Melbourne University Press

I bought this book at last years Crime & Justice festival, and at the time Susanna Lobez was kind enough to sign it with me including the inscription "Stay curious!".

And that is the best way I can recommend this book - staying curious, reading this sort of historical true crime fiction, reminds you that nothing is ever really new.  And nothing is ever "the worst it has ever been" or "never before in the history...." or whatever else the media feeds you (obviously I'm thinking of the "Underbelly Wars" here).

Commencing at the beginning of the arrival of the British in Australia, this book takes you right through to the 1990's, outlining the various criminal gangs, crimelords and warlords, as well as their lesser and greater known exploits.  So much is touched on - the drug dealing, prostitution, stand-over merchants, infights, murders, and bashings. 

And it ranges over a range of different cities, nationalities, groupings, allegiances, loyalties and disloyalties.

This is a great book to read through, or to dip in and out of.  And it is a tremendous book to remind you that there's very little new under the sun.

INFILTRATION doesn't seem to be served particularly well by the blurb on the book.  It's considerably more than just the story of an undercover sting against the Mafia, in fact it's part personal memoir, part story of the Mafia operation, but sprinkled throughout with snippets of other parts of Colin McLaren's astounding police career.

Many of us lead lives pretty sheltered from the advent or consequences of violent crime in particular.  "Big" criminal events are still pretty few and far between in Victoria Australia, so it's particularly sobering to realise that those big events can be attended by such a small core of police.  The Queen Street shootings, the Walsh Street shootings, the NCA bombings, Mr Cruel, the Griffith Mafia are all connected in a chilling way by Colin McLaren's life story.  Along the way you get glimpses of a man who is also a son to a mother he loves very much, a dedicated single father to a daughter of whom he is immensely proud and a boyfriend, lover, husband (and ex a few times over it has to be said).  Alongside the lifelong relationships with his mother and daughter, you're reminded again and again of how hard it must be for policemen and women to maintain personal relationships - of how odd the life of an undercover or task force cop must be.

INFILTRATION does definitely outline much of Colin's involvement in the breaking of the Mafia in and around Griffith in NSW, and it touches on a range of earlier cases and experience - including his time in Richmond at the time of the notorious Pettingell/Allen family heights (or lows if you prefer that analogy).  Whilst that's definitely interesting, what was more rewarding, touching in some places, highly illuminating in others was the story of Colin's life, and the way that the demands of the job dictate how the rest of your life is going to be lived.  If you're not much of a fan of true crime, then INFILTRATION is worth reading - particularly for that personal viewpoint.  This is a book which is less about the crimes, certainly less about the criminals.  It's a very personal story from a policeman who has seen and done a lot of things that the rest of us wouldn't even contemplate.

This is a compilation of short stories that fans of crime fiction in general, and the local product in particular, will have on their must read lists.

Written from 1859 to 1933, this selection of 17 stories provide a fascinating insight into the social issues that were being addressed by crime fiction authors during that period.  Not surprisingly, the delivery may have changed - and I suppose we're not tracking murderers through the bush on horseback much anymore - but the fundamental worries then are not a lot different from those that are being written about now.  Nor is the standard of the storytelling, which in this book is absolutely fantastic.  The collection contains stories from some of our finest early writers - John Lang, William Burrows, Mary Fortune, James Skipp Borlase, BL Farjeon, RP Whitworth, Campbell McKellar, Francis Adams, Ernest Favene, Guy Boothby, Roderic Quinn, Coo-ee (William Sylvester Walker), EW Hornung, 'Rolf Boldrewood' (Thomas Alexander Browne), Randolph Bedford, Norman Lindsay and Alan Michaelis.

Particular favourites of mine were the Mary Fortune stories (not just because she stands out amongst the male writers), the Norman Lindsay story and the Francis Adams - which contains references to events in The Murder of Madeline Brown; as an added bonus many of the stories are based in and around the Goldfields of Victoria (which gives the whole thing a particularly local feel for me anyway).  All the stories are replicated from their originals, so the language and terminology is exactly as it was at the time - giving a very accurate representation of the style of writing, talking and living for the period.  This has the added bonus of giving readers a look at how long so many of our local colloquialisms have been around, and conversely, how much has been lost.

Despite the possibility of local flavour, not just because it contains entries from favourite authors, this Anthology is a fascinating glimpse into our history, and into the quality and breadth of the Australian crime fiction writing fraternity, which it's easy to forget has been around for a long long time now.  Australian have always told their own stories, and books like THE ANTHOLOGY OF COLONIAL AUSTRALIAN CRIME FICTION remind us how strong that tradition has always been.