Sixty Minutes with Garry Disher at the Crime & Justice Festival

Posted on November 8, 2013 by Andrew Nette| 2 Comments

Bitter WashA quick heads up that I’ll be interviewing Australian crime writing legend Garry Disher at the Reader’s Feast Crime & Justice Festival, on Sunday, November 17.

It’s no secret I’m a huge fan of Disher. Have been ever since I picked up the first of his Wyatt novels, Kickback, in the early nineties. He’s got a new one out, Bitter Wash Road. We’ll be talking about that, his other books, including the Wyatt and Challis and Destry books series, and his tips to crime writing. If you’re luck, we might even discuss the time he wrote for television.

I’m half way through Bitter Wash Road and it’s terrific. Set in rural South Australia, it involves a police whistle blower and an investigation into the hit and run killing of a teenage girl that unearths terrible secrets.

The plot is as hardboiled as they come and the writing is simply wonderful.

Dare I say, it might even be Disher’s book best yet.

I’ll post a longer review of this book in the next week or so.

If you have the time, do come along to my discussion with Garry. It takes place 10am, Sunday, November 17 at the Reader’s Feast Bookstore, 162 Collins Street, Melbourne. The ticket will set you back $6, which is not too steep a price to listen to one of the best Australian crime writers working today.… Read more

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Book review: The Cambodian Book of the Dead

Posted on November 3, 2013 by Andrew Nette| 4 Comments

TheCambodianBookOfTheDead-144dpiI’ve been meaning to read Tom Vator’s debut novel, The Cambodian Book of the Dead for a while now. I’m glad I finally got around to doing the task, because it’s one hell of a ride. Amusing, horrifying, at times frustrating, always perceptive.

The Cambodian Book of the Dead is not for everyone. I was probably predisposed to the book before I’d read the first page, because of my fondness for crime fiction set in Asia generally and Cambodia in particular, a country I’ve spent a lot of time in and the setting of my own debut crime novel, Ghost Money.

As far as I could tell, The Cambodian Book of the Dead takes place in the early part of last decade. The Khmer Rouge insurgency is over. Pol Pot is dead, murdered by his own lieutenants in one last bout of bloodletting. Cambodia hovers between the civil war wracked basket case it was in the nineties and the must-see tourist destination it is now. Investment is starting to flow in, but things are slow. The ruling elite is still in the early stages of organising the wholesale plunder of the country they are carrying out today.

Maier is the Asia specialist for a top flight German private investigations firm, before that an international correspondent.… Read more

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Posted in Asian noir, Book Reviews, Crime fiction and film from Cambodia, Noir fiction

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Perth and crime fiction: an imaginary garden with real toads

Posted on October 28, 2013 by Andrew Nette| 2 Comments

1970s-Near-William-Street

A couple of weeks ago, I reviewed Zero At the Bone, the latest book by Perth based crime writer, David Whish-Wilson. Zero At the Bone is a sequel to Whish-Wilson’s 2010 book, Line of Sight, which established him firmly in my mind as the president of the, albeit very small, club of Australian writers who do noir fiction and do it well.

This week, I’m thrilled to host David on Pulp Curry, with a wonderfully written and nuanced piece on the historical origins of Zero At the Bone and Line of Sight. It’s also a great insight into his home town of Perth, a place where, as he writes “the brighter the light, the deeper the shadow”.

Dave’s next book is Perth, part of the New South Books city series, out in December. 

David Whish-WilsonZero at the Bone had its genesis in a quote supplied by my brother, and it’s one I reference in the novel, by Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes, who plundered the Aztec Empire in the 16th Century. He said that “I and my men suffer from a disease of the heart that can only be cured by gold.”

This is a pretty honest assessment of the motivations behind Cortes’ journey to the New World, but the story of this maddening desire for gold, and the story of the city of Perth, where Zero at the Bone is set, are also closely linked.… Read more

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Posted in Australian crime fiction, Australian noir, Crime fiction, David Whish-Wilson, True crime

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Pulp Friday: On The Yard

Posted on October 25, 2013 by Andrew Nette| Leave a comment

On the YardOn The Yard by Malcolm Braly picks up on two themes I’ve examined in recent Pulp Friday posts.

The first is prison pulp, in this instance, written by someone who actually did time. A lot.

The second is the blurred line, particularly evident in the sixties and early seventies, between pulp fiction and literature.

On The Yard First published in 1967. The above is from the Fawcett Crest Books edition published a year later in 1968.

On The Yard, which is on my TBR pile, is the story of two characters, Chilly Willy, who heads the prison’s black market in drugs and sex, and of Paul, who is in jail for murdering his wife.

It’s generally seen critics as vivid depiction of penitentiary life, by a writer who spent many years in prisons, including Folsom and San Quentin. The New York Review of Books called it “arguably the finest work of literature ever to emerge from a US prison”.

Braly wrote three other novels and a biography, False Starts: A Memoir of San Quentin and other Prisons. This detailed his slow decent into crime from relatively well off beginnings. He was never a major criminal, most of his prison sentences arose from bullshit jobs. He once robbed a dentist of eleven dollars, which he subsequently lost escaping.… Read more

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Posted in Fawcett Gold Medal Books, Pulp fiction, Pulp Friday, True crime

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Chopper Read and our fascination with true crime

Posted on October 21, 2013 by Andrew Nette| 1 Comment

ASS Chopper

Two weeks ago Overland Editor Jeff Sparrow posted a short piece on this site on the passing of Melbourne criminal identity, Mark ‘Chopper’ Read. It centred on the obvious, although important point the crimes of rich get treated very differently to those of the poor.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the media’s treatment of Read’s death. Partly because as a crime writer I feel implicated by association in the media’s often-salacious interest in true crime, and it raises questions about aspects of what we, as writers of true or fictional crime, do and how we do it.

It’s also interesting to ponder why Read became such a public figure and, by extension, why contemporary Australia is so fascinated with the criminal.

You can read the rest of this piece here on the Overland website.

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