Love & magic for grownups: ‘Cherrywood’ by Jock Serong
If versatility is a sign of a writer’s skill, then Australian author Jock Serong’s latest offering proves he has bucket loads of the stuff.
From his earlier works of surprising, emotive crime fiction, to his trilogy of historical fiction beginning with Preservation, he has explored darker aspects of the human psyche and behaviour.
Cherrywood is different in that it is a playful work that evokes themes of deep magic, while setting the work firmly in the prosaic Melbourne suburb of Fitzroy across two timelines – early twentieth century and the 1990’s.
There are two main characters. Thomas is heir to a Scottish industrialist family fortune who gambles it all on a fanciful scheme to build a paddlesteamer to ply its trade across the bay in Edwardian-era Melbourne. The boat is to be built entirely from a load of beautiful cherrywood, whose mysterious provenance in eastern Europe forms part of the novel’s backdrop of vague menance. He travels to Australia in search of his vision, followed later by his loving wife Lucy and their young daughter Annabelle. Fortune does not favour either the family or his plans.
In 1993, Martha is a lawyer working for a major law firm. She is a fish out of water, being clever but saddled with a conscience, in a company and surrounded by colleagues without one. One evening she stumbles across the Cherrywood, a pub she has not seen before in Fitzroy. She becomes obsessed with the place, as it seems to elude her efforts to find it again. Gradually her future, and the hotel’s, become intertwined…
The novel has many layers, all seemingly disparate, but its brilliance is the way they all interconnect by the end. There is so much here about love, and vision, and endurance, loss and grief, about the ordinary lives of people and the hurdles we must all overcome. The magic underlying the cherrywood motif is beautiful, subtle to begin with, intruiging enough to have this reader want to push on, to find the clues, to figure it all out along with Martha.
Readers familiar with Melbourne will enjoy the author’s descriptions of both the early years of the city and the version of thirty years ago. The Cherrywood of the title is very much at home in both.
Cherrywood is a novel that works as a modern fable, as historical fiction, as a love letter to Melbourne, as a romance. It’s a complex and beautiful novel.
It was published by HarperCollins in 2024.Unrecorded lives: ‘Tell Me Everything’ by Elizabeth Strout
Elizabeth Strout is a genius at the small moments. The lift of an arm, the turn of a head, a hand on a shoulder. A fallen blossom. Slushy snow on a sidewalk, wet shoes. A blush, a smile. Speaking, listening, being truly heard.
The small moments that build to make a friendship, a relationship, a marriage, a family. A life.
Tell Me Everything features characters from previous Strout novels such as Olive Ketteridge, Oh William! Lucy By the Sea. It is now post-Covid (or not quite, because Covid doesn’t seem to really go away, does it?) and Lucy and William have remained in their Maine house near the sea. Lucy’s friendship with local lawyer Bob Burgess has developed and deepened; they take regular long walks together where they talk – and really listen – to each other.
And who – who who who in this whole entire world – does not want to be heard?
Tell Me Everything p198Meanwhile Bob has taken on the defence of a local man accused of the murder of his mother. It’s a complicated case with many layers of hurt and history to uncover and understand.
Around Bob and Lucy, are other layers of hurt and misunderstanding as various members of their families struggle with illness, accidents, separation, grief and loss.
How each person deals with these inevitable setbacks are what makes up this novel’s dramatic sweep. Nothing out of the ordinary: they are the kinds of stumbling blocks to be found on the paths of most of us at some point or another, unless we blessed with a totally charmed life.
Another thread throughout are the visits Lucy pays to ninety year old Olive Kitteridge, during which they tell each other stories about people they have known – ‘unrecorded lives’. Some of the stories are almost unbearably painful, others shocking, a few mundane. But in their telling, the lives described are given meaning. And is that not what most of us seek in our lives – a meaning to the living of them?
So, in one sense Tell Me Everything is a novel where nothing in particular happens. In another, it’s a book where a great deal is happening a great deal of the time.
Tell Me Everything is a beautiful, gentle, heartfelt book. If you haven’t read the earlier books by this author, I would recommend you at least read Lucy by the Sea first, as it will help to place Lucy and William, Bob and Margaret, into the Maine town where this novel mainly takes place. Actually, do yourself a big favour and read all the books in this collection about Lucy, William, Bob and so on. Elizabeth Strout’s writing really is a masterclass in ‘less is more’, in subtlety and in using everyday language and keen observation to great effect.
Tell Me Everything was published by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Books, in 2024.
He’s back: ‘We Solve Murders’ by Richard Osman
I’ve missed the gang from Richard Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club series so much: Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim, and Ron, and their associated buddies. I wasn’t sure I would warm to Osman’s new series as much. I mean, how could any new characters be as wonderful as those four?
I needn’t have worried. While We Solve Murders features new characters, new crimes, and definitely a much more multinational setting, the charm and trademark humour is there, the quirkiness of many of the characters, the twisty plot guaranteeing a page-turning absorption.
As always for me, the crimes and plot are incidental. It’s the characters and their emotional arcs, and Osman’s dry humour, that grab me and keep me reading.
In this new series we meet three main protagonists. Steve is a retired cop, settled now in a small village in England’s New Forest. While he still grieves the death of his beloved wife Debbie, he’s become a part of this community: the pub quiz on Wednesday nights, the group of friends he meets there for lunches, his cat Trouble. He likes his routine and the predictable life he’s created here.
His daughter-in-law Amy, on the other hand, thrives on adrenaline and adventure as a private security officer who crisscrosses the world on the job. At the novel’s opening Amy is on a private island, tasked with keeping Rosie D’Antonia, famous author of thriller and crime novels, safe.
That’s where the novel starts but it doesn’t stay there long. Amy and Rosie begin a chase to find a killer before he or she can get to them, and Steve is – very reluctantly – dragged in to help.
It’s a complicated and at times madcap series of events from here that lead to the final showdown. In the process we get to know the threesome well and – speaking for myself at least – I was reluctant to part with them at the final page.
It is a measure of the author’s skill that he can leave the reader breathless on one page and then on the very next, have a scene between a father and son that is both incredibly moving and very funny, so that you don’t know if your tears are from sadness or from laughter.
I’m already looking forward to We Solve Murders #2
We Solve Murders was published by Penguin Random House in 2024.
‘The Serpent Bearer’ by Jane Rosenthal
What do a Jewish veteran of the Spanish Civil War, a glamorous British aristocrat, and a beautiful Hollywood screenwriter, have in common – and how do they all end up in Mexico in 1941, at the height of World War II?
That’s the riddle at the heart of this intruiging novel by US writer Jane Rosenthal, who deftly weaves her Jewish and southern heritage, along with research trips , into the book’s settings (South Carolina and the Yucatan region) to bring to life the humidity, mosquitos and lushness of the region, with the menace of the time and place.
Solly is a reluctant recruit to a newly formed US spy agency; he is tasked with infiltrating a group of Nazi collaborators and spies operating in the Yucatan. He discovers that there are plans afoot for a German invasion of the US, so the stakes are high.
He also discovers a motley group of refugees from Nazi atrocities in Europe who look to him for salvation. And, raising the stakes further, he learns that somewhere nearby in the Yucatan is Estelle, the British women whom he loved, then lost in Spain – and vowed to find again at whatever the cost.
But before he can get out of Mexico, there are many more discoveries awaiting Solly, both personal and political – all of them dangerous. How he steers his way through them makes for a page-turning, and at times quite moving, novel.
While Solly is the main protagonist, there are a cast of characters who ably support and enrich the narrative: particularly Estelle, Grace (the Hollywood writer who has, like Solly, been sent on a spy mission to Mexico) and Sister Immaculata, a nun who plays a vital role in the novel’s climactic scenes. These are women of agency and drive, with their own particular agendas, and important to the emotional and narrative arc of the story.
The descriptive passages are brilliant: I almost felt immobilised by the humidity myself even though I was reading in a much more comfortable environment!
The title refers to the ancient Greek myth of Ophichus, and the constellation of that name, depicting a man holding a snake, long associated with healing, transformation, and a bridge between death and life:
“It’s up there somewhere.” Grace had interrupted his thoughts. “The constellation of the Serpent Bearer, the god that brings the dead back to life. I wish we could do that, don’t you?’…
“All we can do is what we’ve done, Grace,” he whispered. “Bring souls back from the brink like those refugees …”
The Serpent Bearer loc.99%The Serpent Bearer is published by She Writes Press and distributed by Simon & Schuster in April 2025
My thanks to the publishers and to NetGalley for an advanced reading copy to review.Nurturing peace: ‘The holy and the broken’ by Ittay Flescher
Since the Hamas attacks on Israel in October 2023 and the resulting devastation of Gaza by Israeli defence forces since, I have been silenced. How could I put into words my revulsion at the violence, my despair at the apparent intractability of the centuries-old enmity? I knew too little about the history of the conflict, the bewildering tangle of geo-political and religious factors that have contibuted to the bitterness poisoning generations of Israelis and Palestinians.
Many of my left-leaning friends and contacts were vocal in their criticism of the Israeli government for the brutality of the retribution wreaked on innocents in Gaza, including women, children, the elderly, the sick. I could not disagree with this. Bombing hospitals, denying medical and water supplies to civilians surely can never be justified.
But the chant at ‘pro-Palestinian’ rallies of from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free – what does that mean? That the Jewish population should be expunged from the land? To go where? And then?
When I saw Ittay Flescher’s book title and subtitle, I knew I had to read it. The holy and the broken references a line from Leonard Cohen’s beautiful song ‘Hallelujah’, which Flescher argues would be Jerusalem’s anthem if she were a soundtrack rather than a city. As a place of deep and abiding significance for three of the world’s major religions, Jerusalem and the land that surrounds it is certainly holy. But torn apart over centuries by ancient battles, crusades and modern warfare, it would be difficult to argue that it is not also broken.
And the subtitle: A cry for Israeli-Palestinian peace from a land that must be shared positions both the book and its author from within the land in question, not a book written by an outsider, but by someone intimately familiar with the land and its people. And importantly, someone who believes that the way forward is to imagine a different future for both Palestinians and Israelis.
The author is someone who has worked as a peace builder and educator for many years, both in Jerusalem as the education director at Kids4Peace, an interfaith youth movement for Israelis and Palestinians, and as a high-school educator in Melbourne.
His book opens with a personal account of the October 7 Hamas attacks from the perspective of an Israeli man in Jerusalem: hour by hour, then day by day, both absorbed and repelled by what he was seeing and hearing on the news, wanting to turn away but also needing to know. Seeing his country become instantly united by this existential threat; opposition to the government seemingly shut down overnight.
Then he draws back and begins to reflect and to question.
In Flescher’s view, the core of the tragedy between the river and the sea is a deep and reciprocal misreading of the other. Here he touches on education, media and journalism, language difference, even religious texts: all can play a part in either cementing difference and stereotypes, or affirming the humanity of everyone who lives there.
All have suffered historic and ongoing trauma. Palestinian and Israeli families experience daily pain and heartache at the loss of loved ones in senseless acts of violence. Their religious traditions feature deep, historic connections with the same land.
He emphasises the importance of building grassroots connections across religious and language divides; the kind of connections that occur outside political structures. Take the politics out of it; the people who have the most to gain from peace are youngsters, their parents, friends and neighbours. People who just want to get on with their lives.
It involves recognising each other’s humanity, and understanding that the love Palestinian and Israeli parents hold for our children is the same, as is the profound grief we experience when they are taken from us.
It means embracing the notion that injustice anywhere poses a threat to justice everywhere and that security of one side requires security for the other.
The holy and the broken pp 222-223The most moving section of the book for me was found in the two letters the author wrote to future Israeli and Palestinian teenagers, which come towards the end of the book. They beautifully encapsulate his vision for what the land he holds so dear could be like, ‘when there is peace.’
If, like me, you have been at a loss as to how to think about or discuss the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, or wish there was an alternative to the black-and-white rhetoric of much of the public debate on the issue, I urge you to read this book. It offers another perspective and a welcome glimmer of hope on an otherwise very dark horizon.
At the time of writing this post, the author has planned a number of book launch dates in Australia. I am going to the Sydney one. Perhaps I will see some of you there.
For more information about Ittay, his book or his lifelong work for peace, you can visit his website here.
The holy and the broken is published by HarperCollins in January 2025.
My thanks to the publishers for a review copy.2024: My year in books (and what’s in store for 2025)
In 2024 I participated in three reading challenges again, always a fun way to keep variety in my reading diet. Sometimes the results at the end of a year can be surprising; this is one of those times.
In the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge I undertook to read 15 books of historical fiction – I came in right on target. It is easily my favourite genre of fiction.
For 2025, I will choose that same target in this challenge.
In the Cloak and Dagger Reading Challenge, I chose the ‘Amateur Sleuth’ target of 5-15 books, and hit 14 books, so that’s a giveaway that crime fiction is another favourite of my genres. I’ll go for around that many again this year.The surprise result for me this year was the Non-Fiction Reading Challenge, where I chose a conservative target of ‘nibbler’, aiming for 6 books. Instead I read a whopping 16 non-fiction books in 2024! I’m not sure what that means, but perhaps I should choose a higher target for 2025? Well, I’ll probably aim for ‘nibbler’ again and see how I go.
I have a private challenge of my own, to read more books by First Nations authors, in any genre. In 2024 my reading included 10 works by Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander writers: encompassing fiction, non-fiction, and children’s books. In 2025 I hope to equal or better that number.
As always, I am indebted to publishers, especially HarperCollins, and to NetGalley, for sending advanced copies of books for review. I also thank authors who have approached me asking if I would read and review their work.
I know it can be a scary thing to put your writing out into the world and ask for feedback. I never approach the task of reviewing a book lightly. Someone has put months (usually years) of work into research, drafting, rewriting, redrafting, editing, rewriting, editing again, and again, and again…until the finished product is finally put into their hands. For this reason I treat each and every book with the respect it deserves. And I thank each author and publisher for allowing me the opportunity to read and review their work.
So, on to 2025. I wish all my fellow readers a wonderful bookish year ahead.
Brilliant insight: ‘More or Less Maddy’ by Lisa Genova
I’ve read two previous novels by American nueroscientist and author Lisa Genova, and loved them both. Still Alice (made into a feature film) and Left Neglected offered fascinating insights into early onset dementia and a brain injury known as Left Neglect, respectively. More or Less Maddy likewise tells a very human story behind a medical diagnosis that devastates individuals and their families.
When bipolar disorder strikes Maddy, a young college student from a comfortable middle class family in Connecticut, she is already struggling with a sense of not fitting in. While her sister and brother seem to belong to the picture perfect world of their parents, happy with the already mapped-out life trajectories of education and career pathways, marriage, family and lovely home, Maddy dreams of a career as a stand-up comedian in New York.
Her first episode of mania at first feels wonderful. It rockets her out of the depression she has suffered for months, seemingly overnight. Suddenly she feels she can do anything, achieve anything. She doesn’t need to sleep, she writes brilliant comedy, and is sure she will soon be writing an authorised biography of Taylor Swift, her artistic heroine.
It all comes to a sticky end and that is when her distraught and frightened family step in and she is confronted with hospital, therapy, doctors and medication. She is fortunate to be connected with a knowledgable and empathic doctor who skillfully guides both Maddy and her troubled family on this new and frightening journey.
But there are plenty of pitfalls, not least of which is the diagnosis itself. Maddy’s struggles with the lifelong nature of her condition, and the burden of the stigma it carries, are brilliantly and sensitively portrayed in the novel; as are those of her family, who only want to keep her safe.
How to, or indeed whether to tell friends, old and new, of her condition, is a preoccupation. As is coping with the side effects of the various new drugs she must take. Keeping to a pretty strict lifestyle regimen: no late nights, no illicit drugs or alcohol, eating a healthy diet, watching her mood like a hawk, keeping a mood journal…all rather tiresome for a ‘normal’ twenty year-old.
But of course that’s just it. Once she has heard that word – bipolar – Maddy can never feel normal again.
I cared for Maddy a great deal, and could not wait to return to her story each time I had a chance to pick up the book.
The author does not pull punches. Maddy’s situation is not prettied up: there are relapses and mistakes, some that made me want to skip pages. But I read on because I knew this was all a necessary part of Maddy’s story. The ending is not tied up in a neat bow but there is hope for a better future for Maddy and those who love her.
If you see this book in your local bookstore or library, please do read it. It goes a long way to humanise this mental disorder that a suprising number of people live with. Lisa Genova has such a gift and I can’t wait to see what topic she might tackle next.
More or Less Maddy is published by Allen & Unwin in January 2025.
My thanks to the publishers and NetGalley for an early review copy.Vivid colonial story: ‘The Governor, His Wife and His Mistress’ by Sue Williams
The third work of Australian historical fiction by Sue Williams, The Governor, His Wife and His Mistress tells the story of the naval officer who became the third governor of the British colony of New South Wales, but also the lesser-known entwined stories of the two women who shared parts of his life.
Williams has done this twice before, with great effect. Elizabeth and Elizabeth focused on the wives of Governor Lachlan Macquarie and John Macarthur. That Bligh Girl introduced Anna Bligh, the daughter of the notorious William Bligh (of ‘Mutiny on the Bounty’ fame) who replaced Gidley King as Governor in 1808.
As with those earlier novels, this new book gives a fabulous insight into the earliest, troubled years of the colony, from the point of view of women. A point of view usually overlooked in official histories of the men who, let’s be honest, made most of the decisions in those times.
Actually, this novel gives a vivid picture of the establishment of two colonies, because Gidley King was sent to put down British roots on Norfolk Island before returning to New South Wales. The author’s research is lightly handled but readers are privy to the many difficulties at both Port Jackson (later Sydney) and the even more remote Norfolk, and the logistical, moral and emotional challenges faced by successive governors.
By most historical accounts, Gidley King was an able and a fair and even handed adminsitrator. It is in his personal affairs that the other side of the man’s character are illuminated.
In this, he was definitely a man of his time and milieu. Men of his rank and situation often thought nothing of taking a convict wife as mistress, especially on the long voyage to the colonies. By the time the transport ships arrived, many had a baby on the way.
This is what happened to Ann Inett, a seamstress who had fallen on hard times when her soldier lover was killed in the Revolutionary War in America, leaving her with two small children to raise alone. One desperate crime sees Ann wrenched from her children, transported to New South Wales on a First Fleet ship, part of the great experiment of setting up a settlement from nothing on the other side of the world. Gidley King invites her to be his housekeeper, attracted by her obliging nature and quiet demeanour and, as they say, ‘one thing leads to another…’ A very common tale, part of Australia’s foundation story.
Dare I say it, more relevant to many modern Australians than the ANZAC story?
Before long, Ann has two young children with him, they are sent to Norfolk Island to endure even harder conditions there, then he is ordered to return to England…what will become of her?
It’s no spoiler to relate the next bit. Gidley King does return to Sydney. He had promised Ann marriage on his return but instead he brings back a wife, who is already expecting a baby!
It is to the author’s credit that she manages to relate this part of the story in a way which made me want to keep reading, rather than throw the book across the room. She took me into Gidley King’s head and his world view. Not a pleasant place, I admit, but it allowed me to see the constraints (as he saw them) on his moral and personal choices. So very different to today’s views. As I often say, people are no different, essentially, but society’s beliefs and expectations certainly change over time.
And as mentioned above, he was among many, many soldiers, sailors and officers who did exactly the same thing back then. Not an excuse. Just background. Captain David Collins, for example, who became the colony’s Judge Advocate, took convict Nancy Yeates, as mistress. She features in this novel too.
The real heroine of this novel, I believe, is the woman Gidley King marries, Anna Josepha. Can you image marrying a man after a very brief courtship, then boarding a ship to sail across the world to a rudimentary outpost of society, arrive heavily pregnant, to be confronted by your new husband’s mistress and his two children with her?
It seems that this quiet, ‘plain’ little woman rose to the occasion magnificently, smoothing what must have been a fraught and humilating situation for all concerned. She built a bridge between herself and Ann, between her husband, his existing children and those she went on to have with him. She took responsibility for the education of his children with Ann (to Ann’s credit also, as this meant losing her children yet again for a time).
And in doing all this, Anna Josepha was Gidley King’s right hand in his role as administrator and as Governor, acting as informal secretary, First Lady, diplomat, helping to sooth fractious tempers and care for her husband when illness took its toll.
An old story, isn’t it? And depressingly common: the faithful, loyal wife or mistress, supporting, helping, building up their menfolk. And then being forgotten in the annals of history.
So it’s wonderful to see their stories being told, both in more recent non-fiction and through the lens of fiction as in this novel.
The Governor, His Wife and His Mistress is published by Allen & Unwin in Janurary 2025.
My thanks to the publishers and to NetGalley for an advanced reading copy to review.More Australian history adventures for kids: ‘Tigg and the Bandicoot Bushranger’ by Jackie French
I’m delighted that my final book review post for 2025 is another brilliant historical fiction for middle-grade readers by Jackie French. Did I mention I am a fan? Maybe once or twice…
The reason is that she effortlessly tells stories about Australia’s past that ignite imagination and a passion to know more, wrapped up in tales of adventure featuring characters we can both admire and relate to.
Tigg is such a character. Growing up an orphan on the fringes of the rough and dangerous Victorian goldfields of the 1850’s, Tigg has had to learn many things to survive. Under the less-than-careful eye of ‘Ma Murphy’ who runs a shanty on the diggings but gambles and drinks most of the takings, Tigg has learnt how to grow vegetables from her neighbour, a Chinese gardener; bush skills from Mrs O’Hare, a Wadawurrung woman; and reading and writing from ‘Gentleman Once’, who used to be a teacher at a grand school for English boys.
She has also learnt how to be a bushranger.
Disguised as a boy, she holds up coaches on the way to and from the diggings, but only ever takes half of passengers’ money, and never anything precious like a wedding ring. And she only robs to get money so that Mr Ah Song can pay rent for the land he gardens.
But one day everything goes very badly wrong and Tigg has to go into hiding, until a plan can be hatched to smuggle her out of danger – disguised this time as a Chinese man on his way to the goldfields. To do this, she must join with hundreds of other desperate, poor and hungry Chinese on what became known as the ‘Long Walk’, a journey across unmarked territory of hundreds of miles, facing thirst, hunger – and attacks from angry white men and sometimes even children.
So the author weaves in another of the astonishing stories from Australian history; one that has until relatively recently been hidden or forgotten. The shameful racism directed specifically against Chinese people which reared its ugly head during the gold rush period of the mid 1800s. It persisted for decades, manifested in the so-called ‘White Australia Policy’ of the early 1900s and, it could be argued, rose again with politicians like Pauline Hanson seeing an opportunity to score points on the back of anti-Asian sentiment.
The power of Jackie French’s writing for children is that she is not afraid to introduce these topics for younger readers. She treats her readers with respect, knowing that children can learn about difficult things that have happened in the past and reflect on how they have impacted on the present. Seeing the nineteenth century world of colonial Australia through the eyes of someone like Tigg allows a perspective other than our own, like putting on a magic pair of glasses or stepping into a time machine. Tigg grows up in an environment of poverty, deprivation, surrounded by racists and opportunists – but also by people of many races, and people of generosity and kindness. In other words, people.
Towards the end of the novel, Tigg discusses the appalling attacks she has witnessed with a businessman she comes to know, hoping he can do something to help:
‘You’re a wealthy businessman. I want you to convince the colonies’ parliaments to welcome the Chinese into Australia.’
He looked at her, amused. ‘I am afraid that is beyond my ability.’
… ‘Why?’ demanded Tigg. ‘The Chinese here are peaceful and hard-working and have skills the colonies need.’
‘None of which matters in the slightest. The Chinese look different, and that is enough. Starving miners need to think there is at least one class more miserable than themselves, and so they choose the Chinese, or indeed any Asian to look down on, be afraid of, or hate. Don’t you have a slightly easier request?’Tigg and the Bandicoot Bushranger pp277-278
So we go into Tigg’s world, not wanting to put the book down when it’s lights out time or we are tired. We want to keep reading because we care about Tigg and all the other amazing but believable characters around her.
Jackie French’s novels can do that. They are magic.
Tigg and the Bandicoot Bushranger is published by HarperCollins Childrens’ Books in December 2024.
My thanks to the publisher for a review copy.A jolly Christmas…murder! ‘Everyone this Christmas has a secret’ by Benjamin Stevenson
I so thoroughly enjoyed Benjamin Stevenson’s first two mystery novels featuring Ernest Cunningham that I leapt at the chance to review this one, in time for Christmas.
In keeping with the catchy naming pattern of the first two books: Everyone in my Family has Killed Someone and Everyone on this Train is a Suspect, readers are advised straight up that everyone in this new story should likewise be regarded as a suspect.
Ernest is an amateur detective who writes ‘how to write detective’ books – which is sort of funny in itself when you think about it. Stevenson is a comedian as well as an author, so the comedy is a big part of these novels along with the mystery. Ernest’s schtick is that he writes rules for what he calls ‘fair play mysteries’: like those written in what is sometimes called the golden age of crime fiction.
I loved two things about this one, on top of the main character – Ern is endearing and doesn’t take himself too seriously, though he is very serious about solving the crimes that he inevitably stumbles upon in the novels.
Firstly, the Christmas theme. The motif of a Christmas advent calendar is used so cleverly throughout, each chapter giving a clue as a new window on the calendar opens. It’s done so well, blending the narrative of the crime and the various characters’ motives and movements, with the Christmas setting.
Secondly, the novel is set in Katoomba in the Blue Mountains, just up the road from where I live. The second crime novel set in the Blue Mountains I have read this year! While I would not want people to think that my little part of the world is more prone to murder than any other, it is a beautiful and evocative setting for a novel and I am pleased to see it getting its share of the limelight.
If you haven’t yet met Ernest and his family, I would heartily recommend beginning with the first two of Stevenson’s books and then reading this one. The audio versions are also excellent. They are light-hearted reads, while keeping you thinking as the complexities of the twisty plots are revealed. And give plenty of chuckles along the way.
Everyone this Christmas has a Secret is published by Penguin Books Australia in October 2024.
My thanks to the publishers and to NetGalley for a review copy.