Review: "Chain of Evidence" by Garry Disher

 

Chain of Evidence by Garry Disher Soho Crime, 2007   Chain of Evidence is Australian crime writer Garry Disher’s fourth novel to feature Inspector Hal Challis and Sergeant Ellen Destry. A police procedural set in the rural, but booming Mornington Peninsula area south of Melbourne in Victoria, Australia. A place where poverty and wealth live side-by-side and crime is as deadly and ugly as it is in any large city. While visiting his dying father in his childhood home in the dusty, hardscrabble South Australia town of Mawson’s Bluff, Challis unofficially investigates the mysterious disappearance of his sister’s husband, Gavin Hurst, from eight years earlier. Hurst is a man not readily missed by many of Mawson’s Bluff’s residents and his disappearance is truly a mystery. His truck was abandoned at the desert’s edge and his body was never found. Back home at the Waterloo Station, Ellen Destry is filling in for Challis during his absence when a girl is kidnapped on her way home from school. She is found imprisoned in an uninhabited house. Abused by what Destry believes is a pedophile ring operating in the Peninsula. Her investigation hits roadblocks from within the police service and the only person she can trust is Hal Challis, more than 1,000 kilometers away. Chain of Evidence is a powerful and disturbing procedural. The two major mysteries are intriguing and executed with the sure hand of an absolute professional. It is Ellen Destry’s coming out as an equal partner with Challis. The setting, both the Peninsula and Mawson’s Bluff, is rendered with a muted artistry and adds immeasurably to the novel’s power. There is nothing gory or exploitative about either storyline and Disher has a way of mixing character stereotypes to develop tension between the characters, the plot, and the reader. It may be the best book in the series. If you are new to Garry Disher, Chain of Evidence is a very good place to get acquainted. *                        *                        * This is a slightly updated version of a review published on August 12, 2017.

Check out Chain of Evidence on Amazon—click here for the Kindle edition and here for the paperback.

Review: "Chain of Evidence" by Garry Disher

 

Chain of Evidence by Garry Disher Soho Crime, 2007   Chain of Evidence—which won the Crime Writers Association of Australia’s Ned Kelly Award for Best Novel in 2007—is Aussie crime writer Garry Disher’s fourth novel featuring Inspector Hal Challis and Sergeant Ellen Destry. A police procedural set in the rural, but booming Mornington Peninsula area south of Melbourne in Victoria, Australia. A place where poverty and wealth live side-by-side and crime is as deadly and ugly as it is in any large city. While visiting his dying father in his childhood home in the dusty, hardscrabble South Australia town of Mawson’s Bluff, Challis unofficially investigates the mysterious disappearance of his sister’s husband, Gavin Hurst, from eight years earlier. Hurst is a man not readily missed by many of Mawson’s Bluff’s residents and his disappearance is truly a mystery. His truck abandoned at the desert’s edge, his body never found. Back home at the Waterloo Station, Ellen Destry is filling in for Challis during his absence, a girl is kidnapped on her way home from school. She is found imprisoned in an uninhabited house. Abused by what Destry believes is a pedophile ring operating in the Peninsula. Her investigation hits roadblocks from within the police service and the only person she can trust is Hal Challis, more than 1,000 kilometers away. Chain of Evidence is a powerful and disturbing procedural. The two major mysteries are intriguing and executed with the sure hand of an absolute professional. It is Ellen Destry’s coming out as an equal partner with Challis. The setting, both the Peninsula and Mawson’s Bluff, is rendered with a muted artistry and adds immeasurably to the novel’s power. There is nothing gory or exploitative about either storyline and Disher has a way of mixing character stereotypes to develop tension between the characters, the plot, and the reader. It may be the best book in the series. If you are new to Garry Disher, Chain of Evidence is a very good place to get acquainted. *              *              * This review was originally published in August 2017 at my Gravetapping blog. With a distance of years from this reading to   now, I’m more certain Chain of Evidence is Disher’s best Challis / Destry book, and it very well may be his best book overall.

Check out Chain of Evidence at Amazon—click here for the Kindle edition and here for the paperback.

Review: "Against the Grain" by Peter Lovesey

 

Against the Grain by Peter Lovesey Soho Crime, 2024   What is advertised as the final Peter Diamond mystery, Against the Grain, the 22nd entry in the impressive series, is a marvelous send off for the cantankerous but brilliant detective. When Peter’s former deputy, Julie Hargreaves—who quit the Bath CID years earlier after she “wearied of his [Diamond’s] overbearing conduct”—has asked Diamond to visit her for a week at her home in the Somerset Village of Baskerville. Diamond does his best trying to avoid the visit, but he is ultimately convinced it is the right thing to do by his romantic partner, Paloma. When Diamond and Paloma arrive, they find that Julie has been blinded by macular degeneration. A condition she kept secret from Diamond when they worked together and may have been the true reason she left Bath. Julie is content with her life, but she has a request of Diamond. Claudia Priest, the heiress of a local dairy farm and Baskerville’s primary employer, was convicted to three years’ incarceration for manslaughter when a party game went horribly wrong. A former lover and then-hanger-on of Claudia’s, Roger Miller, was trapped and crushed to death in a grain silo while trying to recover a garter that would win him the favors of Claudia for the evening. Claudia, without much fuss, was convicted of negligent manslaughter, but Julie believes Claudia was treated unfairly during the trial and she asks Diamond to do his own investigation—off the books, of course—to determine if Claudia is truly guilty. A request Diamond jumps at since it will be his first village mystery, and he would like to test himself as an amateur sleuth against the likes of Miss Marple. Against the Grain is a smart fair-play traditional mystery in the style of the golden age of detection. Diamond is his usual stubborn, at times affable, at times irascible, and always genius self. His interactions with the locals—a laconic and moody teenager named Hamish, the local busy body, a talkative barmaid—are often uncomfortable and always funny. Diamond takes a few wild swings at investigating—he plays at being Columbo and then Poirot—but as the tale winds down he finds his detecting mojo and unravels the mystery as only Peter Diamond can do. And that final revelation is as surprising as it is good.

Find Against the Grain on Amazon—click here for the Kindle edition and here for the hardcover.

Review: "Eight Very Bad Nights" edited by Tod Goldberg

 

Eight Very Bad Nights edited by Tod Goldberg Soho Crime, 2024   This holiday themed collection, edited by Tod Goldberg, is an eclectic assortment of eleven entertaining tales—they are scattered across the hardboiled tradition with a couple crowding into noir—centered around the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah. Ivy Pochoda’s “Johnny Christmas” is an ironic take on crime, grandmotherly love, and the reasons why someone named Goldfarb would chuck it all for a handle like Christmas. “Shamash,” by David L. Ulin, is a thought-provoking and surprising noir about a son and his dying father; its bite so hard even the most callous reader will bleed. James D. F. Hannah’s “Twenty Centuries” is about murder, hatred—the kind of racist and antisemitic crap we’re seeing more and more of in our neighborhoods—and a mother’s sideways sorrow. Nikki Dolson’s “Come Let Us Kiss and Part,” is a noirish love story about hope, bad decisions, and even worse luck. “Dead Weight,” by Liska Jacobs, is an energetic tale verging into psychological thriller territory, about a romantic couple at the end of their relationship. But Raquel—one-half of the duo—isn’t eager to leave the other’s, Joel’s, beautiful apartment without a fight. Stefanie Leder’s “Not a Dinner Party Person” is a marvelous riff on the sociopath career climber motif, with a perfect twist played out during a latke celebration with her sister and mother. My favorite story in Eight Very Bad Nights—and it is likely yours will be different since every tale is good—is Lee Goldberg’s “If I Were a Rich Man,” featuring his anti-hero Ray Boyd tracking down a bundle of stolen cash during Hanukkah. Boyd plays all the notes just right and even falls into a honeytrap with both eyes open. Of course, everything works out for Boyd and the trip is a blast. There are also great stories from J. R. Angelella, Gabino Iglesias, Jim Rutland, and Tod Goldberg.

Check out Eight Very Bad Nights here at Amazon.

Review: "The Summons" by Peter Lovesey

 

The Summons
by Peter Lovesey
Soho Crime, 2004

 

Peter Lovesey’s third Peter Diamond detective novel, The Summons—originally published in 1995 by Mysterious Press—is a first-rate, inventive, traditional mystery with a credible cast of suspects set in the lovely tourist town of Bath, England. Peter Diamond, formerly Superintendent Diamond of the Bath Constabulary, is living a humdrum life with his wife in a squalid basement apartment in London after quitting his job leading Bath’s murder squad. Diamond works part time recovering shopping carts from a grocery store parking lot and money is something he vaguely remembers from when he had a proper salary. Things are bad enough that he is considering a job baring his considerable girth as a nude model for extra dosh.
     Diamond’s mostly quiet desperation is unsettled when a pair of Bath police officers arrive at his door demanding he return to Bath with them. They give him little incentive since they don’t give him a whiff at the why except it concerns his nemesis, Assistant Chief Constable Tott. When he gets on site, he learns Tott’s daughter has been kidnapped by an escaped convict Diamond put away for murdering a Swedish journalist four years earlier. The convict proclaims his innocence and demands Diamond review the investigation again before he will return Tott’s daughter.
     The Summons is a marvelously entertaining murder mystery with enough action to keep the narrative lively, including some gunplay and real risk to Diamond’s health, and more than enough detection to satisfy even the snobbiest reader. And most unpretentiousness readers, too, including a dolt like me. Diamond is a rare treat: self-absorbed (but trying to be better), anti-technology, clever, and funny. The supporting cast are an eclectic bunch of oddballs—a crowd of hippies called “crusties” squatting around town—eccentrics, an obese photographer-turned-baker, stiff-upper-lip-types, millionaires (at least one), and braggarts. Diamond is a bloodhound as he questions his original investigation and then pursues the killer against what appears to be his own best interest. And the denouement is a blissful surprise, and even better, a surprise that makes perfect sense.

Click here for the Kindle edition and here for the audiobook at Amazon.