New South Wales

I still remember the profound sense of disquiet that WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN? left me with, and Wendy James has done it again with THE MISTAKE.

There's something about Jodie Garrow that I suspect is going to trigger differing responses in readers. Personally I couldn't get past a very obvious sense of Stepford Wife syndrome. She's a socialite, immaculately made-up, coiffured, dressed to the part of the wealthy wife of a high profile husband. There's the perfect family - a boy, a girl, a modern house. She's a big fish in a very small pond - a metaphor that extends as the plot of the book expands and, in Jodie's eyes, she's increasingly surrounded by the sharks - media, friends, mother-in-law. Even the supportive, but ultimately unfaithful husband. There's obviously a lot wrong in Jodie's life and it seems that the revelation of the illegal adoption all those years ago has suddenly bought all that's bad to the surface.

It's also distinctly possible that Jodie is everything that's wrong in Jodie's life, and this author has done a particularly good job at confusing that possibility. Is Jodie the ultimate unreliable narrator, or is the media frenzy, the trial by public opinion, more what's going very very wrong in this woman's life? Why has she stepped back, wrapped herself in what seems oddly passive acceptance, why doesn't that quite stack up against the revelations of Jodie's background and her determination in other areas of her life? Add a philandering husband who does seems to be stepping up to help, a rebellious teenage daughter, and there are cracks in this perfect life that widen with every page.

The point of view moves around between Jodie, her husband Angus and sixteen-year-old daughter Hannah. The timeframe also changes between the present and 1986 when the missing baby was born. The main voice however is always Jodie. As everybody else reacts and deals with the circumstances, Jodie alone knows the full story of what happened to baby Else Mary. Yet somehow her story doesn't quite ring true - whether or not that's because the media hype is winning, or whether or not there is something wrong in what Jodie is saying is not all that easy to decide.  

It was hard not to be struck by the coincidence of finishing THE MISTAKE just as a Northern Territory coroner declared that a dingo did indeed take baby Azaria Chamberlain. Hard not to think of the hysterical media and public speculation that went on around that case, hard not to consider the mindless obsession with looks, clothes, demeanour.  

In THE MISTAKE, once again, James takes the reader into some very interesting territory. The book is definitely almost pitch perfect psychological thriller, and it's going to be very discomforting reading for some people. It's sneakily challenging, disconcerting, compelling, car crash fascinating, and probably one of the best fictional reminders I've had in a while that public and media opinion should never be mistaken for the justice system, regardless of the ultimate outcome.

Not sure what's weirder, talking to fictional characters, or the feeling that you actually know those fictional characters...  Either way, you have to think it's quite a feat for a writer to get you to the stage where you're more than happy to regard her characters as real people. MILES OFF COURSE is now the third book from Sulari Gentill featuring Rowland Sinclair and his band of supporters - Edna, Milton and Clyde and that feeling of connection, of reality and authenticity continues ... in spades.  

The connection is probably helped by the way that Gentill sets her characters and her stories in differing, and frequently real settings.  Whilst MILES OFF COURSE starts out at the luxury Hydro Majestic Hotel and spa, it ends up deep in the High Country, often in significantly less luxurious circumstances, although one property owner's pride in the running water and other mod cons was particularly illustrative of the difference in times (this book is set in 1933 after all).  But the move to the High Country and the Tumut valley in particular comes as Rowly's brother Wilfred despatches him in search of their missing foreman, Wiradjuri man Harry Simpson, a long time and much trusted employee of the Sinclair family who has disappeared in highly unsatisfactory circumstances.  As Rowly, and his entourage move into this environment, it's very obvious that we're in a part of the world that the author knows and loves.  The sense of place becomes almost palpable and there's a real feeling for how the High Country looks, feels and grows into and around the story.

I have been a fan of these books since the first one was released, but intriguingly in MILES OFF COURSE I think I see a little deepening of character, a few glimpses of, maybe not so much internal crisis, as conflicts.  Not surprising really as Gentill's light touch with the storytelling should not be misread as light-weight.  Whilst there is humour and a certain insouciance that seems to fit with the born to wealth and privilege background of Rowly, there were points at which something deeper revealed.  Whether it was the internal bored playboy peeking out from under the mantle of social conscience, or whether it was deeper, private passions more starkly drawn, Rowly is not everything he seems.  Nor is his brother Wilfred quite the stuffed shirt he seems; Milton as shallow; Edna as assured or Clyde as confident about his choices in life.

Given that this is now the third book in the series, to be honest I can't make a definitive statement about whether or not you would be better to read the earlier ones first.  Whilst there is ongoing character development, and you will get more from the series understanding the relationships between Rowly and his family, and his entourage the books would work on their own.  But if you haven't read the earlier books in the series, you really should.  Gentill's combination of factual events and places, built around the fictional undertakings of her cast of characters help to give the books a fantastic grounding, and a firm sense of place.  Done, mind you, with the lightest of touches, and with the flair of a real storyteller, the books "feel" right and real and authentic, the stories are fast paced, nuanced, often funny, frequently insightful and just flat out darned good yarns.

I suppose finding some sort of "pattern" in what you're reading, when you read a lot of books, is inevitable, but it always intrigues when I find that sort of co-incidence showing up.  At the moment it's well-written unsympathetic, often off-putting characterisations.  THE PRECIPICE has more than one of those in spades.  

Thea Farmer's voice is very realistic, the retired school principal, reclusive, difficult, with a small circle of carefully chosen people she interacts with; her only soft edges come from her relationship with her beloved, and rapidly aging, dog.  Resentful and hostile, she's prickly, acerbic, standoffish and seemingly unable to find anyway to reconcile herself to the loss of her dream home and the invasion of her privacy that this new couple, and the child with them, inflict on her controlled and private world.

This is most definitely not a book for readers who like events declared right up front, and investigations and resolutions with everything neat, tidy and answered at the end.  It's not even a book that declares a "crime" or a problem blatantly, although I suppose it might be possible to take an educated guess at where we could be heading, if you have the time, or the inclination to want to try to double guess the author.  But it's really not that sort of a book.  THE PRECIPICE is very much a psychological thriller, moving seamlessly from the resentful mutterings of a grumpy old woman, through the development of a cessation of hostilities rather than friendship with the young girl, to a minefield of responsibility and dilemma.  There's the odd stutter and stumble along the way - they could be plot vagaries, they could equally be the vagaries of a tricky narrator.  

The book is undoubtedly one of those slow burn, sleeper type thrillers.  The plot's very slow to reveal, which makes the reader really have to concentrate on Thea's life - her main obsessions as well.  She's definitely terse, she's judgemental and more than a bit snobby at points, all of which seem perfectly in character, it's probably a tendency towards whinging that really stood out as a character flaw - somehow that just didn't fit with the rest of the woman's persona.  Having said that, there was something "not quite right" about the new neighbours as well... overly "nice", too contrasted to Thea to be true.  

So far, it sounds like there's not a lot going for THE PRECIPICE, and I can't begin to tell you how surprised I was to find that it had gone from a book to be slogged through, to something unable to be put down.  But it did, and that was quite a while before the "point" of the drama was clearly revealed, before the crime was declared, and some reason for everyone being assembled on the pages was constructed.  Where that happened, when the why or the what or the how became less important and the doing, the build up, the slow reveal really started to work, is still a bit of a mystery to this reader.  But work it did.

There's increasing signs of "write what you know" in Australian crime fiction, so it's probably not at all surprising that well known QC, and media commentator Stuart Littlemore has followed exactly that path.  Although, to be honest, I'm not sure I agree 100% with labelling HARRY CURRY: COUNSEL OF CHOICE as crime fiction.  Whilst the idea is definitely that our hero, Harry Curry, is a criminal defence lawyer, this book is less about the crimes and a lot more about the exploits of Curry in getting all and sundry off, each and every charge thrown at them.

HARRY CURRY etc is a series of 5 short stories, during which the reader learns that Curry is one of the sharpest legal minds ever to grace the NSW bar.  He's also ugly, irascible and irresistibly attractive to a young female barrister.  He's exactly what you would expect from a swashbuckling, devil-may-care, legal warrior - irreverent, intolerant, touchy, absolutely and utterly assured of his own invincibility.  A brilliant tactician, at loggerheads with legal seniority, Curry is no friend of the judiciary.  The book opens with Curry defending himself against allegations that he's sworn at a learned judge during a case and moves onto him fostering the young, beautiful Arabella Engineer, English barrister, Indian beauty, she of the hopeless infatuation with Curry, whilst he awaits the return of his practising certificate.  Acting on his own behalf, or as the tactician behind Engineer's scenes, Harry Curry is unbeatable in the court, and resistant to everything Arabella can throw at him... at least for a while.

Needless to say - we're talking, one hopes, just a little bit tongue in cheek here.  Although there was a time when I wasn't sure whether that was the case - there are points where, even when you know the lawyer is always going to win the case in this book, you just wouldn't mind a little something to go slightly wrong .... just to make Curry hover down here a little closer to the heads of we mere mortals.  Perhaps that's the only minor quibble - Harry Curry - scion of the establishment, class traitor - starts out with some real potential for a bit of stereotype smashing.  A little dancing on the lower side if you will.  But for all his supposed fall from grace, even allowing for the old Jag he's driving unknown to it's owner, banged up as he is in jail, somehow Curry doesn't really seem to have sunk that low.  Maybe his home location doesn't quite telegraph a dramatic step away from the privileged background for those from other States.  

Curry is undoubtedly no Rumpole, and it's unlikely that the case of The Live Dead Man will ever quite scale the heights of infamy of the Penge Bungalow Murders, but for what it is - a series of legal tall tales, HARRY CURRY: COUNSEL OF CHOICE is a gently amusing little wander around in the far end of crime process.  I think I heard that a second book is in the pipeline - it will be interesting to see where Littlemore heads Harry Curry.