Police Procedural

LET THE DEAD SPEAK is the 7th novel in the Maeve Kerrigan series. A sobering thought for me given how much I liked this character in book number 1 and yet still I've now managed to miss books 2 through 6. Which means I can definitely say even if you've never read any of this series, LET THE DEAD SPEAK will work well.

A police procedural in style, LET THE DEAD SPEAK relies heavily on character interaction between Kerrigan and the team that she works with. There are a few tensions dotted throughout which are mostly self-explanatory, in particular there's obviously some clouds over Kerrigan from the recent past. When eighteen-year-old Chloe Emery's mother disappears, leaving behind signs of a bloody struggle, the entire team are baffled by the missing body. Despite that tension between within the team, they do manage to stay focused on the investigation that leads them to some dodgy neighbours and some very odd outcomes.

The plot here is an interesting undertaking with some elements that are going to be easy to pick, and much that remains unclear right until the end. Without a body, Kerrigan and her team are forced to focus on the possible why's of Kate Emery's fate, rather than the how or who up front, meaning this is a good old fashioned investigation in many ways, working each lead as it appears, weeding out a wide range of red herrings and possible suspects by coming to understand the victim, her family, and the immediate neighbours. 

The use of first person narrative by Kerrigan works well here, giving the reader an inside view on the frustrations, achievements and feelings around an investigation like this. Peppered as it is with acerbic humour and plenty of barbs and cracks from colleagues, the perspective creates an immediacy and realism that wouldn't necessarily work as well with a more observational style. 

About the only thing that readers who are new to this series might notice is that there is obviously back-story to Kerrigan's recent promotion, and her relationship with DI Josh Derwent - that alone should be enough of a reason to plug the gaps in reading the series, but it really shouldn't stop anybody from starting with LET THE DEAD SPEAK if that's the best option available. A series definitely worth reading whatever order you opt for.

THE OTHER GIRL has a noticeable lag in the first few chapters but picks up welcome pace as Miranda becomes more isolated from her colleagues. Her job, which has always been her saviour, being taken away from her, is a huge blow. There is a small cast in this novel so you don’t have many characters to cast your suspicious eyes over; this serves well to sharp focus on those close to Miranda who may be saying all the right things whilst thinking the complete opposite.

There is a small romantic sub plot that doesn’t take away from the action and as the walls close in on Miranda, the novel takes on extra threads where she reunites with her estranged family and re-discovers more of what really happened to her in the past.

THE OTHER GIRL is a fast beach or plane ride diversion that will distract and entertain those readers who don’t need too much of an investment into a complicated plot. There has been good character development work put into this book and by the novel’s end, we feel that we have come to know the characters well and understand their motivations.

Hate it when a new book from a much loved series lingers too long on the reading pile simply because of competing priorities. No disrespect intended at all in how long it took me to get to this entry, and much pleasure when I finally did. Anyway they come, I'm quite a fan of the Pufferfish books.

For readers unaware of the Pufferfish series, Detective Inspector Franz Heineken is a gruff, grumbling bear of a man wont to stalk the mean streets of Tasmania with a glare and a stare for anybody who steps outside the bounds of propriety. His very particular brand of propriety.

Which means that the mere disappearance of a toffy sommelier after what's obviously been a violent confrontation in the lounge of his rented house in Hobart is as offensive to the great man as is the attempted attack on a young woman, connected in more than one way to a murderer he wasn't able to catch. Add to that the imposition of a bunch of toe-cutting, restructurers straight out of the Emerald City infesting his police station with their management speak, and an agenda of cost cutting that's making him particularly annoyed, not just because the only high-up in the organisation he has any time for at all is looking like he might be for the chop.

If you are new to this series ROMEO'S GUN may leave you wondering what the point is - there's a level of put-upon-ness that's particularly ramped up here, although to be fair, it's a big part of the entire series. These are tongue-firmly-in-cheek novels about policing, being a bit of a grumpy bugger, and a put upon character forced to endure the indignities of dealing with upper-management, crooks, civilians, other police forces, and the general bother of having to cope with people who refuse to see things from the Pufferfish point of view. 

ROMEO'S GUN does wander down some highways and byways, and it narrates those in a typical dry sarcastic drawl. It will take you around the back for a good look at the dark side, it'll drag you kicking and screaming into the high and low life and it'll do it in a round-about, frequently long-winded, more often than not laugh inducing way. As long as you're prepared to relax into the series, take Pufferfish at his best and worst, and deal with anybody who thinks drinking espresso coffee around a liquorice allsort is normal behaviour.

THE ICE SHROUD is a very promising debut fictional novel from New Zealand wildlife photographer and non-fiction writer Gordon Ell. Structured as a combination village mystery and closed room scenario, the locations in this novel are beautifully described, the plot is good, the dialogue crisp and believable, and the main police character pairing well imagined.

Any writer who can evoke the amazing scenery and sensibility of some of the wilds of New Zealand is obviously off to a very good start, and a woman's body, frozen to the iced cliff edges of a river, discovered by a touring jet boat party because the location inaccessible by any other means, is a pretty good opening salvo. It provides a number of questions for the subsequent investigation, not the least of which being how the body got there. From the point at which recovery of the remains becomes an exercise in physical dexterity, to the need to combine cleverness in investigation with doggedness in traversing a wild and tricky landscape, there is much to keep the reader engaged. 

The central pairing of the local traffic sergeant and the incomer - Detective Sergeant Malcolm Buchan - is nicely pitched as well, avoiding a lot of the clichés that hamper the believability of those sorts of working relationships all too often. About the only clangers here are a rather glaring personal relationship that isn't declared and just screams WRONG, and some well-worn characterisations in the supporting cast (surely every big man about town doesn't have a heavy-drinking, pathetic, put-upon wife?), but they are very minor quibbles in a novel where everything else works particularly well. 

In case you hadn't noticed there's a number of debut novels recently out of New Zealand, often written by authors with a policing or related background, many of them telegraphing potential for interesting things to come. THE STUDENT BODY is Serious Fraud Office investigator Simon Wyatt's first novel, written while on sick leave recovering from a rare, and potentially life-threatening autoimmune disorder. 

The central character in this novel, Detective Sergeant Nick Knight, is a little bit different from current day crime fictional norms in that he's a young, not yet cynical cop, in a murder enquiry team after a few years of adult sex crimes investigations. Readers may see something in the link between his experience of sex crimes, and the death of a young female student, found semi-naked, strangled and dumped in the bush near a school camp. From the circumstances, sexual motivation is upper-most on everyone's mind. But there are secrets to be found amongst her family, school teachers and friends, the community around the camp, as well as those in her home neighbourhood. 

Wyatt's background in policing is very obvious in THE STUDENT BODY, deployed to great effect when revealing the inner workings of CIB, not as effective when describing characters in ways that have more than a whiff of wanted poster about them. It's obviously an extremely difficult balancing act to get the information on internal workings and readability right though, and whilst at some level details can be fascinating, it's not quite as successful when the reader can't quite shake the sense of an exam coming up. Having said that the personal touches: the baking provided by lower ranks in the team, and the difficult family dynamics, in particular, are well done. Because the story is told from Nick's point of view it's hard to avoid the idea that he might not be seeing the full picture on some things and his observations about family members, relationships with colleagues etc have just the slightest feeling of unreliability about them. On the other hand, there's some nice sprinklings of humour dotted throughout and not just the gallows style that could be expected in a police procedural. 

It's in the shadows of Nick's personality that there's particularly interesting hints. He's not perfect, he's self-centred, and on the face of it his difficult relationships with a lot of people could be coming from both sides. Which probably also sums up THE STUDENT BODY. It's not perfect, it's got the odd continuity issue, a few clanging terminology / naming problems, and an ending that reads like a lot of heavy lifting of a lot of elements in a big hurry. Overall, however, THE STUDENT BODY is a promising first take, and it will be worth seeing what happens in any follow-up novel. 

Alan Carter is the author of the Ned Kelly Award winning Cato Kwong series (PRIME CUT won the Best First Award in 2011), but MARLBOROUGH MAN features a new character - UK born, New Zealand based cop Nick Chester and his family.

Chester's had an "interesting" working life - starting out as an undercover cop in the UK, ending up a country cop in Havelock in rural New Zealand as part of a witness relocation scheme when his undercover work goes decidedly pear-shaped. Even with what would seem to be the impossible task of tracking him, his wife and their young son Paulie down, he's constantly on edge - anybody new could very well have been sent to exact revenge.

You'd also think that the move to rural New Zealand would mean that policing would be limited to the odd drunken skirmish, a lot of traffic tickets, and a bit of low level thieving (it does seem that the local villains are particularly obsessed with meat in various forms). Unfortunately there's been a spate of horrific child murders in these parts and the discovery of a young boy's body close by gives the neighbourhood an internal shaking echoing the constant threat of earthquakes.

There's quite a lot of set up in this novel, working the back-story of Nick's undercover exploits, and the resulting outcomes, into the current day activities. Nick's a great character, but all of the characters in this book are fabulous - especially his cop offsider Latifa Rapata; his two guardian pig-shooters Gary and Steve; Denzel the Maori kid not beyond redemption; Charlie the chicken and alpaca farmer and particularly his wife Vanessa. Each of these characters slots into the action perfectly, seamlessly contributing enough to both the good and bad of a complex story like this.

As the big wigs from the city come to take over the child murder investigation, there's less and less chance of Nick letting go, and as his old life starts to catch up with him, he determined to sort out everything and everybody in his neighbourhood. Including the local logging magnate with whom he openly shares a mutual vendetta. There's lots of strings to the bows in MARLBOROUGH MAN and just when you think they are all going to twang around Chester's neck, somehow he manages to find the right targets, granted at great risk to everything that he values most highly.

There's nary a hitch in MARLBOROUGH MAN. The characters work, the plot is cleverly executed and the sense of place is visceral. There's touches of humour and self-inflicted jeopardy which are perfectly justifiable. There's also personal loss, sadness and guilt. All in all it's so good this reviewer even managed to recover from the death of an alpaca and a pet pig which got a bit too close to home for comfort. Shows what a seriously good writer like Alan Carter can do in an absolute stand out book like MARLBOROUGH MAN.