginal ritual killings hardly ever happened there.


Perhaps it's also worth repeating the author's note:

Special Interests: 
Indigenous Issues
Aboriginal
ISBN: 
9780646503820
Location: 
Central Australia
Publisher: 
Cockatoo Books
Year of Publication: 
2009

MURDER IN UTOPIA - Philip McLaren

Author Information
Book Title: 
Murder in Utopia
Author Name: 
Philip McLaren
Author's Home Country: 
Australia
ISBN: 
9780646503820
Categorisation
Category: 
Crime Fiction
Special Interests: 
Indigenous Issues
Location: 
Outback Australia
Publisher: 
Cockatoo Books
Year of Publication: 
2009

Doctor Jack Nugent never liked looking at dead people and he hated touching them.  In spite of this, he acquired detailed knowledge as to what happened to human remains.  In the small community of Utopia, in the middle of Australia, he'd picked up skills he simply never could have learned by staying in New York:  Aboriginal ritual killings hardly ever happened there.

Book Review: 

There are a lot of reasons why I move heaven and earth to get hold of a Philip McLaren book when I hear there's a new one in the offing.  Firstly, as you can probably pick from the synopsis above, there's a very dry, understated wit in McLaren's story-telling style.  He's also writing about his own people, in a way that's both affectionate and exasperated.  He's also frequently very very pointed about the difficulties Aboriginal people in Australia face on a daily basis.

What McLaren is doing in MURDER IN UTOPIA is really interesting.  He runs a parallel story of a young Aboriginal girl in Australia, against a disgraced New York doctor both of whom collide in Utopia.  McLaren hastens to add this is not a book about the real Utopia - rather it's a fictional setting for his book, stating "I found the irony irresistible: imagine naming a place Utopia, a place so impoverished, so desolate."

The narrative moves forward bringing Jack Nugent to outback Australia and a community in need of medical services, as well as a community struggling against so many issues - alcohol, violence, neglect, poor housing, tensions with authorities.  All of these are told from both points of view - from the American, doctor, outsider with alcohol problems of his own, and from people within the community.  A ritual killing becomes a catalyst for people to adjust their views and for the depth of the problems in the community to be dragged into the daylight.

The structure of this book really works well, and whilst it is obvious that there is a lot of opinions and observations of reality being voiced within the narrative, fair enough.  In fact it's a privilege to read a fictional story addressing real-life issues in an Aboriginal voice, and the occasional stridency or maybe sledge-hammer adjustment of plot to make a point seemed perfectly reasonable in the circumstances.

Not a book for readers looking just for "pure entertainment" MURDER IN UTOPIA is a book for readers that want to learn something about issues we should be more aware of, written by somebody who obviously knows.

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