Death of a Coast Watcher by Anthony English

 

In 1943 Hugh Rand was put on Bougainville to act as a coast watcher reporting back to Australia on Japanese shipping movements; however, before he was able to make any reports he was caught and executed. This is the basis of a story which is an intense study into many aspects of humanity: obsession, infidelity, fear, cultural clashes, mental illness and the shattering effects of misinterpretation.

The story moves from Bougainville to the Gilbert Islands, to Melbourne to Japan. The first section which is through Hugh Rand’s eyes of his last days is Hemingway-like in its quite brutal honesty.  In the following section those same days are interpreted clearly, simply and sadly in the 1971 diaries of Bos Simeon who was a young girl on Bougainville at the same time.  Peter Millar, formerly a district officer on Bougainville and now in the Gilberts is obsessed with Hugh Rand and has hounded Bos Simeon to tell him what she remembers. Peter’s obsession has caused a rift with his wife, Charlotte.

Five years later Charlotte, herself now determined to find the truth behind Hugh Rand’s execution, is in Japan. This part of the story covers a different cultural clash, that of east and west. 

I can’t possibly do this book justice; I feel loosely connected to the time and place of the story, my father having served in Z Special Force in Borneo in the war against Japan; and myself and my husband having lived in Papua New Guinea. Anthony English’s writing is superb: intelligent and powerful. He belongs to the ranks of David Malouf and Alex Miller.

I recommend this book to all Australians and to all lovers of good fiction.

Published by Monsoon Books Ltd

We Are the Brennans by Tracey Lange

 

The Brennans are an Irish/American family, with three sons and one daughter, living in New York. The oldest son, Denny, is in partnership with close family friend, Kale, in Brennan’s, an Irish-style pub, and they are preparing to open another pub at Mamaroneck on the Long Island Sound.

When the book opens Sunday, the daughter of the family, has been in a car accident in Los Angeles where she has been living for the last five years. Denny comes to pick Sunday up and take her back to New York to recover from the accident and that is where the story starts and the secrets that have been part of the family’s past begin to unravel and shape the way forward.

Although the family matriarch, Maura, has passed away, her insistence on creating a perfect family in the eyes of the world and her disappointment in her husband and children in not meeting her expectations which have set the course for all of their lives still hangs over them. When someone appears who wishes them harm that is when the family’s secrets have to surface and be shared and when a new secret comes into being.

The Brennan siblings, their father, Mickey, and their lifelong friend, Kale, are true-to-life characters and what made this story so easily readable for me was that I genuinely cared what happened to them all and how their lives were to be resolved.

This is an interesting, dramatic, well written story and I hope Tracey Lange will go on to write more.

Published by Macmillan

Never by Ken Follett

 

Ken Follett has written some huge books and, at 816 pages, Never is one of those. At first glance I thought I would never be able to get through it and then before I knew it I was racing through it and trying to slow myself down because I didn’t want it to end (in more ways than one but you will have to read it to see what I mean by that).

This intriguing, thrilling, terrifying story is set in the near future and looks at what could happen when leaders of countries disagree and don’t trust each other enough to be the first to back down.

The personal relationships of the people in the three major strands of the story make absolutely riveting reading. All the characters are drawn meticulously so that I cared deeply about all of them and was anxious to find out what happened to them all through the shattering events taking place around them. Pauline is the president of the USA and her husband, Gerry, is known as the first gentleman; Abdul is an incredibly brave Lebanese/American spy working for the CIA who by chance becomes the protector of Kiah who is trying to leave Chad with her baby boy, Najiv, and start a new life in France; Chang Kai is a Chinese spymaster, Princeton educated and moderate in his hopes for the future of the world. He is married to Ting, a beautiful television star, who is adored by millions of Chinese viewers.

Trouble in North Korea is the beginning of a snowball which keeps rolling, very fast, downhill all the way. What happens when the snowball looks like becoming too big to push back is what this story is all about.

This is a brilliant book, and all a bit too realistic. That the fate of the world could hang on the decisions of a small number of people is all too frightening. I’m off now to eat, drink and be merry (well, as much as one can at my age) for tomorrow…?

Published by Macmillan.

The Way it is Now by Garry Disher

 

I haven’t read Garry Disher before and he has obviously written lots of books so I will remedy that now.

The Way it is Now is his latest and it tells the story of Charlie Deverin, a detective on suspension from his job with the Sex Crimes Unit for interacting with a juror and causing the mistrial of a suspected rapist. Charlie has, in fact, formed a relationship with the juror whose name is Anna. 

Charlie is staying in his family’s old home at Menlo beach which his father has put up for sale. It is also the place from which his mother disappeared twenty years ago and Charlie is hoping to find some new leads to her disappearance while he has this time to spare. As there was a full police investigation at the time it happened there doesn’t seem to be a lot for Charlie to go on. Seemingly coincidentally, at the same time as Rose  Deverin went missing, so too did a little boy who was presumed to have drowned.

At the same time,  Charlie’s father and stepmother are away holidaying on a Japanese cruise liner and, unfortunately, the dreaded pandemic has just started making its appearance making this a thoroughly contemporary story.

Charlie’s painstaking, relentless search has him uncovering new leads into the twenty year old mystery while he and Anna find there is no easy getting away from the consequences of Anna’s actions as a juror in the trial of the alleged rapist.

This is a terrific whodunit, well put together with very real characters and an exciting, satisfactory denouement.

I will find myself another Garry Disher book and give this one 5 out of 5.

Published by Text Publishing

Smoke and Whispers: Zoe Boehm Thriller 4 by Mick Herron

 

Of all the terrific Zoe Boehm thrillers so far, Smoke and Whispers comes in first by a long shot even though centre stage is taken by Sarah Tucker for the most part. Sarah has been a major player from the start, of course, and her life story has developed with each book until now when she has temporarily left Russ behind on the farm with the ostriches to come to Newcastle to find out what has happened to Zoe.

Along the way Sarah meets up again with the billionaire, Gerard Inchon, with whom she has become friends, kind of, and a new acquaintance, Jack Gannon who appears as her not entirely welcome champion. The evil person known as Alan Talmadge is still out there somewhere and Sarah is in for some rather harrowing times as she tries to establish whether Zoe is in fact, dead. Then there is Barrie, the Australian (maybe) bartender, where does he fit in?

I can’t help repeating myself in praise of Mick Herron’s intelligence and wit. His imagination knows no bounds as all kinds of wonderful characters appear. My favourite is, probably, Ivy, an old woman roughly “the shape and approximate colour of a post box”, who is propping up the bar of a pub Sarah ducks into to escape a massive, sudden downpour. A gas fire banged and “The air was so heavy with damp from drying clothes. It was like attending a wet dog conference”. Mick Herron throws in Geordie phrases that make sense to an Aussie reader and the ones that don’t, don’t make sense to Sarah either. It’s all brilliant writing.

I hate getting to the end of a Mick Herron book but then I love getting to the start of a new one. I shall search for more.

A thrilling 5 out of 5.

Published by John Murray