Category Archives: Australian crime fiction

Book review: Whispering Death

Posted on August 15, 2011 by Andrew Nette| 1 Comment

Why is the police procedural sub genre of crime fiction so popular? Is it something to do with our roots as a nation of convicts? Do we have a voyeuristic fascination with the inner workings of the police force?

Or maybe it’s just because for the most part – and many will disagree with me here – they provide a relatively straightforward, escapist read? Nothing wrong with that. Someone commits a crime and the cops need to solve it. There’s a bit of violence, usually a bit of sex, we get a few insights into modern day police methods and everything is pretty much neatly wrapped up by the end.

Whispering Death is the sixth of Garry Disher’s Peninsular murder mysteries, so named because they take place on the Mornington Peninsular, a rapidly growing area south east of Melbourne.

If you like police procedurals, chances are this book is already on your to read list, so enough said. If you’re not, then this is a good place to start because as usual journeyman Australian crime author Disher delivers a superior product.

Whispering Death opens with sergeant Ellen Destry on her way to Europe to study how the police tackle sex crimes, leaving her lover and veteran cop, Inspector Hal Challis, to deal with a rapist who wears a police uniform and has a sophisticated knowledge of forensics.… Read more

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Posted in Australian crime fiction, Book Reviews, Garry Disher

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Books my father read

Posted on July 25, 2011 by Andrew Nette| 16 Comments

July 24 was the fourth anniversary of the death of my father, William Nette.

He died peacefully in hospital on the Queensland Gold Coast, where he had retired with my mother many years earlier. He was 86.

Like many father-son relationships, we didn’t always get on. That’s putting it mildly. But he brought a lot of positive influences to my life.

He turned me onto the joy of jazz, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Art Blakey and Dave Brubeck. He had a large collection of 78s wrapped in brown paper that he’d secreted out of Papua New Guinea, where he was an armed forces disc jockey during the war, along with cartons of cigarettes he later sold in Australia.

Only recently have I realised he’s also responsible for much of the delight I find in reading and my particular fondness of crime fiction.

I remember the pivotal moment quite clearly. I was thirteen. He came home from work one day and, to my complete horror, announced he was withholding my allowance until I started reading books (comics, which I loved, didn’t count).

He set the first two books, Robinson Crusoe, followed by Treasure Island. They were heavy looking volumes with no pictures that had belonged to my father when he was a boy.… Read more

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Posted in Australian crime fiction, Australian pulp fiction, Carter Brown, Crime fiction, Horwitz Publications, Larry Kent, Pan Books, Pulp paperback cover art, Vintage pulp paperback covers

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Not another post about the crisis of the publishing industry

Posted on June 6, 2011 by Andrew Nette| 3 Comments

This is not going to be another post about the crisis in the publishing industry.

Well, not quite.

The Emerging Writers’ Festival has been running over the last week in Melbourne.

The events I attended, including the crime genre panel at the Wheeler Centre last Thursday night (more about that later), were great. Good speakers, interesting discussion, a refreshing absence of hipsterdom.

I’ll certainly be marking the week off in my diary next year and trying to attend more events.

Not surprisingly, a central theme of the proceedings was the future of publishing. Much of the discussion focused on whether it was in crisis or not.

Before going any further, it’s important to set the record straight. I love books. I mean the paper kind you can smell and touch and thumb through. I’m not going to be coy about it, I really hope the manuscript of my crime novel set in Cambodia gets to become a book made out of a dead tree.

Hopefully you’ll be able to buy it from a neighbourhood bookstore owned by someone you’re on first name terms with. Shit, I even hope I make some money off it.

I also love newspapers, party politics, Hawaiian shirts and a whole lot of other things that have an uncertain future.… Read more

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Posted in Australian crime fiction, Kerry Greenwood

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Crime time at the Emerging Writers’ Festival

Posted on May 23, 2011 by Andrew Nette| 1 Comment

Melbourne’s Emerging Writers’ Festival gets underway later this week. The agenda features a mind-boggling array of writers, editors, publishers and other literary types.

This year, the Festival includes a series of panels on genre writing. Young adult, speculative fiction, romance and crime are all going to get a going over.

And guess who’s got a slot on the crime fiction panel on Thursday, June 2?

Yes, I’m going to be one of the three panel members. I’m the emerging writer (go team!).

Also on the panel is Jarad Henry, policy advisor to the Victorian police by day and author of two books, the most recent of which is the 2008 novel Blood Sunset.

The third person is veteran crime writer, Kerry Greenwood. Greenwood is the author of approximately fifty books, including the well-known series featuring the female sleuth, Phryne Fisher.

I’m sure it will be a great discussion so come along.

This is going to be my first literary panel and I have to admit I’m a little nervous, especially given the experience of my co-panelists. Carmel has asked me to send her my thoughts about being an emerging author. Hmm, I’m going to have to think about that. Any aspiring or emerging writers reading this post who’ve got ideas about what I should say, are encouraged to drop me a line.… Read more

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Posted in Australian crime fiction, Kerry Greenwood

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Peril in the sex jungle: sixties Australian pulp

Posted on May 15, 2011 by Andrew Nette| 9 Comments

The popularity of my recent post on the hey-day of Australia’s local pulp fiction industry in the 1940s and 1950s has provided me with an excuse for a reprise, this time with a selection of pulp paperback covers from the 1960s.These are sourced from the titles I’ve collected over the years from opportunity shops and second hand books dealers, hence the poor condition of some of the covers.

I don’t know of any history of pulp fiction publishing in Australia in the sixties and early seventies (but I’d would love to hear from any reader that does).

Although the local publishing industry was hit hard when restrictions on the import of foreign paperbacks were lifted in 1959, it was by no means eradicated.

In addition to local reprints of foreign titles, publishing houses such as Horwitz, Cleveland and Scripts continued to pump out a selection of titles, including crime, westerns, war and romance stories.

As was the case in the UK and America, in the sixties Australian pulp publishers started producing kitchen sink and exploitation fiction, often dressed up as lurid exposés of drug use and sexual promiscuity. These fed off mainstream society’s fears of youth rebellion and changing sexual standards.

Exhibit A is the following selection of locally produced pulps that expose the sleazy underbelly, real and imagined, of Sydney’s Kings Cross.… Read more

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Posted in Australian crime fiction, Australian pulp fiction, Crime fiction, Horwitz Publications, Pulp paperback cover art, Scripts Publications, Vintage pulp paperback covers

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