Taut: ’17 Years Later’ by J.P. Pomare
J.P.Pomare – Kiwi-born Australian author – writes taut, twisty crime thrillers. 17 Years Later is definitely that, imbued with a sense of darkness and with questions about the mystery at its heart: who really killed the Primrose family seventeen years ago?
Set in a small town on New Zealand’s North Island, the narrative is told from several different perspectives and voices.
There is Bill Kareama, the Primrose’s live-in private chef, delighted to be offered this amazing chance to kick-start his career and make good money while cooking for the wealthy family. When the shocking murders of Simon Primrose, his wife Gwen, daughter Elle and son Chester are discovered, Bill is the prime suspect – in large part due to the fact that the murder weapon is one of his chef’s knives. We hear Bill’s own account of the events leading up to his arrest, the trial and his imprisonment.
Into the town of Cambridge arrives Sloane Abbott, a successful journalist with a popular true-crime podcast. She is determined to investigate the crime because she has heard stories about how the original investigation failed to seriously consider any other suspects and overlooked evidence. Did Bill and the Primrose family receive justice? If not, seventeen years is a long time for the wrong man to be imprisoned. And troublingly, is it possible that here a killer still at large?
We hear from Fleur, the French au pair, who shares a cottage on the Primrose estate with Bill. What is her role in the family and why does she stay with them, given that the children no longer really need a nanny?
TK was Bill’s psychologist who devoted years of his life to finding the truth about what happened. He is dragged unwillingly back into the mystery by Sloane’s dogged persistence.
All of these characters are well drawn, as is the setting of a regional New Zealand town where many of the locals just want to forget the whole thing. There are plenty of twists and an action-packed ending; the story unravelling between the various players, keeping me guessing to the end.
I was engrossed by 17 Years Later and gobbled it up quickly. A very satisfying read.
17 Years Later is published by Hachette Australia in July 2024.
My thanks to the publishers and to NetGalley for a copy to read and review.
For all cat lovers: ‘Mickey’ by Helen Brown
When I received this book to review, I wasn’t sure if it was a good fit. After all, I’m not what you’d call a cat person. I don’t dislike cats, but I don’t always gravitate towards them as true ‘cat people’ do. (A certain Queensland based fluffy Birman gentleman cat might be the exception here.)
I needn’t have worried. Mickey is certainly about a cat – a stray tiger-striped kitten with extra toes who entered the author’s life in 1960’s New Zealand – but as the book’s subtitle suggests, it’s much more than a ‘cat story.’
Mickey becomes The cat who helped me through times of change by being a silent yet steadfast companion through the author’s early teen years, in an era of enormous personal, family, and social and political changes.
The author has woven the story of her relationship with Mickey, into the broader fabric of her rather eccentric family life, the idiosyncrasies of her neighbourhood and small town community, and her growing awareness of the wider world around her.
As a child of the 1960’s in a small rural community, I resonated with some of the descriptions in the book. Helen’s mum, for example, sewing and knitting garments for her family, as a cost saving measure but also a way to show her love for them. The agony of embarrassment at being fitted for a first bra. The sense of loss as older sibling grow up or move away. The ‘hollow art of waiting’ in a world in which it was impossible to communicate with each other at the tap of a screen. The unease generated by living in the nuclear age, thinly veiled but still apparent amongst adults. And of course, a war being fought somewhere in the world, reflected on TV screens and in the papers – in this case, the war in Vietnam which took away New Zealander and Australian young men at the very beginning of their adult lives.
The author describes these and more, with the most memorable scenes being those featuring her unconventional family: her father’s visions for the future development of natural gas as an energy source, her mother’s obsession with the local musical theatre productions, her older brother’s fascination with taxidermy. They are characters drawn beautifully and with great affection.
But of course Mickey the cat is the star of the book, and here the author’s deep love for and intuitive understanding of cats shines:
Felines don’t give a hiss about the materialistic obsessions that make people miserable. They live in the gaps, observing energies between themselves and other beings, offering affection when it suits them… A feline is never fully tamed. Maintaining its connection to the wild, it refuses to be bossed around or trained to sit like a dog. The cat is seldom open to bribery. When it offers trust, the gift is more precious than the first camellia of spring.
Mickey p91I am pretty certain that cat lovers will adore this book. But even cat-neutral people, like me, will enjoy its gentle telling of a coming-of-age story and its depictions of a world that is, in many essential ways, no longer with us.
Mickey is published by HarperCollins Publishers Australia in May 2024.
My thanks to the publishers for a review copy.
A Kiwi perspective: ‘The Leonard Girls’ by Deborah Challinor
The war in Vietnam divided opinion and (often) families, in those countries that sent troops and support personnel to oppose the communist Viet Cong in Vietnam during the 1960’s and early 70’s. The Leonard Girls is a well researched portrayal of the issues confronting New Zealanders during this turbulent time.
There are three main characters in the story: Rowie and Jo (the Leonard girls of the title) and Sam. Rowie has just enlisted to serve as a military nurse in Vietnam. Jo, her younger university student sister, is vehemently outspoken in her opposition to the war. Sam is a professional soldier about to embark on his second tour of duty.
By the time the novel closes, each of these three have undergone a change in their views about the war, due to first-hand experiences of the losses that inevitably accompany military conflict.
There are fascinating details of the daily lives of the soldiers who fought, the nurses who tended the wounded and the concert parties who braved the difficult and sometimes dangerous conditions to entertain the troops. Inevitably there are confronting scenes of the impact of war, including on the Vietnamese people and on families left at home in New Zealand. A scene in a Vietnamese orphanage made an especially visceral impression on me.
The other, quite shameful, aspect of this time that is portrayed well is the treatment of Australian and New Zealand soldiers, particularly on their return from Vietnam. The Author’s Note goes into this in a little more detail as well as giving a good overview of NZ involvement in the conflict, and what was going on at home.
As in another book I recently reviewed, The Nurses’ War by Australian writer Victoria Purman, The Leonard Girls shows the important positive effects on injured Australian and New Zealand personnel of being tended to by nurses and doctors from ‘home’.
If you have seen either the stage production or the hit Australian movie The Sapphires, you’ll have something of a picture of the work of entertainers in Vietnam during the conflict. However, I enjoyed the New Zealand focus of this novel, as so often the ‘NZ’ component of ‘ANZAC’ is downplayed or ignored altogether. I also enjoyed the glimpses of Maori culture and community throughout.
While I found the pace a little slow at times, there was much to enjoy about – and learn from – this novel. Deborah Challinor’s books are always founded in deep research and knowledge of the period or context about which she writes, and this one is no different.
The journeys of the three protagonists, and their loved ones, are profound and well portrayed. This is a novel to leave the reader thinking deeply about a period of relatively recent history about which opinions can still be sharply divided.
The Leonard Girls is published by HarperCollins in March 2022.
My thanks to the publishers for a review copy.
