CRIME BOOK OF THE MONTH

The Last Act of Hattie Hoffman by Mindy Mejia

I’ve long been a sucker for American stories set away from the intensity of their cities and in the country’s open heart: those wide endless prairies; the sheriffs who know everyone and ride the thin line between being adored and feared; that down-home American cheesiness that hides an undercurrent of blood as much as the seeds of their farmland. Everyone is suspicious, and a suspect; everyone speaks their minds, except when they are hiding something. And teenage girls go out of their minds in desperation to leave for bigger and better places. Sometimes they don’t make it further than an early marriage and another farm down the road; sometimes, like Hattie Hoffman, they don’t even make it that far before being discovered in an abandoned barn, stabbed to death – her acting career, her life, cut short.

Mejia’s novel follows multiple points of view, all genuine, all heartbreaking in their own ways, all unhappy with something, someone, or somewhere. Hattie herself, in the lead-up to her death, is consumed by the idea of escape and an unknown love. Del, the worn-out sheriff, is trying to find out who killed his best friend’s daughter. And then there’s Peter, a teacher forced by circumstance into a life he is desperate to be out of. Who in this town is unhappy enough to kill a teenage girl? To slash her face into an unrecognisable version of herself?

This book is full of tiny, genuine moments – in a family, between friends, describing the landscape – that elevate this tale, and make Pine Valley a place worth visiting, even when you don’t know who might be living there.

NEW CRIME FICTION

Sacrifice by Hanna Winter

And so we start the new year afresh with another book from a country that has spent the last 12 month hosting many fictional crimes – Germany, its capital of Berlin playing host here to a sadistic serial killer who has local police at the end of their frayed nerves and desperate for a solution. So they call on Lena Peters, an underrated criminal psychologist, to assist – but some on her team aren’t thrilled to have an outsider on the case. Snippy colleagues fade to the background, however, when someone far more dangerous sets their sights on Lena.

The Girl Before by J.P. Delaney

Begrudgingly, yet again, I had to get over the use of the word ‘girl’ in a book title to refer to a woman in her twenties, as I found myself entranced by these haunting parallel tales of women who move into an unexpected kind of home. One Folgate Street is a minimalist masterpiece, all pale stone and non-existent clutter; a place you can only move into once you fill in an extensive questionnaire and pass the interview process: something achieved by Emma, once, and now by Jane, following a tragedy that has rocked her to the core. As the two women, separated by time, experience their own emotional upheavals within Folgate Street’s walls, parallels beginto show – but only Jane knows how one of their stories ends. An unnerving, heady, psychological thriller.

Win, Lose or Draw by Peter Corris

Brace yourselves, devotees of Corris’s beloved Cliff (no relation to your esteemed reviewer) Hardy – this is the forty-first and final book in the series. Corris didn’t decide it was the last one until afterwards, though, and Win, Lose or Draw remains as sharp as usual, with the down-on-his-luck Hardy a final choice for a desperate father trying to locate his missing daughter. This teenage girl is smart, beautiful, adored – and gone – and with a surly brother, a cryptic stepmother and a wealthy father high on the police’s suspect list, Hardy has a lot to consider. But hey, considering is what Hardy does best. Sydney remains as much a character as anyone else here, and Corris is as much the talented writer as he has ever been – all these years, books, and awards later.

Kill the Father by Sandrone Dazieri

School’s back, but the heat is still rising from the pavement and maybe you’ve decided to take a little trip down the coast, or into the country, and you’re looking for something to read. Something good, something hearty – it needs to last a flight or a few days on a towel in the sand – and something you don’t want to stop reading. This book will hook you in when you least expect it: an Italian family goes out for a picnic, and, in the warm breeze, the father lies down for a nap. When he wakes, his wife and son are gone. When the police come, they find bad and worse news: the wife is dead – decapitated – and the son has vanished. Police politics ensure the reappearance of Deputy Captain Colomba Caselli, technically still on leave after the tragedy that still has her reeling, and Dante Torre, once kidnapped as a child by a man called The Father, who trapped and tortured him in a silo. Now, they think, The Father may have returned – and he may want to reconnect with the man he called Son. This is a tight, tense, highly addictive thriller.

Miss Treadway & the Field of Stars by Miranda Emmerson

In 1960s London, the struggle for change in a society trying hard to dig its heels in at any difference is brought into visceral relief when Miss Anna Treadway takes it upon herself to locate a missing woman. Iolanthe Green is an American actress who commandeers the stage when she disappears. The media whips itself into a frenzy which then dissipates into nothing, and Anna – Iolanthe’s dresser – doesn’t trust police to find her. Sergeant Brennan Hayes – now known as Barnaby to avoid being vilified for his Irish background – is one of the few who are trying to find Iolanthe. Beyond him, it’s those on the street who do what they can to help Anna, no matter the discrimination they face in a London teeming with bigots, racists, homophobes – and murderers. As much a loving and heartbreaking portrait of a time and place as it is a story of a crime, this tale of the expansive heart of London’s more wonderful characters is both a welcome relief and a shaky reminder as we see Britain hell-bent on painting itself as anti-change and insular once more.

Crimson Lake by Candice Fox

Candice Fox – winner of two Ned Kelly Awards in a row for Best Debut Crime for her first book, Hades, and then Best Crime for its follow-up, Eden – returns with a currently-standalone-but-let’s-hope-there’s-more story of Ted Conkaffey, a detective on the drug squad whose brief stop-off at a highway bus stop to fix a noise in his car led to him being interrogated by his own team and jailed for nearly a year for the brutal assault of a teenage girl. Released due to lack of evidence – but not aquitted – he runs north to the Cairns marshlands and the eponymous Crimson Lake: crocodile country, mind-your-own-business country. There, he becomes the begrudging owner of a family of pet geese and then forms a tentative business relationship with investigator Amanda Pharrell, a woman shunned by the town and just as prickly as Ted. He knows what it’s like to be looked at like she is, and as the two of them hunt for a missing father, there’s more to unearth in this humid town. Fox is smart, sharp, and a brilliant writer, and Crimson Lake a character-driven, crocodile-infested thriller to be read on your patio on a hot night.

Police at the Station and They Don’t Look Friendly by Adrian McKinty

Adrian McKinty has so many awards to his name it’d take this whole column to name them all, but suffice to say, his immensely enjoyable Sean Duffy series is deserving of all of them. Set in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, Detective Inspector Duffy is endearing and personable to readers (if not to the rest of the town), constantly in fear for his life, not above shenanigans to get his way and now trying to figure out who decided shooting someone in the back with an arrow was the way to get rid of them. But pulling out all the stops to track down the archer could lead to something similar being aimed at him – or something worse. To be enjoyed with a pint and Tom Waits crooning ‘Cold Water’ in the background.

Winter Traffic by Stephen Greenall

Stephen Greenall’s debut novel was picked up after its commendation in the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript, and it’s an edgy, hard-nosed thriller set in a Sydney luminous from the outside and dark within, held together by corruption, money, and revenge. Sutton gets a phone call in those unknowable early hours of the morning from his closest friend – a hero of the police force – but he still doesn’t want to answer it. It’s the kind of call that leads to trouble. Read this one in dim lighting with a hard drink in your hand.

The Unfortunate Victim by Greg Pyers

“In 1864, 17-year-old Maggie Stewart was viciously murdered in her humble home in Daylesford. The subsequent investigation is a farce and reinforces the prejudices of the small goldrush community. Detective Otto Berliner makes a desperate bid to right the wrongs of the investigation and discover the real identity of the killer. Based on a true incident, Greg Pyers, with a wonderful eye for detail, brilliantly captures the atmosphere of the time. Berliner is a suitably frustrating yet brilliant detective and I’m looking forward to more of his adventures.”

– Mark Rubbo, Managing Director

Fiona Hardy