Tag Archives: Sulari Gentill

The comfort of crimes past? Why we love period crime procedurals

Posted on December 13, 2015 by Andrew Nette| 2 Comments

sherlock-holmes

You only have to take a quick look at the television guide or go to the crime section of your nearest bookstore to know that period crime procedurals – crime stories set in the past – are popular.

Showing or having recently aired on free-to-air television have been Foyle’s War, a police procedural show set during or immediately after the Second World War; Dr Blake Mysteries, set in Ballarat in the 1950s; Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, based on the successful books by Melbourne writer Kerry Greenwood set in late-1920s Melbourne; andAquarius, dealing with the murders committed by Charles Manson in 1960s California. These programs feed into a much wider canon of popular period shows – everything from Downton Abbey, to Mad Men and Wolf Hall, the adaption of Hilary Mantel’s 2009 bestselling Booker Prize-winning novel.

Our desire for period crime procedurals is just as big on the printed page. In Australia alone, there are Sulari Gentill’s books featuring the 1930s sleuth, Roland Sinclair, Robert Gott’s police procedurals set in the newly formed homicide squad in 1940s Melbourne, and Geoffrey McGeachin’s award winning Melbourne police detective Charlie Berlin, to name a few.

What is driving this? Is this a symptom of our refusal to come to grips with modern reality?… Read more

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Posted in Australian crime fiction, Australian television history, Crime fiction, Crime film, Kerry Greenwood

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My year in books: Karen Chisholm

Posted on December 12, 2013 by Andrew Nette| 2 Comments

I’ve very happy to welcome Karen Chisholm as the next contributor to the ‘my year in books’ series I’m running on this site over December.

Karen probably does need any introduction for many of you, especially readers in Australia. For those of you who are not familiar with her work, I think it’s accurate to say she’s one of the foremost crime fiction reviewers in the country. She’s certainly one of the most prolific. If you want proof, check out her great site, AustCrimeFiction.

Over to you, Karen.

Up front, I hate doing best of book lists. Obviously there’s the chance that I’m going to change my mind a nanosecond after crafting the definitive list. But the major problem is that if you’re as lucky as I am to read a lot of really good books every year, getting those numbers down to five ends up with some very arbitrary decisions being made. Which never seems fair, particularly as there is some seriously great storytelling going on out there.

So, in no particular order, and apologies for the massive cheating going on, the book(s) that have stayed with me in 2013 are:

The Discword Series, Terry Pratchett

Nothing like starting a limited list cheating, but the Discworld Series is and will always include some of my all time favourite books.… Read more

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Posted in Australian crime fiction, Garry Disher, Noir fiction

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Book review: The Half-Child

Posted on December 23, 2010 by Andrew Nette| Leave a comment

We love a good guest review here at Pulp Curry and today’s is about a book very dear to me, Angela Savage’s The Half-Child. For readers who don’t follow Pulp Curry on a regular basis, in the interests of full disclosure I need to declare that Angela has been my partner in life (and crime) for the last 20 years. Her book, The Half-Child, is also a great read. Many thanks to Sulari Gentill, whose own crime novel, A Few Right Thinking Men, was published in 2010 by Pantera Press.

I am a greedy reader.

When I opened The Half-Child, Angela Savage’s second Jane Keeney crime novel, I looked forward to reacquainting myself with the streets of Thailand, about which Savage writes with an intimate knowledge and affection.

I wanted once again to be shown the colour, the contrast, the cultural crater of a place where West has hurtled into East.  I wanted to see past cliché: the neon, the sleaze, the confronting corruption, to the beauty of an ancient culture and a tenacious and adaptive people. On top of all this I wanted intrigue, excitement, perhaps a little romance, and definitely some humour.  I did start out by saying I was greedy.

The Half-Child completely satiated my literary gluttony and then offered me dessert!… Read more

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Posted in Angela Savage, Australian crime fiction, Crime fiction, Crime fiction and film from Thailand

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