November 2008 - Crime In Books

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CRIMEinBOOKS - November 2008

ROBIN BOWLES INVESTIGATES

November 30th 2008 11:57

True crime writer Robin Bowles ventured into the comparatively tame world of crime fiction when she published her first novel, The Curse of the Golden Yo-Yo in 2007 then followed it up with The Mystery of the Missing Masterpiece in 2008. The heroine of these two comical crime tales is a fearless PI by the name of Cornelia Finnigan, whose escapades in the pursuit of dim-witted criminals bear a remarkable resemblance to the adventures of her creator. After she had completed Justice Denied, her investigation into the disappearance of Moe toddler Jaidyn Leskie and the man accused of his murder, Greg Domaszewicz, Robin spent time working as a private investigator. She was gathering information in Moe and became aware that the Moe police were tailing her. Robin’s husband became concerned for her safety so he hired private investigator Michael to accompany Robin on her trips. Michael was so impressed with Robin’s skill in eliciting information from people that he made the offer of a job which Robin later took up, obtaining her PI’s licence. She says that much of the work is dead boring but it was punctuated with the occasional exciting episode.

One of these involved a married professional man who was being investigated for insurance fraud, after claiming that his house had been burgled. The insurance company employed Michael’s agency to investigate and it was discovered that this man had a secret other life which involved gambling and a lap-dancer girlfriend. The girlfriend was then tailed and Robin paid a visit to her workplace.‘I followed her into this dressing room and introduced myself. I said I was looking into Dimitri’s burglary. I said “Has he mentioned that he was burgled?” “Oh yes, he has. It’s so terrible. You know they took so much stuff.” I said “Yes, well I’m just looking into the insurance side of it because we’re trying to hurry it through to pay him out. What did he tell you about it?” So she’s getting dressed, you see, all this time and being a lap-dancer she didn’t care I was in the room and then she sat down at her dressing table and she reached over and she put this bracelet on and my eyes nearly popped out of my head because that was one of the bits of jewellery that had been stolen. ‘I’m very astute about jewellery and I recognized it straight away. I said to her “Oh I like your bracelet. Where did you get it from?” And she said “Oh, Dimitri gave me this.” And I said “When did he give it to you?” She said “Just after Easter.” (that’s when the burglary happened) “He had to go away with his wife for Easter but he gave it to me as a present because he couldn’t stay with me.” And I said “Well look”…I forget her name now…Amanda or something…one of those names. Anyway, I said to her “Um look, I’m going to have to tell you that I think that bracelet is stolen property. I’ll give you a receipt (this is a total bluff) I’ll give you a receipt but I’m going to have to take it with me.” And she’s just looking at me, you see, and she said “Oh no, why would it be stolen?” And I said “Well, I’m not too sure. You’ll have to ask Dimitri about that.” And I said “Now, what’s your full name?” So I’m already starting to write in my notebook, you see, and so she just took off the bracelet and gave it to me. I mean, there was no reason why she had to. She could have said No and I would have had to have gone back to the office and just said that I thought she was wearing the bracelet and it would have been much harder to prove. But she just handed it to me! She was so gob-smacked, I think.’ The next day Robin and Michael paid the professional man a visit at his place of work. 'He had high-society clients and he used to get really pissed off when I went in there to interview him. I’d been twice before and I’d say to the girls, “I’ll just see him in between patients” and I’d wait. He’d come in really angry. On this particular day I took Michael with me - it’s always bad news when investigators come in pairs - and so I said to him “Now Dimitri, I’m sorry to have to interrupt your day but I met a friend of yours yesterday and she was wearing this.” So I put the bracelet on the table and you should have seen his face. He went grey. I thought he was gonna have a heart attack. And I said “Do you recognize this bracelet at all?” And he said, “Well, it looks like a bracelet I gave a friend of mine.” I said “Well, do you recognize it from these pictures?” Because the insurance company had given us photos, you see, taken only a week or two before he was burgled. He’d had all the stuff photographed for the insurance policy so we had those photos. That’s how I knew what the bracelet looked like. So I said to him “You know, it looks remarkably like this photo here doesn’t it? In fact, it really looks like the same bracelet to me” And he just crumpled. He said “I don’t have to talk to you. I’m going to call my lawyer.” And I said “I think that’d be a really good idea Dimitri. We’ll just put in our report to the insurance company and let the police take it from here.”’

Robin Bowles has been dubbed Australia’s true-crime Queen. She had worked for years as a nursing sister and had gone on to run a highly successful PR company when she decided to write a book. She was still mulling over what to actually write about when the Sunday Age published a story by journalist Andrew Rule about Jennifer Tanner, whose death by shooting in 1984 had been deemed a suicide - a finding that stretched the bounds of credulity. ‘For some reason this bloody story wouldn’t leave my head alone. It was a long weekend so I thought about it all Sunday and then we had a dinner party that night because it was a holiday the next day. We had friends over - six or eight people - so I raised the subject at the dinner table and everyone had read the story so we were all talking about it and speculating. A couple of days later I was on my way home and I drove past the Vic Market. Now I’d driven past the Vic Market I can’t tell you how many times in the ten years I’d been living in Melbourne and I’d never ever seen a gun shop there before but there was this gun shop and there was a parking space right outside the doorway so I 'whzzip right into this parking space. So in I went in my black crepe suit…I was a lot skinnier then…and I had long legs and very high heels and pearls and a silk shirt and…you know…I was running a PR company. I had to wear the PR uniform every day. ‘Anyway, I said to this guy “Do you sell BRN 0.2 rifles?” And he said “We do” and I said “Do you think I could have a look at one please? I’ve got a son in the army (which was true) and I thought I might buy him one for Christmas” Which was bullshit but, anyway, he brought this gun out and I was amazed it was so long. It was about 1100cm long. It was huge. I’d never handled a rifle like that. She was shorter than I am, Jenny, so I tried all this stuff, trying to see if she could have pulled the trigger with her big toe and of course the guy’s hand is hovering over the telephone because that was the same year as the Port Arthur Massacre and he must have thought I was a fuitloop ‘cos I had taken my shoes off and was standing there with this gun. Anyway, in the end I told him what I was trying to do. So I got home and I said to Clive “I think I’m going to write a book about that Jenny Tanner story” and he said to me “Look you better ask the journalist. He’s probably going to do it, it’s that good a story, and he’s done all the research already.” So I rang him up and he said he wasn’t going to do it. He said “I’m too busy and it’s too dangerous.” I said “What do you mean too dangerous?” And he said “Well I’ve had a lot of threats since I ran the story. I’ve had hang-up phone calls, I’ve had my car damaged in my drive, I’ve had my front windows smashed since that article came out. I’ve got my kids to think about and I don’t want to do it. I’ve got a full time job anyway.”’

Robin completed Blind Justice, followed By four more true crime books then, along with the rest of Australia, she became enthralled with the disappearance of British backpacker Peter Falconio. Naturally loquacious, Robin has spoken to scores of people while researching for her books. She is the only person whom Bradley Murdoch, convicted of the murder of Peter Falconio, has granted an interview. She tells me that she has had a number of episodes of extraordinary good luck while on the trail of a story. Robin and her husband Clive were returning home, after having traced the fateful route taken by Peter Falconio and Joanne Lees, and were staying at a hotel in Daly River in the Northern Territory. 'It’s an old pub way out in the middle of nowhere. The Daly River Hotel - it’s quite famous. We knew no-one and it was the rugby world cup, I think. I can’t watch the rugby but I knew Clive would want to stay up in the lounge area and watch it so I went and plonked myself down on a chair and a table towards the front and saved this seat for him. I wanted to make sure I got him the front stalls. Anyway this young girl sat down next to me and we started talking. I knew she was a Pom straight away, with her accent and I said “What are you doing out here in the middle of nowhere? You’re a long way from home.” And she said “I am. Unfortunately, I’ve got to go back at the end of the week. I’ve been here for 3 months and I really don’t want to go. My boyfriend’s Australian and he’s still thinking about whether he’ll come with me but I can’t get my permit extended any longer.” She was working as a housemaid at the hotel and her boyfriend was behind the bar. So we had these long conversations. I said to her “Whereabouts in England are you from?” and she said “Oh I’m from a little place you would never have heard of. I’m from Huddersfield.” And I said “I’ve heard of Huddersfield. As a matter of fact I’m doing a book on Peter Falconio and Joanne Lees. They both came from Huddersfield.” and she said “Oh, go on! You know what? My dad worked for 20 years with Peter Falconio’s father” And I said “You are kidding me? At the post office? You are joking.” I said “Does he know him well?” And she said “Of course he knows him well he worked with him for 20 years” So I said “Have you got his phone number?” So I got the Falconio’s family phone number from this girl in the middle of the bush in Daly River. I could tell you a hundred stories like that. I mean, it’s amazing.’

Robin Bowles’ latest book is Rough Justice, subtitled: unanswered questions from the Australian courts. It retraces some crimes about which Robin has already written but, no doubt, it is full of the interesting bits of background information that she has the uncanny knack of uncovering.

I’m looking forward to reading it.

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CRIME WRITER LOUISE WELSH TALKS

November 13th 2008 12:11

In 2007 Scottish writer Louise Welsh spoke at a Sisters in Crime event in Melbourne. She talked about writing, about the joy of being published and about falling in love with your protagonist. The softly-spoken lesbian also gave her audience the pleasure of hearing her read an excerpt from her most recent book The Bullet Trick. Louise is introduced with the recitation of the couplet which opens her first book – The Cutting Room. It is from John Keats ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,’ – that is all Ye know on earth and all ye need to know The narrative which follows this couplet is in sharp contrast to the poetic beginning; as the narrator, a homosexual auctioneer, draws the reader tightly into his seedy Glasgow world. Asked who the ‘voice’ is, Louise has this to say: The voice belongs to Rilke, who is his own man. In some ways, although he’s not a detective, he is like a traditional detective in that he has a quest. He knows the city very well. He knows particular people in the city very well. But he has a quest that he must go through alone and at times, when I was writing it, I was consciously thinking about the detective genre. And part of the reason that he’s cold is because of detectives like Marlowe and Spenser. But perhaps part of what is not traditional about Rilke - and I know there are many gay detective protagonists - is that he is a gay protagonist who is not the murderer, not the killer. He doesn’t jump out of the closet with a knife and stab somebody. Rilke is very much out of the closet and very happy with where he is.'

The physical description of Rilke is compared, by Louise's interviewer, to Nick Cave and she is asked about the gothic sensibilities of this book.‘I’d been thinking about the Gothic at the time of writing this. I’d run a second-hand bookshop for many years. As we do, I’d come to a point where I wanted to change what I was doing but I didn’t want to re-train. And I thought “well I’ll teach some classes at Adult Education. They’ll let me in there.” And in the way of night school teachers, I was always just one week ahead of the class. But I became more and more interested in the Gothic and I think a lot of those conventions were very fresh in my mind when I started to write this book. Rilke is not quite your Byronic hero – he’s maybe more of an anti-hero. I really like him. I have an awful lot of affection for him. He’s almost a real person to me.’ Asked to comment on a rumour that, during the staging of The Cutting Room, she had been unable to look at the actor (also responsible for the adaptation) who was playing the part of Rilke Louise admits that this actor so resembled her character that when he came on stage she had to shield her eyes. ‘It was too strange. It was too weird. I don’t know how people feel that have had things adapted for film but it was just a bit too much for me and also, strangely, I really fancied him which is something I don’t normally do.' This admission causes a burst of laughter in the audience. Louise confesses that she was worried that, while watching the performance, she might actually start saying the lines and run onstage. Asked about the themes of sex, violence and women which is contained in this novel, Louise says that she was influenced by a book she was reading which explored images of women as the dead female form.'We see this image reproduced over and over and over again in advertising and fashion shoots. It’s an image that is used quite cheaply. If we look we can see all these billboards of very beautiful, very passive women that could be dead and I guess that informs this novel to some extent. As a writer, I want the reader to be shocked. I want the reader to know why Rilke feels compelled to search out the origins of this photo. That was part of the difficulty of this book. To make people see this image, to make them feel it yet not be doing what it is I disliked.’ On the subject of the labelling of her writing, Louise says that although she was aware of using gothic rather than crime conventions, her main concern was would anybody read this, rather than where it would be placed on the bookshelf. ‘I wasn’t really sure if it fitted into the crime novel genre and I think that’s fine because definitions and categorizations are something, perhaps, that writers shouldn’t think too much about. If you start thinking about that then you’ll start bending what you have to say to fit. When you start to think about the market you’re doomed really.’When the subject of the literary/crime divide is later raised Louise responds ‘I did an event with Ian Rankin and we were talking about this. He was, perhaps quite rightly, getting agitated and I was saying I don’t really feel that way. Maybe I should get more agitated about it but I do feel that the divide is getting less. Michael Collins, the crime -writer is a fantastic writer, full-stop and he’s been on the Booker shortlist twice so I think the idea that crime-fiction is not regarded highly is probably still true but I think the division is getting less.‘I think there are some very bad literary novels out there and perhaps if we start to think of literary fiction - whatever that means - as a genre then that may put things in perspective. But I think we name things in order to be able to talk about them.Louise’s second book, a novella, Tamburlaine Must Die charts the last days of playwright Christopher Marlowe, contemporary of Shakespeare and subject of deep fascination and speculation. Praised for its evocation of time and place and criticised for its brevity, the work is a totally believable imagining of another era. About the language used in this book, Louise says ‘Obviously people in the 16th century did not speak as we speak. I read a lot of literature of the period. I read a lot of historical dictionaries and made up vocabulary lists. And I tried to think about the way in which they’d speak.’Louise was asked to contribute to a series on dead novelists but was required to sell the idea back to the publisher. To do this she used the image of beautiful velvet being dragged through the mud.

‘I think that is a lot of what the Elizabethan Age was like. They have this fine art, this music, science is at its height for the period, navigation, exploration, politics, courtly love and then…MUD. Mud and shit and smells and stinks and piggish behaviour. So this contrast was very attractive to me, but also the parallels this time has with our own age because for me there wasn’t much point in writing a historical fiction unless it somehow pertained to our time as well.’Louise elaborates on the structure of her third book, The Bullet Trick, which she claims was fun to write, by giving a visual demonstration of the intersection of two narrative strands causing an explosion.‘The protagonist, William Wilson, is a conjurer. He’s Glaswegian but has lived in London for a long time. Part of it is set now, in Glasgow, and William is telling us what happened to him a year ago in London and Berlin.’As to the source of her inspiration for The Bullet Trick, Louise tells us that it began with a request to write a travel article which was to include a stay in the city of her choice - within reason. ‘It was the anniversary of the movie, Cabaret, so I said: Can I go to Berlin and check out the cabaret scene? See if it’s still going? Me and my partner went and we had a ball, and I think this stayed with me - these images and these ideas - and they were just kind of in there for a couple of years.’ It is suggested to Louise that William, like her other two male protagonists, is on a path to redemption and reveals himself by what he does and not by what he says. Louise responds'I did want to bring William down to the very bottom. Down to the point where he really has to decide well, is he going to pull himself up or is he just gonna sink? Is that the end? And part of what I thought about William was that he’s like a lot of us. He’s a lot better than he thinks he is. William has a very poor opinion of himself and part of his whole trouble comes from his inability to believe in himself. We talk about this a lot; this lack of confidence that I think was instilled into a lot of us through the educational system which tells us to shut-up and keep quiet.’After some talk about the writing courses that she teaches, Louise is asked: can you teach someone to write?‘No of course you can’t teach anyone to write. I think that a lot of it is giving people confidence, giving people some time, giving them the right environment and some tools of the trade. You can show them that wanting to be a writer is not a silly thing.’

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RITUAL - MO HAYDER

November 8th 2008 05:53

REVIEW

Phoebe “Flea” Marley, a police diver, recovers a severed human hand from the Bristol harbour and forensic testing shows that the amputation took place while the victim was still alive. The search for the body, dead or alive, leads Flea into dark corners of the world of African muti (traditional medicine) where human body parts are valued for their supposedly magical properties. *Before long, DI Jack Caffery arrives on the scene. He has transferred from London, lugging a load of emotional baggage and Flea is instantly attracted to the dark-haired loner; as he is to her. She is still grappling with grief and her own guilt over the deaths of her parents and Caffery carries the burden of memory, of the long- ago disappearance of his brother whom he believes was abducted by a paedophile. *The hands (a second is discovered) are identified as belonging to a young drug-addicted male prostitute named Mossy and the search for both victim and perpetrator connects to Flea’s world in more ways than one. *Ritual held my interest from start to finish (I took it with me on a long walk because I didn’t want to stop reading). Mo Hayder has constructed a plot that proceeds at a natural pace, easily accommodates uncensored descriptions of bloody violence and neatly intersects several threads of action. The characters are all distinguishable and individual so, even though Flea Marley comes across as a bit of a drip - in spite of her expertise - she’s a likeable and believable drip. Jack Caffery, on the other hand, has undeniable charm. In her notes at the end of the novel, Mo Hayder has this to say about her creation: 'Detective Inspector Jack Caffery is my poster boy. My beau, my BF, my petit copain. In him I was writing myself a fantasy lover…I was intrigued by a man who illustrated the dichotomy in a world where law and order increasingly tread a hazy line, where the protector can be the aggressor, the public servant the criminal. Jack Caffery is constantly challenged to define himself as good or bad.’ *She elaborates on the appeal of this character and describes how many readers have approached her to tell her how much they fancy Jack Caffery. What greater acknowledgement of a creation of real substance could an author ask for? *My one criticism of Ritual is that the character of Walking Man seems extraneous. This wise tramp has the obvious function of revealing Jack’s history and his pre-occupations, but still he seems unnecessary. *The media release for Ritual calls it the ‘terrifying opening novel in the Walking Man series’ so presumably this character, based on a real-life tramp that Mo Hayder encountered, is to be further explored. Perhaps his relationship with Jack Caffery will develop more satisfactorily in the next novel.

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SAY GOODBYE

November 6th 2008 09:20

REVIEW: SAY GOODBYE by LISA GARDNER

Say Goodbye is ‘thriller’ number 10 by Lisa Gardner, an established writer of romance who successfully morphed into a crime fiction author. *This story opens with a not half bad sex scene that is followed by the musings of an unnamed abuse victim (which intersperses the narrative) then moves on to the main players. It begins to read like a collection of impressions that never form a cohesive body; scribblings that have been forced into a single plot, with misshapen results. *Number one player, FBI Special Agent Kimberley Quincy, is the ‘total package’ we are told –‘beautiful, brainy and pedigreed’. The daughter of a retired agent, she has something to prove to her childhood-absent father. Her mother (and possibly her sister) have been murdered - although this is never fully explained - and she is suffering the obligatory personal conflict: Her husband is harassing her to ease up on her workload now that she is pregnant. We first meet Kimberley Quincy working a crime scene. Gardner has done her homework and it shows – with every clunky technical/statistical/explana tory exchange that she has with fellow officers. Kimberley is led into the pursuit of a serial killer who is targetting prostitutes and the reader is made aware that the killer is also a paedophile who has abducted pre-pubescent boys and subjected them to a life of dominance, control and abuse. Or death. *Gradually it transpires that that the paedophilic prostitute-killer and the soliloquising abuse victim are one and the same. What is intended to be a sharply drawn observation of the cyclical nature of sexual abuse is just confusing. There is too much switching between past and present, victim and perpetrator. And the lack of naming, in order to facilitate the surprise factor, makes it even harder to follow. *The killer calls himself Dinchara (spell it backwards!) and the spider motif is relentless. A vaguely interesting snippet of information about spiders heads each chapter but casting this web across the story does nothing to unify its components. Gardner builds towards a climax that has everyone on Dinchara’s trail, including Kimberley’s visiting father (and his girlfriend) to whom she reveals details about the case which are, presumably, confidential. *When she is not displaying her knowledge of investigative procedures, the author is good with the natural flow of talk between people even when what they are saying is inane – and it often is. Most other characters are used as sounding boards for Kimberley’s intelligent, wise or deeply felt speeches or to bolster the impossible leaps she makes towards the workable theories that drive the plot. Gardner conveys something of the horror that the abuse victim must endure but the fetid canals of the perpetrator’s psyche remain unexplored. *The character of Dinchara doesn’t ring true. A paedophile, who cruelly abuses very young boys and is who is also the hunter and torturer of young women? An individual who exerts total control over victims who are free to escape? Particularly unbelievable is his relationship with Ginny, a street-smart and conniving young prostitute who maintains her connection with him rather than help the police. The author offers a weak explanation, using a brief exchange between Kimberley and Sal, her partner on the case, in which they allude to Stockholm syndrome. It is unconvincing but by this stage, having persevered with the book, the reader will have surrendered any reasonable expectation.

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