Police Procedural

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.

The first of the Johanne Vik & Adam Stubø books, PUNISHMENT, is now available in paperback locally. An excellent crime fiction series by Norwegian author Anne Holt, this has been a series that could be (well had to be) read out of order. Now there's something compelling about being able to go back to the start, and work your way through.

Originally read by this reviewer back in 2007, when it was newly translated, PUNISHMENT is the novel that introduces an unusual investigative (ultimately personal) coupling of academic and former FBI profiler Johanne Vik and Detective Inspector Adam Stubø of the Oslo police.

As summarised in my earlier review:

"When 9 year old Emilie goes missing her father is worried but not frantic. She'd done this once before just after her mother died. This time, they don't find her. When a little boy disappears and ultimately is returned to his parents; dead, no obvious cause of death, and a handwritten note: You Got What You Deserved; Oslo starts to worry.

Police Superintendent Adam Stubø, working the case, turns to former FBI profiler Johanne Vik for help. Johanne is already looking into the conviction of Aksel Seier for the rape and murder of a young child many years ago. An old lady really wants to know if Seier was guilty or not. Johanne is not confident that she can help Adam, but he is increasingly desperate for any sort of lead that the Police can get. He and his team make very little progress and they soon have 3 abducted children, two dead and a chance that Emilie is still alive."

The focus of this novel moves between Oslo and that current case of a child killer, and the US and the cold case of Aksel Seier. The two central characters are each, in their own way, obsessed with their respective cases, and the complications that they bring. An odd message from the killer in the current day case, and a dying woman who wants the truth to be found before it's too late for her - and a man who has lived with the consequences of a child killing many years before. Woven into the story of these children and all of their dreadful deaths and the consequences of them, is the story of Vik's own daughter, who is intellectually disabled, and Stubø's own loss of his wife and daughter. Whilst there's no romantic attachment in this initial book, readers of subsequent novels in the series will know that something builds between these two main characters, as their professional involvement increases.

My main quibble at the time still stands - there is a tendency to concentrate on building the central characters quite a bit in PUNISHMENT. If we'd have been lucky enough to read this series translated in order then right from the start it was obvious there were plans for these two, and this initial novel is laying a lot of ground work. Which is a minor quibble in the overall scheme of things - possibly only noticeable because of the round about way in which we got a chance to read the series. Vik and Stubø are a great pairing though, and re-reading PUNISHMENT was an opportunity to remind myself of what a great series this is.

Part history lesson, part social exploration, the Sean Duffy series from Irish-Australian writer Adrian McKinty is required crime fiction reading. Reviewed at: Newtown Review of Books

It is a common trope in crime fiction that the protagonist detective often finds themselves in some sort of mortal peril. So much so that it starts to feel like a bit of cliché.  But for Sean Duffy, a Catholic policeman in a mainly Protestant police force in Northern Ireland in the 1980s, mortal peril is just a fact of life. From the first book in this award winning crime series Sean has been checking under his car for mercury tilt switches every time he leaves his house. So it comes as no surprise to long term fans that book 6, sporting the mouthful name Police at the Station and They Don’t Look Friendly, opens with Sean being marched to his execution through a remnant patch of Irish forest. But, being Sean, as he puffs his way asthmatically through a bog he still manages to keep his mordant sense of humour: “A bullet in the head will fix an incipient asthma attack every time.”

Flashback to Sean visiting his parents with his girlfriend and new baby Emma and being relieved to be called back to Carickfergus to investigate the murder of a small time drug dealer. From the start his investigation is hampered by poor process and with everyone intent on seeing it put to bed. But this is Sean’s first murder case in a year and, as familiar readers will know, even if his superiors do not, Sean does not like a mystery going unsolved no matter where it leads him.

In this case the clues do not lead far or fast but slowly build up broader suspicions, finding connections that go deeper than first appearances. And with the involvement, once again of the secret service and IRA, Sean finds himself in the crosshairs.

Police at the Station… is another fantastic entry in an already highly praised series. What keeps this series fresh, besides Duffy’s droll narration and domestic woes, is the historical context against which the action plays out. In this book, this includes a failed IRA attack on British soldiers in Gibraltar and the weeks of violence and terror that followed. While the case builds slowly, the atmosphere, the characters and the setting are more than enough to keep the pages turning. And McKinty knows how to ramp up the tension once the pieces start to fall into place,

Police at the Station… continues to be the best of crime fiction. McKinty uses the genre to effectively open a window into a time and place, using the mystery and Duffy’s travails to further illuminate the history that he is so effectively conveying. Police at the Station… may be the sixth in the series and can at a pinch be read as a stand-alone. But if you haven’t caught up with Sean Duffy yet, do yourself a favour and go back to the beginning.

Author Tony Cavanaugh has had a long and illustrious career in film and tv and thus brings that excellent crafting of place and character to his crime novels.  All of his creations are wholly convincing and though sketched with typical Australian economy, they are entirely recognizable in their landscape.   

KINGDOM OF THE STRONG is strongly anchored to the Melbourne setting and the reader is very much travelling along the streets with investigator Darian Richards.   The same themes do thread through the novels in this series; loss, redemption, loyalty and betrayal and KINGDOM OF THE STRONG gives a little illumination to the before, as in what Darian was like when he was operating, albeit loosely, within the parameters of the Victorian police force.

Darian Richards is one of those crime fiction characters that you want to know more about with each series entry.  Darian’s world is familiar yet his slant on it is not.  KINGDOM OF THE STRONG is another strong novel in a compelling series that powers forward with Darian’s insight into what is visible on the surface, and the underside which perhaps might not be seen, but is always present.