• Books and reading,  History

    Claiming independence: ‘All the Golden Light’ by Siobhan O’Brien

    All the Golden Light is the story of one Australian woman, Adelaide Roberts, towards the end of the First World War. In a way, it’s also the story of a whole generation of women, who came into adulthood amidst the turmoil of war, a newly Federated nation, and who had to battle for the right to direct their own lives.

    We might think that Adelaide’s hopes are modest. She simply wants the right to choose her own life, to marry whom she pleases, to live a life in keeping with her own desires. In other words, freedom.

    At the turn of the twentieth century, though, these simple ambitions were beyond the reach of many women.

    Like many others, she is manipulated by family and circumstance into marriage with a man she does not love. She has met a man who fascinates her, but her future is not her own to choose.

    As events overtake her, her options seem more limited than ever, leaving her in a situation that becomes more dangerous by the day.

    The novel is set in the south coast of New South Wales, Australia, and the beauty of the islands, coastline and bush of this region is brought vividly to life.

    The terrible toll wrought by the war on small communities and the men and women affected by the conflict is also very clear.

    There is plenty of drama and tension in this novel, and readers will understand the many barriers facing women who want to live an independent, free life at this time.

    I found it difficult to relate to Adelaide and some of the other characters, and I’m at a loss as to why. It may have been just me, or what was going on for me at the time I was reading this book. But despite this, Adelaide’s predicament and struggle felt very real.

    The irony of her awakening to the women’s suffrage movement and her strong desire to exercise her own rights, while simultaneously being pushed into situations not of her choosing, is also very real:

    An image of her teenaged self came to her. She was around sixteen and huddled under the back verandah with a copy of Vida Goldsteins’ Women Voter magazine…Everywhere, women were being tortured, force-fed, imprisoned and sexually assaulted…
    In that moment, under the house, fury about the oppression that these women had endured surged through Adelaide’s veins. The world she knew, or at least she thought she knew, shifted. She realised women didn’t need to blithely adhere to convention. There was another way forward.

    All the Golden Light p 104

    All the Golden Light was published by HarperCollins in January 2024.
    My thanks to the publishers for a review copy.

  • Books and reading

    When the past bites: ‘Tipping Point’ by Dinuka McKenzie

    I’m now a definite fan of Kate Miles, the central character in this third novel by Aussie author Dinuka McKenzie featuring this determined, but very human, police detective. You can read my thoughts about Taken, book 2 in the series.

    Once again Kate is on her home turf in the fictional town of Esserton, in the NSW Northern Rivers region. She is still juggling her very demanding job with two young children while trying to be more present for them and her husband Geoff. Not an easy task.

    In this story, her birth family and its complications feature heavily and place more demands on Kate. Her brother Luke, long estranged from their father, returns to Esserton for the funeral of one of his two closest friends during their school years. A few days later, the third in their old friendship trio is found dead.

    Luke has many other issues he is trying (not very successfully) to deal with, and it’s not surprising when the shadow of suspicion falls on him.

    While Kate attempts to convince Luke to help himself, things begin to spiral out of control. Her impartiality and professionalism is brought into question as another death in the town rocks the community.

    Events from Luke and his dead friends’ pasts become inextricably linked with these tragedies, in ways the characters struggle to understand.

    The novel nicely meets the requirements of a page-turner, but as always for me it’s the characters who are the most important, especially Kate and her family. She is entirely believable and relatable and I found myself cheering for her the whole way through.

    She knew that Geoff would love her to give up the police force for a profession that placed less strain on their family life and removed his constant worries about her welfare and safety. But that would mean throwing away all the years of slog, the slow and patient climbing, dealing with all the bullshit and dick swinging and bureaucracy to prove her worth. It felt like so much of her life and identity were tied up in proving herself against those jeering voices that told her it was her skin colour, her gender and her father’s influence and not her ability that had got her there. To give it up now felt nigh-on impossible.

    The Tipping Point p99

    The Tipping Point was published by HarperCollins Books in January 2024.
    My thanks to the publishers for a review copy.

  • Books and reading,  History

    Tale of two cities: ‘Edenglassie’ by Melissa Lucashenko

    It felt quite appropriate that I was finishing this new book by Goorie author Melissa Lucashenko just as the annual public holiday of ‘Australia Day’ (also known as Invasion Day or Survival Day) dawned.

    Given that the day is supposedly Australia’s national day, but is held on January 26th, the day that Governor Phillip planted the British flag on a Sydney beach and claimed the place for the British, it raises many questions of the kind also found within this novel.

    When does colonisation of a place end – if it ever does?
    Has the modern nation of Australia moved beyond its undeniably racist beginnings?
    Who has the right to tell whose stories?
    Can we see vestiges of the past in our current cities and landscapes? What lies beneath the concrete and tall buildings?
    Can past hurts ever be healed?

    Edenglassie was a name used briefly in the early years of colonisation for part of what is now the city of Brisbane. The novel has two timelines: a current day one, and a second narrative taking place in 1855, just a few decades after the first British convicts, guards and settlers established a settlement there.

    Mulanyin is a kippa, a young Yugambeh man from the coastal region around Nerang, who has been living at Edenglassie, gone through ceremony there, fallen for a young woman, Nita, and plans to marry her, save enough money to buy a boat and return to his saltwater home. He’s received good advice from his elders, especially his Big Father, who warns him: Think hard before you pick up the things of the dagai, especially those that seem entirely pleasurable.

    He is hot headed and must learn to control his impulses, especially when he sees wrongdoing against his fellows or himself. He comes to learn that while the Law imposes bonds and obligations that chafe, it also binds all Goorie people together and protects them and their civilisation. There is a lot of information given here about some of the precepts of Aboriginal culture: the importance and purpose of ceremony, the intricate rules of kinship and marriage, the careful tending and protection of natural resources.

    It is effortlessly woven in with Mulanyin’s story, as is the language scattered liberally throughout. We learn that jarjums are children, jalgany is an Aboriginal woman, pullen pullen is a space set aside for ceremonial combat. There is no glossary – we get the meaning from context and repetition throughout the novel; the best way to learn.

    The mid-nineteenth century was a time of increased tension and conflict in areas of Australia where European settlers were pushing further, taking more land, squeezing the First peoples out of home and livelihood. Inevitably Mulanyin is caught up in some of this with tragic consequences for his people.

    His story carries through, indirectly to begin with, into the modern-day narrative. This is actually where the novel opens, in 2024, with an elderly woman known as ‘Granny Eddie Blanket’ suffering a fall in the city that sees her in hospital for most of the rest of the novel.

    Granny Eddie is a formidable woman in her nineties, with a granddaughter, Winona, who is a strong activist. A young doctor, Johnny, provides care while exploring with Winona his own search for his indigenous ancestors. While a white journalist plies Granny Eddie with questions, hoping for a story on ‘Queensland’s Oldest Aboriginal Woman.’

    Through sometimes heated discussion we hear debate on issues like cultural appropriation, ‘wannabe blackfellas’, government hypocrisy, does DNA make you Aboriginal? contemporary blak activism… This part of the narrative is both hard-hitting and frequently very funny, often at the same time.

    Granny Eddie chastises Winona for her scorn at Dr Johnny’s attempts to get closer to indigenous ancestry:

    ‘I can’t come at it, Gran,’ she finally muttered. ‘It just feels all wrong. Invasive.’
    “Yeah, I know it does,’ Granny nodded. ‘But believe me, girl. You’re thinking like a whitefella when ya close him out. That’s not our way. We bring people in, we bring our Mob home, and we care about em. We teach em how to behave proper way. So, you just knock orf and be nice to him!’
    But what if they’re the same mob that stole our Home in the first place, Winona burned to retort. What if they’re white, Nan.
    But instead, she sat down and shut her gob and stayed ning, just like a real Goorie must do when growled by her Elder.

    Edenglassie p148

    Last year I hear Melissa Lucashenko interviewed in which she described how it is for an Aboriginal person walking around modern Australia, aware of all the history under their feet; the ancestors’ birthplaces and burial sites, the places that once nurtured whole communities and were nurtured in return. Edenglassie is a novel that helps white Australians catch a glimpse of what was there before the dispossession and the violence and theft that came with invasion and colonisation.

    And, we can get a tiny glimpse into the way that ancestors’ stories and teachings are carried though into modern day lives.

    Edenglassie was published by UQP in October 2023.

  • Children's & Young Adult Books,  History

    Lest we forget: ‘Secret Sparrow’ by Jackie French

    The publishers had this to say about Australian author Jackie French’s latest offering for middle grade readers:

    This is the story of women who fought during WWI, but not as nurses or ambulance drivers.

    In 1917 sixteen-year-old Jean McLain is working as a post-office assistant in England. But when she wins a national Morse code competition, the British army makes a request Jean cannot refuse – to take a secret position as a signaller in France.

    If Jean can keep the signals flowing between headquarters and the soldiers at the Front, Britain might possibly win the war.

    From Secret Sparrow blurb, HarperCollins Australia

    I sometimes think that if Jackie French was not an author, she would have made a wonderful archaeologist or even miner: she is forever digging out long-buried nuggets of wonder and creating compelling stories to bring to life little-known events or circumstances from the past.

    Secret Sparrow tells the story of young Jean, whose character stands in for the women who were sent by the British to work as ‘signallers’ in WWI. Working at base camps but sometimes near or on the front lines, they operated the morse code machines, sending and receiving coded messages that were crucial in the days before mobile technology or even telephones were widely used in warfare.

    Most of these women were employed by the postal service, although on temporary ‘secondment’ to the army. This meant that they were paid at the normal rate for their postal worker job, received no special conditions and – shockingly – were not paid pensions or medical expenses due to them after injury, or at the end of the war.

    A shortage of recruits with signalling skills meant long shifts of twelve hours or more, with no toilet or meal breaks. Signallers needed to be fast and, importantly, accurate – a slip could literally be the difference between life and death for soldiers. It was crucial work.

    To add insult to injury, in researching this history, the author learned that the majority of records relating to the women signallers’ service were destroyed after the war. Was this to evade responsibility for paying pensions to these women? Or embarrassment that the authorities had needed to recruit women for what were seen as men’s jobs, due to the danger and skill involved?

    Jean’s story takes us to the heart of trench warfare in France in 1917 and the author does not try to tidy it up for younger readers. The mud, rats, lice, horrific injuries, chaos, death and fear are all there. But there is also comradeship, and kindness, and bravery.

    There are moments of humour:

    ‘Toodle-pip, ma’am,’ Sergeant Peartree said to Mrs Reynolds with a half-salute, half-wave. Jean had a feeling that he thought a woman administrator was not worth a proper salute, or possibly he simply didn’t know which one was due to her – an ignorance shared by almost the entire army, the generals included. Those worthies had not decided whether the female administrators were officers, non-commissioned officers or ordinary troops. Apparently they were simply to be treated like unicorns: a species you didn’t have to acknowledge might exist.

    Secret Sparrow p93

    Jean’s wartime story is told by her to a young Arjun, a boy she helps when they are both caught out in a flash flood in rural NSW, Australia. It is 1978 and Jean is now an older lady, who has not lost her quick thinking and survival skills. She is able to look at her wartime experiences in a nuanced way which she shares with Arjun:

    It was a stupid war, fought in stupid ways, and mostly run by stupid men… The stupidity of the battle I was in – multiply that by every battle in the war… So yes, we had to fight. But we shouldn’t have had to fight like that. England and Germany were ruled by elites, and those elites weren’t very good at ruling. They’d got the job because they were born into it, and so millions of people died.

    Secret Sparrow p226

    Lest we forget, indeed.

    Secret Sparrow was published by Angus & Robertson, an imprint of HarperCollins Children’s Books, in November 2023.
    My thanks to the publishers for a review copy.

  • Books and reading

    Deep questions: ‘What Happened to Nina?’ by Dervla McTiernan

    Irish-born Australian author Dervla McTiernan writes gripping crime fiction with well drawn characters and vivid settings. What Happened to Nina? is set in a snowy Vermont winter, and centres around the main character, twenty year old Nina.

    The prologue tells us much of what we need to know about the story. Nina lives with her mum, stepfather and younger sister Grace. She has a boyfriend, Simon Jordan, and they both love rock climbing.

    One weekend they go away to stay at Simon’s family holiday cabin to climb and spend time together. Only one of the pair returns from that weekend away.

    So, what did happen to Nina?

    The narrative takes the reader into the aftermath of crime: the devastation wreaked on a victim and their family, as well as on the perpetrator’s. To a certain extent, the novel keeps us guessing, as both Nina and Simon’s families have different versions of the events that played out that weekend.

    In essence, it is a story of the awful acts that people can commit, and the lies they can tell to avoid responsibility. As readers we are invited to step into the shoes of the main people involved: Nina’s parents and sister, and Simon, his mother and father. How do you move on from tragedy? How can justice be best served? What lengths would a parent go to, to protect their child?

    It also touches on the power of social media to work both for and against victims of crime and their loved ones.

    It’s the kind of crime fiction I enjoy, raising deep questions about human behaviour and asking the reader to reflect on those questions. I found it compelling, the characters believable and in some respects, the events all too familiar.

    What Happened to Nina? is published by HarperCollins in March 2024.
    My thanks to the publishers and NetGalley for an advance review copy.

  • Books and reading

    Questioning truth: ‘Reckless’ by Marele Day

    I fell into this book, in the sense of immediately feeling comfortable and keen to read on. The opening pages are like an invitation to come into the author’s lounge room, have a cup of tea and hear her stories.

    This memoir is a collection of stories from author Marele Day’s life, from a childhood of treatments and operations for wandering eye; first romantic relationship and crippling grief when her love is killed in a car accident; to spur-of-the-moment (reckless?) decisions made, which lead her in very unexpected and sometimes unwelcome situations.

    We can probably all look back to our youth and wonder at some of the choices we made then. In this book, the author shares her own What was I thinking? moments. Prominent among them is a voyage by catamaran from Darwin to Sri Lanka, with a skipper and crew mates she had only just met. Perhaps unsurprisingly, as the route covers territory known for pirates, and with few places to safely refuel and replenish supplies, they end up in danger on more than one occasion.

    Why did she do it? There was the sense of invincibility that comes with young adulthood. There was a need to do something very different, to break out from the grief that threatened to imprison her after her lover’s shocking death.  And there was a need to be Elsewhere, to Go with the flow.

    The trip, in spite (or because of) its dangers and hardships, resulted in a friendship with Jean Kay, the catamaran’s owner; a connection which lasted thirty years and crossed continents and oceans. On that fateful voyage together in the 1980s, she realises that there is a lot about Jean that is mysterious, contradictory, or hidden from view.

    Later, she decides to dig deeper into his life, in particular one episode in his chequered career: a heist that saw Jean and three accomplices steal millions from an account owned by one of France’s richest businessmen.

    After that, Jean spent years on the run from authorities, living and travelling under an assumed name. In tracing the events surrounding the robbery, Marele begins to doubt what she thinks she knows about her friend and his past.

    In the process she must interrogate her own experiences, beliefs and values.

    The pages of this book held many moments of recognition for me. The foolishness of our younger selves; moments of quiet rebellion (Jean’s school photo conjured a memory of myself aged 17, annoyed by the photographer’s instructions to students to fold hands the same way, deliberately crossing my hands the ‘wrong’ way in my lap.) The need for regular doses of solitude and quiet. A shared appreciation of words and their power:

    Some words were so potent they could only be whispered, matchsticks that ignited fires. I had no idea what a divorce was, but if Aunty Marjorie was getting one it must have been something special. When I whispered the word to the hydrangea bushes near my grandmother’s front steps, it conjured up a mighty wind. I felt the way God must have felt creating the world. All God had to do was say the word and it was so.

    Reckless p86

    My beliefs about an afterlife are also similar:

    The only certainty I feel on these long walks is this: that our bodies, our ashes, are returned to the earth, to nurture new life. All of us, every living creature, becomes part of the ongoing whole. This is enough.

    Reckless p307

    Reckless is a very readable mix of true-crime investigative writing, personal memoir, and philosophy. It’s like an afternoon spent in the company of an engaging friend who has lived an interesting life and met some memorable people, and is a gifted storyteller into the bargain.

    Reckless was published by Ultimo Press in May 2023.

  • Books and reading,  History

    Unlikely connections: ‘The Star on the Grave’ by Linda Margolin Royal

    Did you know that six thousand Jewish refugees were saved from murder at the hands of Nazis during WWII by escaping Europe via Japan? And that they were able to do so by the actions of a brave and committed Japanese diplomat, Chiune Sugihara, who in defiance of his government’s express orders, wrote transit visas for desperate people trying to flee from Lithuania.

    He was helped in this by an official from the Netherlands, who supplied documents allowing refugees to travel through the Dutch colony of Curacao, and from there to Japan. From Japan, individuals and families found refuge in countries such as the USA and Australia.

    I had never heard of either of these individuals, whose courageous and compassionate actions have been lost in the stories of that terrible war. And the connection between Japan, Poland, Lithuania and Australia seems unlikely, doesn’t it?

    The Jews whose lives they saved included the author’s own family: her father and grandparents fled Poland to Lithuania, and were amongst those who owed their lives to Sugihara and the Dutch man Jan Zwartendijk. Rachael wrote this book, her first novel, to tell their story and that of the men who saved them.

    In the novel, the main character Rachel is a young nurse who lives with her widowed father and has a close relationship with her Polish grandmother, Felka, whom she adores. It is Sydney in 1968. Rachel has been brought up as a Christian, attended a Catholic school, and is engaged to marry Yanni, a doctor at the hospital where she works.

    When she tells Felka that she must convert to Yanni’s religion of Greek Orthodoxy on their marriage, her grandmother’s reaction is bewildering and confusing. Then Felka announces her plan to attend a reunion of friends in Japan, and asks Rachel to accompany her. She is puzzled. What is this ‘reunion’, and why Japan?

    When she is told the truth of her family, she is incredulous. Her father and grandparents were among those able to get out of Europe because of Mr Sugihara. And they are Jewish. The trip to Japan is for survivors to meet with Mr Sugihara, to thank him for their lives.

    Rachel’s shock and sense of betrayal at having been lied to her entire life are profound. Slowly, she begins to understand the reasons why her father and Felka did what they did: to protect her, so that she would never know the hatred and anti-Semitism that they had experienced.

    She travels to Japan with Felka and there, hearing the stories of the other people saved by Sugihara, she grapples with the questions of who she is and what the revelation of being Jewish means: does it bring a heritage of suffering and loss, or of family, tradition and deep connection? Or all of those things?

    And how has the trauma experienced by her surviving family members manifested in their personalities, their relationships and approaches to life?

    These are all deep, deep questions she must face, and all at once. It is difficult and painful. Through travelling to Japan with Felka, listening to the people she meets there, and reappraising her own beliefs, Rachel finds some acceptance and a strong desire to learn more.

    Initially, I thought Rachel’s ignorance of the events of WWII, the Nazi persecutions and concentration camps, the murders and unspeakable cruelties, was somewhat disingenuous. But I reminded myself that Rachel had come to adulthood barely twenty years after the war. She was taught the minimum details of the conflict at school, and not knowing of her personal connection to those events, did not seek to learn more. And many, many survivors, refugees and veterans, were reluctant to talk about their experiences, preferring to try to forget, to move on with life.

    The Star on the Grave is a moving story of one family, fictionalised but inspired by her own, in a surprising and little-known chapter of that global conflict. I found it absorbing, and I hope to read future works by Ms Margolin Royal.

    The Star on the Grave is published by Affirm Press in January 2024.
    My thanks to the publishers and NetGalley for a review copy.

  • Books and reading

    Regency adventures: ‘The Benevolent Society of Ill-Mannered ladies’ by Alison Goodman

    ‘Welcome to the secret life of the Colebrook twins: unnoticed old maids to most, but unseen champions to those in need – society be damned.’

    The Benevolent Society of Ill-Mannered Ladies

    Fans of Georgette Heyer’s Regency novels and the TV hits Bridgerton and Queen Charlotte will welcome this romp-with-a-twist through Georgian society.

    Far from simpering ‘young gels’, the Colebrooks (Augusta and Julia) are spinsters of what was then regarded as advanced age – late thirties and early forties. Rather late to still be unmarried.

    Augusta (‘Gus’) decides to take matters into her own hands when she learns that her good friend’s goddaughter is being cruelly mistreated and kept a virtual prisoner by an abusive husband. She hatches a plan to rescue young Caroline and Julia becomes her sidekick – somewhat reluctantly and certainly with misgivings, but wholeheartedly once they both realise the seriousness of Caroline’s situation.

    The mission presents many dangers, especially once their carriage is held up by a highwayman on the way to their destination, and Gus accidentally shoots the man on horseback, who has demanded their money and jewellery.

    Once she realises he is someone they knew from years before – Lord Bevan who was exiled to Australia after being accused of murder – the sisters’ plans begin to unravel in a hilarious way. Despite the setbacks, they succeed in rescuing Caroline and this whets Gus’s appetite for more adventures – much to her sister’s dismay.

    Gus and Julia are very different women, bound by deep love for the other, and they bring a different skill set to each of their subsequent missions to help badly used women. Lord Bevan plays a role and of course there is a blossoming romance (it would hardly be a Regency novel without it, right?)

    The fun of the novel is coupled with some devastating scenarios that beset many women during this time. The graceful gowns, satin slippers and elegant manners of polite society were accompanied by laws and attitudes that seriously disadvantaged women, sometimes to the point of threatening their lives.

    I loved seeing Gus and Julia sally forth on their pursuit of justice for other women. They are heroines we can admire and enjoy – while men provide assistance, the brains of the outfit definitely resides in female heads!

    There is apparently a sequel on the way and I look forward to more fun with the ill-mannered ladies.

    The Benevolent Society of Ill-Mannered Ladies was published by HarperCollins in June 2023.

  • Books and reading,  History

    Why I am thankful for feminism: ‘Restless Dolly Maunder’ by Kate Grenville

    Kate Grenville’s latest offering is a novel woven from family stories of her grandmother, who was born into rural poverty towards the end of the nineteenth century.

    Readers of The Secret River will recognise Dolly as the granddaughter of Sarah Wiseman, the daughter of that earlier book’s fictionalised protagonist based on Solomon Wiseman. Solomon, the author’s ancestor, was an emancipated convict who settled in the upper reaches of the Hawkesbury River in a spot later named for him – Wiseman’s Ferry.

    The novel describes in painful detail the restrictions on women in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, especially (but not exclusively) for poor women.

    The small worlds they inhabited, the never-ending chores it was assumed they’d be responsible for simply because they were born female; the limited options for their futures – marriage, or spinsterhood while working as a nurse or teacher.

    Girls were of no account, you learned that early on. Good enough to make the bread and milk the cow, and later on you’d look after the children. But no woman was ever going to be part of the real business of the world.

    Restless Dolly Maunder eBook location 14 of 293

    Dolly is born wanting more, wanting movement in her life when the world tells her she must be still, be satisfied with her lot. Whip smart yet denied an education past 14 years, and lucky to get that, being young enough to benefit from new government laws that required all children under 14 to regularly attend school.

    As always with this author, the prose is uncannily evocative: Grenville has the ability to climb right inside her characters’ heads and make the reader feel they are there as well. Simple language but always the exact right word chosen for the right moment in the story.

    Dolly is a prickly character, not particularly likeable at any point in the story. But the author’s skill is to make us care about her anyway. There is an especially poignant moment in her author’s note, describing a childhood encounter between the young Kate and her grandmother, where she looks back with empathy and wishes in retrospect that she had responded differently. I am sure we have all experienced such moments, haven’t we?

    Dolly experiences the ups and downs of economy, drought, commodity prices, war, Depression; all of which impact on her and her family.These are factors beyond her control but she brings to bear her characteristic decisiveness (and restlessness) as she tries to respond to these big picture challenges.

    All you could say was, you were born into a world that made it easy for you or made it hard for you, and all you could do was stumble along under the weight of whatever you’d been given to carry. No wonder at the end of it you were tired, and sad. But glad to have done it all, even the mistakes.

    Restless Dolly Maunder loc 281-282

    This book made me feel, once again, deeply thankful for the achievements of feminism that have allowed women in the western world, at least, to move beyond the small worlds prescribed for them.

    She thought of all the women she’d ever known, and all their mothers before them, and the mothers before those mothers, locked into a place where they couldn’t move. My generation was like the hinge, she thought. The door had been shut tight, and when it started to swing open, my generation was the hinge that it had to be forced around on, one surface grinding over another. No wonder it was painful.

    Restless Dolly Maunder loc 281

    We have a long way to travel yet, and so many women around the world still experience difficulties and disadvantages because they are female. Restless Dolly Maunder shows us why that is not acceptable.

    Restless Dolly Maunder was published by Text Publishing in July 2023

  • Books and reading

    Behind the scenes: ‘The Mystery Writer’ by Sulari Gentill

    I first fell in love with the work of Australian best-selling author Sulari Gentill with her historical crime fiction Roland Sinclair series, which combine my love of the two genres of historical and crime fiction in a brilliant and somewhat addictive way.

    Since the last book about Roland and his friends, Ms Gentill has written several stand-alone novels, set in contemporary America. A theme that unites these disparate stories is the ‘behind the scenes’ glimpses of the worlds of writing and publishing, with twisty tales of dark deeds threaded throughout.

    The Mystery Writer is set in middle America, a town called Lawrence in Kansas. This is where Australian student Theodosia arrives unexpectedly on her older brother Gus’ doorstep. She has left behind a partly completed law degree and brings with her a burning desire to become a writer.

    She meets a best-selling author Dan and a friendship starts to form, but to her horror, Theo discovers Dan dead on the floor of his apartment, his throat cut.

    The murders begin to mount up and Theo is suddenly the prime suspect. What can she do to protect herself, her brother and his friend Mac? She has to make a difficult choice which leads to devastating consequences.

    Gradually she understands that Dan’s life and death have a connection to a dark web network of conspiracy theorist fantasists and ‘preppers’. The online posts of key members of this group preface each chapter of the novel, and are by turns hilarious and chilling.

    In the midst of all the dramatic events, Theo receives an offer of representation by the literary agency connected with Dan. A condition is that Theo turns over total control of her social media and online presence to the agency for management by them. She is assured that this is standard procedure. We are left to wonder if this is true…

    The novel explores how fictional narratives can be used to vicariously wield political and business influence. While this is in a context of a piece of fiction, it is worth thinking about in the broader sense, given the events that we’ve seen in US, British and Australian politics, economies and societies over past years.

    Theo, Gus and Mac are all sympathetic and relatable characters,; the tension is nicely calibrated throughout the novel. It’s a book that will please crime and mystery readers and which also provokes some thought about the online worlds we now inhabit.

    The Mystery Writer is published by Poisoned Pen Press, an imprint of Sourcebooks, in March 2024.
    My thanks to the publishers and NetGalley for an ebook copy to review.