Police Procedural

I just love the Brad Chen series.  I must do.  RIP OFF actually took me into the world of high finance skull-duggery and I really didn't notice until I was well into the action.  Quite an achievement.

Part of what really works with RIP OFF is the character of Brad himself.  Maybe it's a girl thing but the idea of a bloke who does any housework at all, let alone the bathroom floor with a plastic scourer...  but Brad's no big girls blouse.  An ex-professional footballer, Brad's an Australian Federal Policemen with quite an interesting career.  Part thinker, part energiser bunny he might like to keep a clean and tidy house, but he's perfectly willing to get his hands dirty when solving a case.

And that's the other thing that really works in RIP OFF, a good, twisty, but believable plot which sees Chen pulled back from the teetering edge of a desk job, to join a multi-agency group sent to liaise with police in Western and South Australia when assorted financial fraudsters start showing up with a very distinctive shot pattern in their recently deceased bodies.  

This little group of Brad (token Asian), Rose (the pregnant woman), Barry (the aging cop with a taste for younger women) and Glenn (Aboriginal cop) have never met before, let alone worked together but they quickly form a cohesive front, based partially on a shared sense of the absurd, but fuelled mostly by the antagonism of the Police Taskforce that they are initially parachuted into.  What they are actually there for is slightly less obvious, but the Australian financial system has it's own regulatory body (hence Rose), the Feds and the various State police have different areas of responsibility and jurisdiction (hence Brad and the other cops), and the whole system is tricky.  Much like some of the action in this book.  Things get tricky for everyone at points.  It's complicated for the WA police - where the killing spree started, it's complicated for the Victorians when Southbank turns into a shooting gallery, it's complicated for the Tasmanians and it's particularly complicated in NSW where things seem to be heading for a tumultuous finale.  It's particularly complicated for the South Australian head cop who gets a seriously daft idea in his head about who could be behind these clever, quick and clinical killings, and he's not all that impressed that Brad and his little team can not just see the wood for the trees, they've got the kindling for the bonfire sorted as well.  Obviously whoever is doing these shootings is very well-resourced, the shooter is moving around Australia undetected, travelling vast distances, getting intelligence on his victims quickly - there's more to this than one rogue ripped off investor out to settle some scores.

Whilst there are aspects of RIP OFF that are just flat out funny, there's also seriousness in the plot and some of the messages that are subtly being sent in this book.  There's something particularly nasty about the idea of hands-off, clinical, financial rip offs, these crooks haven't even got the guts to look their victim's in the eye as they mug them of their hard-earned.  I've no doubt there are many people who would concur with the warped sense of justice behind a little retribution - given that most of the victims of these fraudsters were small-time, battler investors who lost a lot of money.  There are some poignant moments in the book that give the reader a real insight into the collateral damage that can result.  

I was really thrilled to be able to read RIP OFF, not just because it's a great book but also as it sorted out something I'd been suspecting for a while.  I had a sneaking suspicion when Robertson did something very brave at the end of his first book, and I was pretty darn sure when the second book turned out to be just as good as the first, but RIP OFF has cemented the decision.  Favourite series status from here on in. 

It's just so heartening to know that the Pufferfish Series lives on that it's difficult to remain objective about the latest book.  HOW THE DEAD SEE is the second of the re-emergence of David Owen's much loved, acerbic, dry, funny, dark and quite prickly Detective Inspector Franz Heineken.  

There are some things that never change in these books - Pufferfish (his nickname is a direct correlation between Heineken's prickly, dangerous, lurking personality and that of the fish in question), is, as always, dry, prickly, and acerbic, with the addition of being quietly and pointedly determined to see the crooks go down.  The crimes are always nicely balanced - in this case the supposed suicide of local boy made big-time Hollywood movie star (before he went downhill), and the theft of very valuable jewellery from another location altogether.  Both crimes that Pufferfish and his team, in a small force like the Tasmanian Police Force, have to juggle simultaneously.  Along the way they manage the priorities of stakeouts in less salubrious parts with the wealth and weirdness of those that circle even a falling Hollywood star.

All of the Pufferfish series are told in first-person, straight from the mouth of Pufferfish.  His observations, his thoughts, his voice is therefore central to the books, and the irony and sarcasm often drip almost visually from the words on the page.  Everybody is a target for his baleful eye - even himself.  Nobody avoids Pufferfish scrutiny, nobody is forgotten (much to the chagrin of the old Tasmania crim collective), nothing is ever missed.   It's not just the sarcasm that's visual, there's an image of Pufferfish that builds up as you read these books - you can see the man, you can hear him mutter, you can feel how skewering that gaze would be.  And the books are funny.  Maybe not laugh out loud funny, but you can't help but smile, you can't help but feel a snigger at some points.  You can't help but almost feel sorry for the poor hapless fools that think they can go up against Detective Inspector Franz Heineken and not come out just a little bit burned.

The ongoing life of the Pufferfish series is a thing of great joy.  David Owen created a fabulous character all those years ago, and HOW THE DEAD SEE is the latest in some terrific books.  

You can purchase this and the earlier book in the re-emerged series NO WEATHER FOR A BURIAL direct from http://www.fortysouth.com.au

You hear these rumours, and they can panic a person.  "Christopher Brookmyre has gone straight with his latest book."  I was twitchy.  How could he (either to his readers or to himself)?  Surely the man cannot possibly have lost his acute sense of the bizarre, his sly, dry and clever sense of humour.  Could he?  Of course not.  Daft idea.  WHERE THE BODIES ARE BURIED might be a police procedural, crime fiction based book, but it's classic Chris(topher) Brookmyre from the start to the end.  How could it not be!  Glasgow Policing 101 - as explained to one of the main characters Detective Catherine McLeod, when a rookie cop:

'This is Glesca.'... 'Any time you're confused, take a wee minute to remind yourself of that inescapable fact:  this is Glesca.  We don't do subtle, we don't do nuanced, we don't do conspiracy.  We do pish-heid bampot bludgeoning his girlfriend to death in a fit of paranoid rage induced by forty-eight hours straight on the batter.  We do coked-up neds jumping on a guy's heid outside a nightclub because he looked at them funny.  We do drug-dealing gangster rockets shooting other drug-dealing gangster rockets as comeback for something almost identical a fortnight ago.  We do bam-on-bam.  We do tit-for-tat, score-settling, feuds, jealousy, petty revenge.  We do straightforward.  We do obvious.  We do cannaemisswhodunit.  When you hear hoofbeats on Sauchiehall Street, it's gaunny be a horse, no' a zebra...'.

Phew.  Brookmyre without a rant ... well ... I'd have to double check that the earth's rotation was still in alignment.

But is this good crime fiction?  Yes.  In a nutshell.  It's very good crime fiction.  It's a nice, complicated, and very believable plot.  It's full of the sorts of cunning and stupidity that you expect from the cops and crooks.  There's dedication, there's a bit of the past coming forward to screw with the present, the interlacing of worlds over many generations.  There's also more than enough twists and turns, and even a couple of lovely poignant moments.  There's some hugely funny moments, there's some poignant ones as well.  One of Brookmyre's talents has always been to create very believable, human characters.  McLeod is a marvellous combination of a dedicated, clever senior cop with a home life and all the doubts and insecurities that lots of people with rotten jobs have about hanging onto everything they hold dear.  Another main character - Jasmine Sharp, niece of a missing ex-cop, private detective - recently bereaved when her mother and sole parent died, Jasmine's a bit of a mess, to put it mildly.  She's not the world's greatest trainee private detective, but she gets points for being a very dedicated workmate and friend to her boss.  Two excellent female characters, different from each other, but the same in many ways, Brookmyre's also created a supporting cast who work with these two extremely well.  Okay there's one scenario that's a bit hard to swallow at the start of the book - but the end of the book explains it all - and besides that, it wasn't until I was well into the action that the lightbulb went off and this reader suddenly went... what the?

That's the other thing that works in WHERE THE BODIES ARE BURIED, as it does in any Brookmyre book. The pace is fantastic.  The action rolls on, the people do their thing, the tension rises, the reader loses sleep.  

There's nothing worse than a panic over where one of your favourite authors is going.  Dismiss it from your minds.  Chris / Christopher / Mr Brookmyre, whatever he and his publishers want to call him knows how to write books.  Very good books.  WHERE THE BODIES ARE BURIED is one of them.

I remember reading the first book in what is now one of my favourite series quite a few years ago, I really really hoped that the author felt better about life once they'd finished.  I think the same sort of reaction to THE BROTHERHOOD bodes well for what I hope is going to be an ongoing series.

Mind you, you can't help but wonder if Yvette Erskine's going to be able to get back into Tasmania for research purposes if a few of the upper echelon characters in THE BROTHERHOOD are recognisable real people!  

THE BROTHERHOOD is a debut book which promises quite a bit.  The front cover even telegraphs some expectations with the lines "one dead cop", "one small island" "an impact that will last a lifetime...".  Kind of makes you sit up and pay attention.  But to be honest, at the beginning, I was feeling a little leery.  There's a prologue which is obviously telegraphing something that is coming up in the book, and prologues of this nature are a device that's been done to death.  We've got our dead cop pretty quickly, then we're into the action and slowly the investigation into the cop's murder starts to build some momentum.  Then we start wandering down some byways and lane-ways with some nicely expressive, but distracting rants and what felt a bit like point scoring.  On their own sort of interesting - or perhaps telling is a better description, but this reader was getting impatient to get back to the main thread.  Which isn't a bad sign really - there was something interesting going on here.  Something that kind of snuck up on me.  There was a plot building, slowly worming it's way into a fascinating story.

There are some issues touched on here that are uncomfortable.  The main suspect in the cop's murder is a boy with an Aboriginal background, and there's some quite confrontational writing about the politics and tensions between the Law and Aboriginal identity.  It's almost a given that this aspect of the book is going to be a "talking point".  But this is not the only searing and uncomfortable portrayal, there's more than a big swipe at Police Culture and the hierarchy to say nothing of the politics and corruption within the Police Force itself.  

THE BROTHERHOOD is a debut novel, and as anyone who has ever noticed any of my reviews before will know, I'm inclined more towards a bit of leeway for a debut that seems, on the face of it, to be tackling a lot of stuff up front.  The book I alluded to in the opening of this review had the distinct feeling of part getting everything off the author's chest, part this could be my only run at this so I'm going to give it a red-hot go.  THE BROTHERHOOD did engender many of the same feelings.  And that's got to be a good thing.  If a book can make me want it to become part of a much loved new series, then all power to it.  

Compared to other countries, it's always seemed that there's a shortage of contemporary, informed, realistic, dark and confrontational Australian Police Procedural crime fiction being written.  At the very least there's room for a lot more and THE BROTHERHOOD is an uncomfortable, interesting, enlightening and clever debut entry in that classification.

Okay so I'm a bit of a fan - which after two books is quite an achievement.  It's probably a little bit to do with the basic premise of genealogy being used to solve crimes (family tree research being an investigation in its own right after all), but mostly it's because Dan Waddell really can tell a bit of a tale.

There is a serial killer theme to BLOOD ATONEMENT, although initially it's only Detective Grant Foster who sees the parallels between the death of Katie Drake, and the disappearance of her 14 year old daughter, and a case 3 years earlier.  But do not let that put you off, this isn't your standard mad, bad, feral serial killer.  After Foster asks genealogist Nigel Barnes to look into the family history of these girls, the reason for this killer selecting his victims is finally resolved.   It's the family tree research that gives Foster the leads he needs.

It's a real testament to the writing of Waddell that makes the idea of a consultant genealogist perfectly acceptable, it's the methodology in researching the past that makes for some of the real standouts of BLOOD ATONEMENT.  

Whilst BLOOD ATONEMENT (and the earlier book THE BLOOD DETECTIVE) are effectively police procedurals, it's undoubtedly the spin of genealogy that creates the interest in these books.  Having said that, at no stage does it seem like a trick or shtick or anything designed to make the books that little bit different.  Instead the use of Nigel's skills seems seamless, makes sense. 

Being more than a little bit fond of the Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg series I was very annoyed with myself when I got a bit behind with the releases and had to make an effort to catch up.  Poor me.  So tragic.  Having to spend some time with one of my favourite, eccentric detectives and the rest of his team of mildly odd compatriots.

THIS NIGHT'S FOUL WORK sees Adamsberg team pretty well settled, so the introduction of any new lieutenant could be complicated.  Louis Veyrenc is even more disruptive, with his tendency to speak in verse (twelve-syllable alexandrines to be accurate), to say nothing of his oddly striped hair and his deeply held, childhood grudge against Adamsberg.  Which grudge Adamsberg is pretty well oblivious to until slapped over the head with the evidence.  He's somewhat preoccupied by the return into his life of old nemesis Ariane Legarde, pathologist, and Adamsberg enemy since he questioned her conclusions in a case twenty-three years earlier.  But there are crimes at the centre of this book and typically baffling at that.  You can only guess at what the connection could be between the ritual killing of stags in the hills of Normandy, two local "lads" found murdered after raiding the graves of recently deceased spinsters, and the escape from prison of a seventy-five-year old multiple killer nurse that Adamsberg has dealt with before.

Needless to say THIS NIGHT'S FOUL WORK has a wonderful feeling of the Gothic about it.  Odd glimpses of shadowy figures creeping around graveyards; curses past and present; places with strange histories; things going bump in the night in Adamsberg's new house; childhood grudges; deeply held beliefs; long enmities and friction.  Lots and lots of friction.  All of action swirls around Adamsberg as he sort of floats through life.  He's more a cerebral than rush around detective, prone to leaps of faith and acute observations - his odd behaviour is no longer regarded as anything out of the ordinary by a team which kind of specialises in odd behaviour.  But this team is also capable of immense kindness, understanding and support for each other - they are the perfect group to spend time with if you like things just that little bit batty.

If you're not aware of this series - Fred Vargas is the pen name of Frédérique Audouin-Rouzeau, French medievalist and archaeologist. Vargas, as of THIS NIGHT'S FOUL WORK a twice winner of the Duncan Lawrie International Dagger award, is translated by Siân Reynolds who does a sterling job at translating the language but keeping the overall feel and quirkiness of the books.

Just a quick word of warning - I rather like a series where it doesn't matter if you get them all out of order.  In the main I've read the Adamsberg books all over the place but in this case, with the next book AN UNCERTAIN PLACE out already, you'd really be best to read THIS NIGHT'S FOUL WORK first.  Without this, earlier, book I suspect a reader could get bamboozled otherwise as there's a lot of setup for AN UNCERTAIN PLACE in THIS NIGHT'S FOUL WORK.

Needless to say I just love these books.  But really - don't read them if you're looking for precise behaviour, keen logic, rules and regulations being followed, and no idiosyncrasies.  Do read them if you're looking for humour, darkness, quirky, a hugely entertaining police procedurals... well police scenarios.  Let's go with that...

The second Inspector Singh novel from Shamini Flint takes Singh to Bali to join the anti-terrorism efforts post a major bombing that ripped through the tourist areas.  What exactly Singh is doing as part of a anti-terrorism squad is no clearer to him than it is to anybody else, but the body in the wreckage, shot dead before the bomb gives Singh the sort of case that he's used to solving - a straight-forward murder.