Opinions & Editorials

This post is not about books.  It's a personal commentary.  Do not read and/or delete if you're not interested.

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I frequently wonder why I bother with AustCrime. I know why I set it up in the first place (as a wiki originally) and why I moved it to a Content Management environment.  It's not a standard blog and therefore there is more to it.  A needs analysis for the site quickly indicated that the original wiki and/or the supplemental standard blog package would not provide the functionality I wanted, and I'm not taking a retrograde step now.  

I like CMS environments and if I had needed just a blog, I'd direct the domain name back to the package I've installed on our server.

But the point (as well as the methodology) for running your own site varies for all people out here.  I don't know why other people do it - I don't necessarily know why I do.

But I do know that the online environment is not always for the faint-hearted and I'm currently mildly pissed off with myself because in over 30 years in the IT business - you'd think I could remember that I've seen it all before.  You see the advances (and retrograde steps) in the technology itself.  You see the worst - the very very worst - behaviour in users and increasingly infrequently you see the very best in user behaviour - the people who step up to the mark / take their end of the bargain deadly seriously and give it - in one of my recent favourite sayings - a red hot go.

But there are some things that really still get up my nose in a massive way.  Cultural imperialism and cyberbulling.  Culturally inappropriate standards imposition.  Personal standards imposition.  Classic passive aggressive behaviour.  Blatant personal publicity machines.  (I can "nearly" forgive an author who at least has a product to sell - but people who will show up at the opening of an envelope to flog their own blog or flog their own "network" or whatever?  Ego gone ballistic in my view.  And I don't mean just those of us (and yes I do this) who include their site name in user names or run a URL in their email signature.  I mean those serial pests who spend most of their life responding to any / all discussions anywhere with variations on the "oh yes - and I comment on this in my blog posting... here" post.  Constantly.  Daily.  Over and over and over and over again until those of us who know about these things are desperately writing blacklists to get them out of our email boxes and off our screens.)

Oh - and the spammers / trolls and the sociopaths.  You get to see them all.  You have to deal with them all.   The thought police.   The people that think - because you see things differently from them - that they are allowed to shout you down - to declare the ill-informed as fact and to continue the argument at every given opportunity without due regard to previous clarification.  People who jump into conversations uninvited, unwanted, and uninformed.  The argument shape-shifters (well okay so that's mostly the passive aggressives) who move the fight around when their proclamations start to look shaky.  The hypocrites who dress you down for being rude using personal attack and blatant digs.    

And then there are the "assumptors".  They are probably my all time least favourite group.  The ones who assume that they know who you are / how old you are (and therefore what generation you "belong in").  The ones who assume that you have the same motivations in anything that you're doing that they do.  The ones who assume that they can tell you what to do / how to react / how to interact.  The unbelievable arrogance of people who insist that you open comments / that you publish their comments / that you are somehow obliged to read their "input".  The people who want to control your speech, your local vernacular, your personal belief systems.  The ones who want to shove their own personal politics, religion or beliefs down your throat.  The preachers, the prissy, the shock jockeys, the "standards" pedellers, the trolls, the smart arses, the arrogant, the insistent that their way is the only way.  The privacy abusers, the completely thoughtless and the frequently clueless.  The ones that assume that you'll want to spread your address, your photo, your date of birth, the names of your loved ones, your entire life story everywhere for everyone to see.  The assumptors that believe you are playing their game and never for one moment think that you might just be playing your own.

You can't help but fantasise about the order against the wall when the revolution comes.

So - why stick with AustCrime?  Whilst the nuisance value is vocal, insistent and blatant in numbers terms, it is still a minority which makes the affect that they can have breathtaking - no lives of their own or they are on much better medication than me.  But AustCrime scratches a personal itch.  It's my way of keeping track of who wrote what / what I've read / what I haven't read / what's coming / what's been / what's what / it's a mild distraction from a daily life which is increasingly tiresome.  It is on the web - it is accessible, it may or may not be deemed useful by authors or by readers - as we say in the game - YMMV.  I could just as easily move the whole thing in house and keep it behind our firewall.  I opted not to do that a while ago in the blind hope that others would find it in their hearts to help maintain the list of authors and over the years many friends have done that and I'm really grateful for their assistance.   It also is nice to think that once in a while it's helpful for a local author to have somebody shouting into the abyss about their books.

Along the way, in the background, I chat amongst myself a lot and there are a couple of highly private areas in which we chat amongst ourselves.  I don't publish everything to the outside world - it would be arrogant to waste others time in avoiding reading it - but having said that - why not?  Boundary setting in what we reveal of a personal nature is one thing - boundary setting (both in terms of subject matter and responsibility for level of detail) on what you "discuss" is another matter. 

AustCrime is a personal website after all, and I'm getting too old to play games.  (I suspect I'm a lot older than some of you think I am.  In fact I'm at that stage of life where there's a lot more of it gone than there's likely to be in the future).  The site isn't really a spot for authors, it's closer to a social networking site if I could be bothered to open that up, it's a place for listing reviews, book information, blogs, quizzes, whatever I feel like playing with at the time.  I'm certainly not doing this to set up an education base for other bloggers, I'm not in this game to hand hold the terminally bewildered or under-educated.  There are almost unlimited resources out there that handle that function well.  Besides - that's the day job and the idea of doing it all over again as part of the hobby - well ask a plumber to fix your drains as a bit of a favour when you've invited them to a dinner party and see if they're thrilled to hear from you again.  This site was set up to amuse myself and that's what it continues to do.  Other people's outcomes are for other people to assess - if you're happy to read some items then you're happy, if you're not - move on.  

So why am I publishing this particular post?  I guess I feel I've little choice than to declare my hand more strongly.  There are two reasons for this - the first is a localised one - an ongoing pattern of behaviour I've been watching a surge in over many months, and partly as a result of a social networking experiment which failed for me.  Lately, every morning I seem to spend an increasing amount of time removing tiresome comments and input to the site.  I've toyed with turning off comments completely for sometime now and today I've finally relented and turned on strict moderation which is a right pain in the arse.  (And this isn't just to stop the link spammers and the tiresome little dweebs with their pathetic little search engine games but its now increasingly required to control the non-author self-promoters (who are rapidly becoming the most annoying group) and the flat out irrelevant).  It's partly because the level of personal attacks is getting tedious (on authors in most cases - but increasingly on other posters as well as at me).  For goodness sake - if you don't like an author - don't buy their books - write your nasty personal little spews on your own blog sites if you can work out how to sign into Google - but really, very few people care that you have a grudge against "x" and I certainly don't.  If you want to disagree with somebody elses comments, you can do so firmly - you can do so slightly hysterically if you want - but questioning the commenters parentage is taking it just a little too far - even for me.  On a purely personal note, if you don't like what I'm talking about, or that I dare to use Australian spelling, or the occasional swear word, or sometimes, oh dear me, I get my apostrophes in the wrong place - then don't spend all that time sending me a comment or a feedback message or posting a dressing down.  If you're lucky I'll just delete it, if you're not so lucky then sook elsewhere please.

The second is considerably more insidious and that relates directly to a post here recently about Privacy.  Seeing as I've been hung out to dry elsewhere in public with no opening for reply, let me walk you through the whole sordid, stupid story from my point of view.  I recently noticed a couple of blogs I was used to commenting on had installed one of those privacy busting widgets.  In the social networking group I made a mistake.  I commented against one of the blogs something as near as I can remember like - "Oh Dear, another blog using XXXXXXX, that's another blog I will have to blacklist".  Unfortunately I can't comment on the blog sites directly without further calling attention to my easily identifiable location and my presence.  With hindsight I should have just done the blacklist as I have done dozens of times since I first objected to this widget here - with no public declaration.  A mistake I fully acknowledge.  I was particularly annoyed as I used to like the content of these locations and whilst RSS is possible then I'm still blocked from participating, and I'm really annoyed that people are mindlessly installing these things without a moment's consideration for others.  Did I explain that to this person?  No - my mistake again, but as the privacy issues are so blatant, it simply never crossed my mind that I would be required to keep explaining this over and over and over again.  A third party - somebody who I have had this conversation with before, bought in with the same old arrogant dismissal.  (How this person "knows" what the blog is reporting as my location I've no idea - but we have had this discussion before and I have already pointed out exactly what it is showing).  Anyway - after posting a reminder that I'm actively removing blogs and blacklisting any blogs that use these things here, I removed the (unnamed) offending blogs from my aggregator.  Returning to the social networking site I was profoundly distressed to find not only was I an idiot for not knowing that my location was not what I could see before me - the invasion of my privacy was actually "just a bit of fun".  Needless to say - second time around with somebody not paying the slightest attention to what I'm saying but continuing to push their own line.  My subsequent reaction in response to an unrelated poster on AustCrime, I thought, was a masterpiece in self-control (had I published my first draft then just possibly somebody could have had grounds for objecting to anger and swearing).  The third party then showed up on AustCrime and yet again repeated their inaccurate assumptions and dismissed my concern.  I posted my response to him on my own site in which I pointed out a number of elements that were of particular offence.  Was the tone of my response angry?  I certainly hope so - his behaviour was outrageous.  Meanwhile on the social networking site I was asked to clarify (having previously posted my objections to this particular widget I didn't bother to reiterate in my last AustCrime post).  Explained objections.  Explained blacklisting is an IT term.  Found myself being treated to a dictionary definition of "blacklist" (it seems I'm too stupid to know what the term means) - I countered with a suggestion of define: blacklist on google for further definitions as there are plenty of examples of its use in IT.  Anyway - long story short - at some stage, original blog owner acknowledged issue and said they would have a look.  Next thing I know I'm being dressed down - in public - by the networking site admin for daring to be angry and posting angry posts in their forum.

Point 1 - the site RSS feeds in from other locations - I have no control on them pulling in posts from AustCrime.

Point 2 - I was very angry that my personal privacy was being abused again - and I acknowledged that - only to be dressed down again. 

Point 3 - I found the intervention of the uninvolved 3rd party infuriating.  His dismissive, ignorant and rude tone was highly offensive and his assumptions utterly uninformed.  Particularly galling as this was the second time round on his merry-go-round.

Point 4 - Being dressed down for being rude included the comment that AustCrime was overly complex and that I had no right whatsoever to close comments on a post on my own site.  (I closed comments because the uninvolved 3rd party was getting the hammering that personally, I think he richly deserved and I was sick of filtering out the abuse).

Now you really have to wonder about a number of issues here.  Not only has the uninvolved third party not been called on his behaviour he has, in fact, been told in no uncertain terms that he is above reproach.  This despite his interjections being inaccurate, dismissive, rude and exceedingly arrogant.  But his bullying and belittling it seems was perfectly acceptable - what was not acceptable was my rudeness - which I am guessing was my original post (or maybe it was because I questioned the man's ignorant input).  Anyway I'm guessing it was unacceptable because I posted an allegedly angry post on my own site.  I further offended by acknowledging I was quite angry about my privacy again being intruded upon.  There are a number of elements in this exchange that illustrated exactly what I object to the most on the Internet.  Standards pedelling, cultural imperialism, bullying, personal standards imposition, passive aggressive behaviour, thought policing, argument by stating a position and continuing to shout it regardless of how wrong you are, assumptions based on nothing, argument shape-shifting, preaching and hypocrisy.  

Obviously other parties in this will have their own perspective as is, of course, their right.  What I seriously object to is that in the forum in which I was subjected to this abuse, I was given no opening for reply.  Instead the tone of abuse was consistently ramped up.  Not only was I dressed down in public in a manner that was decidedly reminiscent of a serving from the nuns in kindergarten, I've also been dismissed for failing in my (albeit somewhat unexpected) "educational responsibilities" and a massive swipe at AustCrime was delivered on the way through (there's nothing like combining a good dose of belittling with your humiliation after all).  My only choice was to bow out.  To defend would have prolonged the ridiculous and from the looks of things I was going to get a bollocking no matter what I said on the matter anyway.  Either way I didn't realise that this educational responsibility was one of the "rules" of participation when I signed up, so luckily it was one of those social networking sites where you can delete your account - I'd have been seriously bloody annoyed if I could only disable it.  One can only hope that if the RSS feed from here hasn't been removed - this is sufficient impetus for them to do so.

But I hasten to add - I'm not some angel in wings and you will get the odd angry shot around here - you will see the occasional swear word.  I can be sarcastic, I can be really pissed off.  I can be reasoned and considered.  I have a full range of emotions and sometimes they leak into the posts that I make.  Sometimes you may misread the tone or ascribe something to nothing - please consider that option before you get all po-faced.  Having said that, this is my site, I'm not Miss Manners, and I will not have people dictating what I can and cannot do on my own site.  Every now and again, the excrement may indeed hit the oscillating device with considerable force.  

Undoubtedly there will be many that haven't even read this far.  There will be others working up a right head of steam because I've dared to have an opinion or a belief system that doesn't sit comfortably with them.  There may even be a few sniggering.  I honestly and truly can't articulate how disinterested I am.  I've felt the need to write this for quite a while now, and let's face it, the "blog" component of AustCrime is supposed to be my web diary.  Why I'm self-censoring my own opinions so much on this site is something that I've now got to work my way through.  Stand by for something or nothing much on that subject depending on what I conclude.   

Technorati Tags: Featuring Opinions

There's so much crime fiction from so many varied cultures these days that it's hard to pick the new "big thing".  The unfortunate thing about the "big thing" is that other areas are often unfairly swamped or forgotten.  Working away in some of the less often remarked upon areas, there are some stunningly good authors.

One of the things I wanted when we started AustCrime was to incorporate New Zealand authors - and this, I hasten to add, is not another attempt to "claim" anything from the land of the long white cloud as our own.  Rather it's to acknowledge that there are some authors just over the ditch who deserve mention - who I regard as important in my reading world as I do the local crew. 

We have included a list of all the New Zealand authors we've managed to locate this far, and we're always on the lookout for more.

There are some within this group that stand astride a number of locations.  Paul Thomas, for example, was born in the UK, grew up in NZ and now lives in Australia.  But he belongs in the New Zealand and Australian groups not just because of the geographical details but because he has written some tremendous books that touch upon the movements of New Zealanders between their homeland and Australia.  Dirty Laundry is one of the best examples of his that I've read so far, but the good thing about Paul's books is that just because you liked one book - don't expect the rest to be in the same vein.  He's a very versatile author.

Paul Cleave, on the other hand, is firmly based in Christchurch although he's probably not the greatest thing to happen to local tourism there.  But his books are amongst my most favourite reads in recent years.  Dark, creepy, downright terrifying in some cases, Paul writes the most fantastic thrillers.  Not a series, his books all approach some of the standard scenarios of crime fiction and shred them - right before your eyes.   But I still maintain - he wrote one of the only books that has scared me witless in a number of years.  Follow the link to Paul's page and then to the books and you'll see some reviews attached as well.

Stella Duffy is another that I've listed - she was born in New Zealand and now lives in London, although the latest book I've noticed from Stella was released in 2005.  Hopefully that's me not looking hard enough.  In a similar vein Chris Niles was born in New Zealand, now lives in the US - and in particular, her book, Hell's Kitchen is an absolute corker.

Vanda Symon is another current day, born and living in NZ author with two books to her name at the moment - both of which are here and I have just got to get them higher up the reading queue (I think I'm going to die saying that!)

Of course, New Zealand has it's own list of earlier crime fiction authors, and most of us have probably started out reading Ngaio Marsh at the same time that we were working out way through the Agatha Christie collection.  There is also Freda Bream who I know was born in around 1918 - but other than that I haven't found out a lot yet.

Just a quick example of some of the authors from New Zealand that you should check out.

Technorati Tags: Featuring Opinions Elizabeth Knox New Zealand Ngaio Marsh Paul Cleave Paul Thomas Stella Duffy Vanda Symon Crime Fiction Thriller

The earliest Australian Crime Fiction book I've ever found reference to is Ellen Davitt's Force and Fraud which was originally published in 1865, but for sheer numbers and prolific writing Fergus Hume is somebody that needs mentioning.

Starting with The Mystery of the Hansom Cab published in 1886, Fergus Hume went on to have about 137 books published up until 1932.

Fergus Hume (1859-1932) was an English lawyer who emigrated to New Zealand with his parents - Dr James Collin Hume and Mary Ferguson (from Glasgow originally).  (James was responsible for founding the first private mental hospital there as well as Dunedin College). Fergus completed his education in New Zealand, and was called to the New Zealand bar in 1885, before moving to Melbourne later in the same year.

Whilst determined to become a play writer, he worked as a solicitors clerk in Melbourne, remaining mostly unknown.  Desperate to gain the attention of local theatre directors, he found that the most popular writer of books at the time was Emile Gaboriau and his detective works.  Hume used these books as a point of study and came up with his own first effort in 1886 The Mystery of the Hansom Cab.  Hume, being based in Melbourne, set his first book firmly in the city - set amongst the laneways and streets of the city and the "outer" suburbs of St Kilda and Brighton.  The book has a number of interesting elements to it - firstly for the clear and very stark depiction of the fledgling colonial city, and then of the society itself within that city.  Slightly controversial at the time, it managed to offend by drawing a pretty stark portrait of the extremes in Melbourne society and even, albeit somewhat obliquely in some places, incorporating some social commentary along the way.

The book was undoubtedly a very good book at the time - and it remains extremely readable today which is quite something given that much early crime fiction doesn't necessarily hold up well with the passage of time.  Hume must have been extremely frustrated at his inability to get the book published - mostly being rejected by publishers for reasons similar to "no Colonial could write anything worth reading".   Ultimately, he had the book published privately - selling the publishing rights for £50.  Luckily he retained the dramatic rights which allowed him to make a reasonable profit from long theatre runs in both Australia and London.

Hume wrote one other novel set in and around Ballarat and the Australian gold mining fields - Madame Midas which was published in 1889.  Many many books followed from there (the full list of his books is included below), but Hume himself left Australia and settled in Essex, England where he remained until he died from heart failure in July 1932.

Project Gutenberg includes a number of Fergus Hume's works that you can access on line: http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/h#a1057

Bibliography

• The Mystery of a Hansom Cab (1886)
• Professor Brankel's Secret (1886)
• Madame Midas (1888)
• The Girl from Malta (1889)
• The Piccadilly Puzzle (Also published as: Dowker - Detective) (short stories 1889)
• The Gentleman Who Vanished (US Title: The Man Who Vanished) (1889)
• The Man with a Secret (1890)
• Miss Mephistopheles (Also published as: Tracked by Fate; or, Miss Mephistopheles (1890)
• Whom God Hath Joined (1891)
• Monsieur Judas (1891)
• A Creature of the Night (1891)
• The Year of Miracle (1891)
• When I Lived in Bohemia (1892)
• The Island of Fantasy (1892)
• The Chronicles of Faeryland (1892)
• Alladin in London (1892)
• The Fever of Life (1892)
• The Black Carnation (1892)
• The Harlequin Opal (1893)
• The Chinese Jar (1893)
• A Speck of the Motley (1893)
• A Midnight Mystery (1894)
• The Nameless City (1894)
• The Gates of Dawn (1894)
• The Best of Her Sex (1894)
• The Lone Inn (1894)
• The Mystery of Landy Court
• (US Title: From Thief to Detective) (1894)
• The Crime of 'Liza Jane' (1895)
• The White Prior (1895)
• The Carbuncle Clue (1896)
• Tricked by a Tattoo (1896)
• The Expedition of Captain Flick (1896)
• The Dwarf's Chamber and other stories (short stories) (1896)
• A Marriage Mystery (1896)
• Claude Duval of Ninety-Five (1897)
• The Tombstone Treasure (1897)
• Hagar of the Pawn-Shop (short stories) (1898)
• Under One Cover (1898)
• The Clock Struck One (1898)
• Lady Jezebel (1898)
• The Rainbow Feather (1898)
• The Devil-Stick (US Title: For the Defense) (1898)
• The Silent House in Pimlico (US Title: The Silent House) (1899)
• The Red-Headed Man (1899)
• The Indian Bangle (1899)
• The Crimson Cryptogram (1900)
• A Traitor in London (1900)
• Shylock of the River (1900)
• The Lady from Nowhere (1900)
• The Bishop's Secret (US Title: Bishop Pendle; or, The Bishop's Secret) (1900)
• The Vanishing of Tera (1900)
• A Woman's Burden (1901)
• The Golden Wang-Ho (US Title: The Secret of the Chinese Jar) (1901)
• The Millionaire Mystery (1901)
• The Mother of Emeralds (1901)
• The Crime of the Crystal (1901)
• The Turnpike House (1902)
• Woman: The Sphinx (1902)
• The Pagan's Cup (1902)
• The Guilty House (1903)
• The Jade Eye (1903)
• The Miser's Will (1903)
• A Coin of Edward VII (1903)
• The Yellow Holly (1903)
• The Silver Bullet (1903)
• The Wheeling Light (1904)
• The White Room (1904)
• The Mandarin's Fan (1904)
• The Red Window (1904)
• The Lonely Church (1904)
• The Fatal Song (1905)
• The Scarlet Bat (1905)
• Lady Jim of Curzon Street (1905)
• The Opal Serpent (1905)
• The Secret Passage (1905)
• The Wooden Hand (1905)
• The Black Patch (1906)
• The Dancer in Red (short stories) (1906)
• Jonah's Luck (1906)
• The Mystery of the Shadow (1906)
• The Yellow Hunchback (1907)
• The Purple Fern (1907)
• Flies in the Web (1908)
• The Sacred Herb (1908)
• The Sealed Message (1908)
• The Mystery of a Motor Cab (1908)
• The Crowned Skull (1908)
• The Green Mummy (1908)
• The Amethyst Cross (1908)
• The Top Dog (1909)
• The Disappearing Eye (1909)
• The Solitary Farm (1909)
• The Devil's Ace (1909)
• The Spider (1910)
• The Mikado Jewel (1910)
• The Peacock of Jewels (1910)
• The Lonely Subaltern (1910)
• The Rectory Governess (1911)
• The Steel Crown (1911)
• The Pink Shop (1911)
• High Water Mark (1911)
• The Jew's House (1911)
• Mother Mandarin (1912)
• Across the Footlights (1912)
• A Son of Perdition (1912)
• The Mystery Queen (1912)
• Red Money (1912)
• The Blue Talisman (1912)
• Seen in the Shadow (1913)
• In Queer Street (1913)
• The Thirteenth Guest (1913)
• The Curse (1913)
• The 4 P.M. Express (1914)
• Not Wanted (1914)
• The Lost Parchment (1914)
• Answered: A Spy Story (1915)
• The Caretaker (1915)
• The Red Bicycle (1916)
• The Silent Signal (1917)
• The Grey Doctor (1917)
• The Black Image (1918)
• Next Door (1918)
• Heart of Ice (1918)
• Crazy-Quilt (1919)
• The Master-Mind (1919)
• The Dark Avenue (1920)
• The Other Person (1920)
• The Singing Head (1920)
• The Woman Who Held On (1920)
• The Unexpected (1921)
• Three (1921)
• A Trick of Time (1922)
• The Moth-Woman (1923)
• The Whispering Lane (1924)
• The Caravan Mystery (1926)
• The Last Straw (1932)

Postscript:

Whilst the parts of Victoria that Fergus Hume wrote about have mostly been spared thus far, this has been a dreadful week and the ongoing bushfire situation isn't going to end anytime soon.  Whilst those of us lucky enough to be safe and out of the worst of the areas, are chatting away about what is, after all, pure entertainment, spare a thought for the army of volunteers and paid workers trying to pull these fires up.  Spare a thought for how many of them have lost everything themselves, and yet they are still out there fighting these fires. 

Technorati Tags: Featuring Opinions Australia Fergus Hume

It's an interesting phenomena that in a country that used to pride itself on it's rugged outdoors / country style heroes, the vast majority of the population live on the coast - in large cities.

It's no secret around here that the rural inland is struggling.  Populations have continued to decrease and small rural communities are really struggling to survive, although hopefully the Tree-Change phenomena is starting to help with that a little.  But you quickly become aware of the fact that the "city dwellers" forget we exist.  A lot of this is reflected again in our crime fiction (with the exceptions of The Broken Shore by Peter Temple and Diamond Dove by Adrian Hyland).

We track locations in books on AustCrime (in the Right Hand Menu you'll see an option "By Category" - hover over Story Location and you'll see not only the locations but the number of entries here that mention that location).  Having said that - some of those numbers are really interesting (the number of articles is in brackets after each location).

Victoria (5) being the whole state in which Melbourne (87) is the capital city and in direct competition with Sydney (176) which has always been Sin City - Melbourne's just trying to catch up.  Country NSW (16) is the state in which Sydney sits (and I think Robert G Barrett's probably got a stranglehold on a lot of those locations).  Canberra (20) is another capital city and the countries parliamentary capital city into the bargain whereas Arnhem Land (3) is about as outback as you can get.  We've also got a more generic setting of Australian Outback (12), many of these entries I would imagine we can thank Arthur Upfield for.  As a comparison Country QLD (1), Cairns (3), Great Barrier Reef (1) and Brisbane (3) so obviously there's just not enough books being set in Queensland full stop.  Adelaide (8) is another capital city, Tasmania (9) as the whole state and Western Australia (2) to stack up against it's capital city Perth (5).  The Northern Territory (1) is currently very under-represented.  One location I've just noticed is Mallee, Australia (1) - (excellent - that's nearly local, I must go see what that article is about!)  (Remembering that these numbers could change as things are added to the site).

Not all these articles relate directly to books obviously, but it is interesting to consider the way that the setting for our crime fiction has changed.  Arthur Upfield, S H Courtier and others tended to set their books in rural / outback locations, at the same time that so much fiction was being set in Melbourne and in Sydney.  Maybe that's because of the circumstances of where they came from, but also because of the sensibility of the nation at the time. 

It's a little bit of a sad outcome that we've never really attained a very wide ranging use of settings throughout the entire country.  We went from the rural to the city, and we've never had what you'd call a comprehensive current day set of books that encompass the entire place.  Now it's obvious that writers tend to write what they know / where they live, it's going to make getting your settings a lot more accurate if you're gazing out the window (so to speak), but if our crime fiction is to evolve to be as wide ranging as other countries, then surely, at some stage, somebody's going to have to turn inland.  Not to the absolute outback, but to the smaller country cities, the smaller states, the country towns, the rural areas, the food bowls, the rivers, the creeks, the hills, mountains and the plains.  Of course, our publishers have to take a role in this as well - books that reflect the entire country may not necessarily be the big blockbuster sellers, but what Australian Crime fiction is.  But there are lots of readers who don't do the mean inner city streets - an increasing number of us are in the dustbowls along the major highways.

Technorati Tags: Featuring Opinions Australia Australia

The problem with the blogosphere is that anybody can be an expert. 

All it takes is time - time to post constantly, time to self promote, time to comment anywhere and everywhere - time to "get the name out there". 

Australian Crime fiction is an older beast than the blogosphere though, and there have been, over many many years, a number of heroes of promotion, support and sheer graft that have tried to carry the message to readers here and all over (right back to when that was truly hard work - before blogs and email signatures  )

Being one of the Johnny Come Latelys, I've always been accutely aware of a need to acknowledge those that came before.  After all AustCrime is nothing if not just a fan site - our aims are not to "flog ourselves" but to try to impart an enthusiasm for the local product.  As we were lucky enough to have previously been inspired.

So in this first Wednesday Waffle, let's look at some of the great promoters and supporters that have gone before.

Fergus Hume - okay so Fergus was the original BSP merchant, being a failed playwrite, he purposely wrote a crime novel as that's what was selling, which he then had to self-publish (and we all know what commentators think of vanity press!)  But when Fergus published The Mystery of the Hansom Cab in 1886, there was no Australian Crime fiction industry.

Even in more recent times, a genre industry has struggled to get moving (although you wouldn't know it these days) so The Crime Writers Association of Australia was set up in the mid 1990's to promote and encourage Australian crimewriting, and it is to them that I must tip a personal hat - in particular Stuart Coupe and Julie Ogden's Mean Streets set me on my current path.

The Ned Kelly Awards from the CWAA have been around forever (well since the 1990's anyway) and all Australian crime fiction fans owe a great debt of gratitude to Peter Lawrance for what seems to almost be a single-handed effort every year. 

A hat tip to Kill City is also required, a fantastic bookshop for crime fiction fans in Melbourne, but long long long before it there was Murder Ink - out in Auburn - that shop was a mecca for me that nearly sent me bankrupt.  I have no idea what the name of the owner was (or at least I assume he was the owner), but he was a quiet unassuming man who always had a kind word for the books that I accumulated from his shop.

The Melbourne chapter of Sisters in Crime is a fantastic, active, supportive and friendly group.  Carmel Shute, Sue Turnbull and her co-convenors including Lindy Cameron are tireless in their efforts to support local authors and "push the product".  Plus there monthly gatherings are the hugest fun!

Special mention must be made of a few commentators who have been working away at talking about the genre for years - Lucy Sussex, Sue Turnbull and more recently Graeme Blundell have done more for high profile, general public discussion of Australian crime fiction than most commentators (and again - personal hat tip, if Sue Turnbull recommends a book - then I'm off to the bookstore toots sweet!).

And online - in the early days, Damien from CrimeDownUnder opened up the huge world of Australian Crime Fiction to the rest of the world when he started his site - I hope he's back soon as he seems to have gone quiet lately.  Also Perry - from my favourite book blog, Matilda.  Even though he has a much wider focus than just Crime Fiction, Perry is the most widely read and erudite commentator in Australia that I love to follow on a daily basis.

There are other people who have been doing this for years and years who I have probably forgotten to mention (probably because they don't do much BSP), but their influence over the years when they have mentioned books, made recommendations, discussed something that just happened to click has been much more profound because the recommendation stays with me - not the recommender.  Most of that has obviously been done for the sheer joy of the act of reading.  A fantastic effort by anybody's estimation.

And the one thing that all of these people have in common - and the baton which I hope AustCrime has picked up and continues to run with - is it's all about the books.  Sometimes the authors, but mostly the books.  It's the books that matter, it's the talk about the books, the noting of comings and goings of the books, the promotion of the local books that matters.  Hopefully at the end of this website's run - the memory of the books will remain the strongest.

Next Waffle will start to pick some authors to talk about in more detail - what I'll probably do is pick an influential, early author and then bounce forward to somebody who is doing something interesting right now and backwards and forwards until I run out of puff (I can guarantee I won't run out of authors - the Australian scene is moving ahead in leaps and bounds).  If anybody has anyone in particular they'd like to see mentioned, drop me a line via Contact Us at the top of the site.

Technorati Tags: Featuring Opinions Australia Crime Fiction Array