What Raymond Chandler said…
Tag: Private Investigator
‘Dead Man Switch’ Mystery by Tara Moss
My recent reading had been on the gloomy side so I was looking forward to a rollicking read—the first thing I noticed in ‘Dead Man Switch’ was the initial lack of thrills and spills although they do make an appearance in the final chapters.
Tara Moss hints that protagonist Billie Walker, private inquiry agent, has a wild past but she seems a bit too reined-in for someone with such a pedigree, her father was a former policeman turned PI and she inherited his business. Even the business relationship between Billie and her ex-soldier assistant Samuel Baker seems flat, more diligence than derring-do, and similarly from starchy DI Hank Cooper from Central Police.
Regardless, I launched into ‘Dead Man Switch’ with high hopes and discovered Tara Moss has written a great book for the novice crime reader. Loaded with adjectives and story recapping, this mystery novel is a nice entry point for those graduating from cosy crime into something slightly more improper.
There are a lot of people draping themselves around the 1940s Sydney scene. There’s a knack to letting characters unfold, and piling them all in the front of the book slowed the action for me. First up we meet stoic lift operator John Wilson and then Mrs Lettie Brown of Brown & Co Fine Furs visiting Billie’s agency asking for help to find her missing son Adin. Business is slow, money is tight, Billie takes the case.
Somebody is spying on Billie from afar, while chunks of author research are on show; the stolen generations via quiet Shyla; WWII atrocities; the fur trade; Sydney nightclubs; Billie’s mother Baroness Ella von Hooft and her lady’s maid Alma representing a dying aristocracy—all jostling in a narrative where deployment of the five senses wouldn’t go amiss, and neither would more showing less telling.
Is Billie glamorous? I did not conjure her, as did a Greek café owner, looking like US film star Ava Gardner (above).
Billie is indirectly responsible for four deaths, although she herself does hang by a thread in one dire situation. She breaks the law, a rather humorous chapter involving her zany mother, and she bribes men with an Australian shilling. It’s hard to believe that when they were phased out in 1966 a shilling was worth 10 cents. But in 1940s, one shilling could buy a loaf of bread and a pint of milk so that’s breakfast sorted.
The Hydro Majestic Hotel in the Blue Mountains makes an appearance (below) with a corny filmscript car chase. Was this due to the writing, editing or my longing for a more unpredictable encounter? Billie is allowed to make mistakes to further the plot but one of them was transparent and I was disappointed in her naivety. Oh well, it is crime fiction after all.
With a view to a series, this first book is a light read with tasty clothes and much eyebrow-raising and head tilting. I sincerely hope Book 2 ups-the-ante. In the meantime, you will learn what to do with Fighting Red, the meaning of ‘dead man switch’ and discover what happens to young Adin Brown.
♥ Gretchen Bernet-Ward
NOTE This debut Billie Walker Mystery may also be titled ‘The War Widow’ due to Billie’s photojournalist husband missing, presumed dead.
VISIT AUTHOR TARA MOSS FOR A FEAST OF BOOKS AND BACKGROUND TO HER LIFE https://taramoss.com/
Among her other books Tara Moss has also written
Makedde Vanderwall
1. Fetish (1999)
2. Split (2002)
3. Covet (2004)
4. Hit (2006)
5. Siren (2009)
6. The Assassin (2012)
Peter Corris Crime Writer Cliff Hardy Crime Fighter
A few years ago I was going through a rough patch in my professional and personal life. I wanted to close the door and read, read, read myself back to normality.
Search and ye shall read
The trouble was I hadn’t seriously knuckled down and read a well-written book for a long time. I felt distanced from northern hemisphere writers (what’s snow?) and never really got the whole Scandi-noir buzz. Several genres, including the ambiguous literary fiction, didn’t hold my interest. I felt I needed comedy, something I could relate to and laugh at. Also I wanted characters and places I understood, and possibly had visited.
Readers of my blog will know I like quirky writing so, rather than reach for self-help books, I began to search for way-out humour on the library shelves. Unfortunately back then humorous Australian writers were thin on the ground so I hung around the bookshops until the next Thursday Next dilemma or Ankh-Morpork debacle was published. Yes, Messrs Fforde and Pratchett saved my sanity with their insane books.
From comedy to crime
After trial and error, and iffy recommendations from friends, I discovered Australian crime writers. The good old Aussie turn-of-phrase drags me in every time. I know the cities, the vast distances between those cities, the weather, the beaches, the Great Dividing Range, the smell of gum trees and especially the food. Our food is a mish-mash of many cultures but in there somewhere is real Aussie tucker and nobody does a Chiko Roll or TimTam like we do. And our criminals are a bit special too.
I read in no particular order (and by no means all our contemporary crime writers) Garry Disher, Kerry Greenwood, Peter Temple, Leigh Redhead, Geoffrey McGeachin, Jane Harper, Robert G. Barrett, Honey Brown, Matthew Condon, Emma Viskic, Adrian McKinty (adopted Irishman) Candice Fox, Shane Maloney, Barry Maitland, Michael Robotham and my absolute all-time favourite, the iconic Peter Corris.
And Peter Corris came with Sydney private investigator Cliff Hardy
Peter Robert Corris (8 May 1942 – 30 August 2018) was an Australian academic, historian, journalist, biographer and novelist of historical and crime fiction. As a crime fiction writer, he was described as “the Godfather of contemporary Australian crime-writing”. After writing 42 books in his PI Cliff Hardy series, from 1980 to 2017, Corris announced in January 2017 that he would no longer be writing novels owing to “creeping blindness” because of type-1 diabetes and passed away the next year.
Naturally I was saddened to learn of his death but it hit me in another way. I never wrote and told him how his Cliff Hardy books lead me into the badlands and showed me that my life was all right. Well, in comparison to the criminal underworld Hardy inhabited. Despite the sleaze, the drugs, the murder, Hardy had his own set of morals, he was a good judge of character and played fair. However, he knew how to defend himself and fought hard when necessary. Forget that it’s fiction. Compared to his daily grind, I had nothing to worry about.
As Bowie said Ch-ch-ch-Changes
These Corris crime novels also documented a changing way of life through Hardy, especially the Sydney cityscape and his beloved Newtown. For nearly 40 years, semi-permanent characters came and went, and mobile phones and laptops took hold. High tech digital devices and spyware increased; electronic locks, security cameras and internet surveillance replaced skeleton keys and good old shoulder-to-the-door. I feel the loss of a metal filing cabinet, its papers viewed by torchlight in the middle of the night.
But through it all, Corris always managed to side-step technology, keeping Hardy real, doing the leg work, nailing the bad guy. His astute observations of human nature, and how he wrote plausible characters, made me feel I’d just met a crooked barrister or a smarmy crime baron.
The book on the right is one of my favourites. Recognise the bridge? These days I do read more widely but I’m missing my yearly dose of hard-boiled Hardy—to use Corris’ own description.
Below I have listed all the Cliff Hardy books even though it doesn’t have the visual appeal of the bookcovers. If you wish to check out more about each story, please visit Allen & Unwin Publishers website:
But—do authors and their books really die?
There could be reprints, anniversary issue, possible screenplay, theatre adaptation, prequel, or Grandson of Hardy for younger readers. I won’t give away the ending of the last book because I expect you to BINGE READ the complete oeuvre, then see for yourself whether or not you like Cliff Hardy’s final installment.
My sincere condolences to Jean Bedford, wife of Peter Corris, and his family.
♥ Gretchen Bernet-Ward
PI Cliff Hardy book series
The Dying Trade (1980)
White Meat (1981)
The Marvelous Boy (1982)
The Empty Beach (1983)
Heroin Annie and Other Cliff Hardy Stories (1984)
The Big Drop and Other Cliff Hardy Stories (1985)
Make Me Rich (1985)
The Greenwich Apartments (1986)
Deal Me Out (1986)
The January Zone (1987)
The Man in the Shadows: Cliff Hardy Omnibus (1988)
O’Fear (1990)
Wet Graves (1991)
Aftershock (1992)
Beware of the Dog (1992)
Burn and Other Stories (1993)
Matrimonial Causes (1993)
Casino (1994)
The Reward (1997)
The Washington Club (1997)
Forget Me If You Can (1997)
The Black Prince (1998)
The Other Side of Sorrow (1999)
Lugarno (2001)
Salt and Blood (2002)
Master’s Mates (2003)
Taking Care of Business (2004)
The Coast Road (2004)
Saving Billie (2005)
The Undertow (2007)
Appeal Denied (2008)
The Big Score: Cliff Hardy Cases (2008)
Open File (2009)
Deep Water (2009)
Torn Apart (2010)
Follow the Money (2011)
Comeback (2012)
The Dunbar Case (2013)
Silent Kill (2014)
Gun Control (2015)
That Empty Feeling (2016)
Win, Lose or Draw (2017)
NOTE: “See You at the Toxteth” Published by Allen & Unwin August 2019
https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/books/fiction/See-You-at-the-Toxteth-Peter-Corris-9781760875633
A selection of stories compiled by Jean Bedford featuring Australia’s favourite PI, plus unpublished writing by Peter Corris on crime.
Review ‘Lethal White’ by Robert Galbraith
My shortish, sharpish book review.
Blackmail, a dead body, superb use of “show, don’t tell”.
“Lethal White” is a masterclass in characterisation BUT…
Link to my teaser post: https://thoughtsbecomewords.com/2018/10/19/ready-to-read-lethal-white/
♥ Gretchen Bernet-Ward
Ready to Read ‘Lethal White’
Just received a brand new copy of ‘Lethal White’ the fourth volume in Robert Galbraith’s Cormoran Strike detective series. We all know that J K Rowling actually writes it but what I didn’t know was that this hardback edition is large and heavy!
The cover has a nice grungy look and, no, I did not skid it across the tarmac.
It was difficult to photograph because the bronze lettering flared but I wanted to illustrate the interesting trend of books getting bigger again.
I can’t help wondering how it will compare to previous adventures. The book blurb reads “The most epic Robert Galbraith novel yet, ‘Lethal White’ is both a gripping mystery and a page-turning next instalment in the ongoing story of Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacott.”
I will post a review when I’ve ploughed my way through 647 pages.
♥ Gretchen Bernet-Ward
Link to my book review https://thoughtsbecomewords.com/2018/11/09/review-lethal-white-by-robert-galbraith/
Why, Sue Grafton, Why?
American author Sue Grafton passed away in Santa Barbara on 28 December 2017 after a two-year battle with cancer. On hearing the sad news, millions of readers, writers and fans must have screamed “Noooo” and fallen to the ground, arms raised to the sky, wailing “Why, Sue Grafton, why?” Well, at least I did, and that’s no lie.
Famous for her 25-book Alphabet crime series, Sue Grafton’s last Kinsey Millhone book Z will remain unwritten. To quote her family “The alphabet stops at Y” and this has been echoed around the world.
Sue Grafton brought me back into crime reading and showed me the joys of a good detective novel. I was floundering in a bad ten years of my life where I’d lost my father and was struggling with the care of my ailing mother while battling my own ill-health when, quite out of the blue, I was given a second-hand paperback of Grafton’s book “K is for Killer”.
PI Kinsey Millhone walked into my life. Grafton’s detective series listed below – “H is for Homicide”, “N is for Noose”, “V is for Vengeance” and so on – transported me into a place I understood, 1980s an era I knew, yet detailed the life of a woman in a job which was so foreign, so far removed from my own experiences that I was immediately entranced. Or as my father would have said “Caught, hook, line and sinker.”
This fortuitous state of affairs meant I had many books to read before I was up-to-date with the current publications. Here I would like to thank my cousin Laurie who willingly sent me several paperbacks to feed my addiction. So I read one and moved straight onto the next, graduating from that first battered paperback to hardcovers and finally e-book editions.
The major characters are unchanging; Kinsey is a private detective in California who joined the police force then left to acquire her detective licence; landlord Henry Pitts is now forever in his kitchen; gregarious Rosie; love interest Cheney Phillips and Robert Dietz. It was fascinating watching Kinsey evolve, if that’s the right word, because in all she only advanced a couple of years and is destined to remain immortalised in her thirties.
It seems Sue Grafton did not even draft a copy of her final book. The old adage “Leave them wanting more” is true but not the case. Her family is adamant that although Grafton had a working title (prophetically) “Zero”, there will be no final book, no ghost writer, no movie and no happy ending – just a blank space on the bookshelf.
My condolences to her family. The final chapter has ended for Sue Grafton and Kinsey Millhone RIP.
♥ Gretchen Bernet-Ward
Sue Grafton Alphabet Crime Series Featuring Kinsey Millhone
- A is for Alibi (1982)
- B Is for Burglar (1985)
- C Is for Corpse (1985)
- D Is for Deadbeat (1987)
- E Is for Evidence (1988)
- F Is for Fugitive (1989)
- G Is for Gumshoe (1989)
- H Is for Homicide (1991)
- I Is for Innocent (1992)
- J Is for Judgement (1993)
- K Is for Killer (1994)
- L Is for Lawless (1995)
- M Is for Malice (1996)
- N Is for Noose (1998)
- O Is for Outlaw (1999)
- P Is for Peril (2001)
- Q Is for Quarry (2002)
- R Is for Ricochet (2004)
- S Is for Silence (2005)
- T Is for Trespass (2007)
- U Is for Undertow (2009)
- V Is for Vengeance (2011)
- W is for Wasted (2013)
- X (2015)
- Y is for Yesterday (2017)
‘The Empty Beach’ by Peter Corris
“The Empty Beach” is about private investigator Cliff Hardy’s routine investigation into a supposed drowning. Beautiful client Marion Singer wants to find out the truth behind the mysterious disappearance of her wealthy husband John Singer.
The truth about John Singer, illegal trader and poker machine guru, is hard to find among the drug addicts, alcoholics and ashrams of Bondi Beach in Sydney NSW. Not to mention the hindrance of PhD rich girl Ann Winter and creepy jailer Mary Mahoud. Hardy soon finds himself fighting for his life when his search for the truth involves some nasty venues controlled by an underworld of violent people and lead by kingpin Freddy Ward who does not appreciate his inquisitive nature.
Being an earlier novel, Hardy is ex-army, a law student dropout, insurance company investigator turned private eye who lives by a solid set of values. And he’s seen many gruesome murders in his time. Throughout Hardy shows understanding and tolerance of people from all walks of life, he embraces the city sprawl and the rural ethos, and doesn’t start a fight. But he can be tough and not play nice when it comes to his own survival. He has a habit, when in a tight situation, of jesting at the bad guy’s expense and consequently coping a beating. This is well illustrated in the chapter where Hardy is imprisoned inside a squash court.
My suggestion is read “The Dying Trade” the first Cliff Hardy book in Peter Corris 42-book series even though a later book “The Empty Beach” was made into an Australian movie in 1985 and remains his archetypal crime story. Based on Peter Corris 1983 novel of the same name, this movie starred Bryan Brown as Cliff Hardy and such notables as Belinda Giblin, Ray Barrett, John Wood, Joss McWilliam and Nick Tate as the ill-fated Henneberry.
While you may like to read the more current books like “Silent Kill” (above) the earlier ones are classic Australia in the 80s and 90s and my favourite is “Wet Graves”. They have changed with the times, think internet and iPhones, and contain physical changes to Cliff Hardy at the same time they happened to the author. For example, smoking habits or the triple bypass heart surgery Peter Corris underwent and kindly passed on to Cliff Hardy. The relationship breakdowns do not appear to apply too much to real life. Corris didn’t pass on his diabetes, however, the easy-going narrative speaks volumes, both men having a genuine affection for their family, the city of Sydney, and its diverse citizenry.
Now I’ve got that out of the way, let me say that one of the most enduring (and for me, best loved) of Australian crime fiction characters is Cliff Hardy.
Fast forward to future ‘Spoilers’ and Hardy is deregistered and operates on his own initiative but still maintains a rock-solid sense of fair play in the 21st century. To date, Hardy’s longtime friend Frank Parker is now a retired senior police officer and married to Hilde, Hardy’s ex flatmate. The reader watches this friendship evolve through a chain of novels and it’s just as interesting as following Hardy’s love life and family expansion. Although he still holds a torch for his late ex-wife Cyn, there’s even grandchildren. And there’s cameos from characters like tattooist Primo Tomasetti with his graphic artwork and sleazy patter.
Cliff Hardy represents the kind of bloke many law-abiding citizens would like to have on their side, a blemish yet dependable man who’d share a joke or reminisce over a cold beverage. When it comes to Aussie mystery solving, Hardy gets my vote every time.
♥ Gretchen Bernet-Ward
POSTSCRIPT: Peter Corris, journalist, historian and author of the best-selling Cliff Hardy detective series, died on 30 August 2018, aged 76. Over 37 years, from 1980 to 2017, Corris wrote 42 Cliff Hardy novels making it the longest running series in Australia. The final installment is titled ‘Win, Lose or Draw’.
Cliff Hardy booklist https://www.allenandunwin.com/authors/c/peter-corris
Author website http://www.petercorris.net/petercorris.net/Home.html
Thoughts Become Words 
You must be logged in to post a comment.