Review by New York Times Review
WHO knew that "Bangkok 8" and "Bangkok Tattoo" were just the warm-up acts? As vibrantly as those sizzling thrillers captured the exotic flavor of crime and corruption in Thailand's capital city, John Burdett's BANGKOK HAUNTS (Knopf, $24.95) opens up new avenues of awe. Even Sonchai Jitpleecheep, the urbane detective with the Royal Thai Police who narrates the bizarre stories in this series, is struck dumb by the sadistic snuff film that sets the latest gaudy plot in motion. "Few crimes make us fear for the evolution of our species," this devout Buddhist observes. "I am watching one right now." To add to his despair, the woman being strangled in the film is Damrong, a prostitute who was the love of his life when she worked in the Old Man's Club, the brothel Sonchai operates with his mother. Like others who succumbed to Damrong's charms, he's still in thrall to this fascinating creature, who returns in spirit as a sexually voracious wraith who will continue to haunt him if he doesn't bring her killer to justice - and do something about this new development in the city's notorious pornography industry. Daunting enough, the task is complicated by his cheerfully corrupt superior's eagerness to branch out from his methamphetamine business by getting into the porn racket. The ambiguous moral hemisphere Sonchai inhabits can be downright dizzying, but since he observes the rites and rituals of his native culture as conscientiously as he consults a professional colleague from the F.B.I., this selfdescribed half-caste is well positioned to negotiate all paths to enlightenment. Girding himself to outwit a vengeful ghost or a hired killer comes as naturally as offering good-luck lotus blossoms to the Buddha above the cash register at the family brothel. "You live in a magic-ravaged land," Sonchai's F.B.I, contact tells him. But the wonder of Burdett's hallucinatory brand of Southeast Asian magic - which puts his novels in range of the fabulous Yellowthread Street procedurals William Marshall set in Hong Kong and of Colin Cotterill's fanciful mysteries featuring the Laotian coroner-sleuth Dr. Siri Paiboun - is that this spooky stuff is manifested in a real world governed by what Sonchai calls "functional barbarism." The author, who practiced criminal law in Asia and clearly knows his territory, has a fine skill for distilling the morbid beauty (not to mention the grotesque humor) in scenes of everyday misery. But in the end, death-by-ghost still seems a step up from a real-life peasant existence in which children eat dirt and are occasionally stomped to death by elephants. Con Lehane's mysteries about a genial Irish-American bartender named Brian McNulty are as cruelly charming as those Irish saloon storytellers who make sure you're laughing before they flatten you with the sad stories of their lives. Running true to form, DEATH AT THE OLD HOTEL (Thomas Dunne/St. Martin's Minotaur, $24.95) opens in the still-carefree days of the early 1990s at a hotel bar on Midtown Manhattan's far west side. It's December, and everyone's in a Christmas mood. But holiday spirits take a dive when the nasty manager unfairly fires a waitress and Brian, proud son of an old Commie organizer and a devoted union man, finds himself leading a strike. Goaded by his friend and fellow bartender, Barney Saunders, "a wild, young Irishman" of irresistible appeal, this big-hearted hero tries to prove a connection between the manager and a crooked union boss, and before you know it, two people are shot dead - and everyone on the picket line is a suspect. For all the sentimental trimmings he hangs on this tale, Lehane has an honest feel for the working-class life of New York. And he's clear-eyed about those crimes of the heart that have nothing to do with class. There are certain places on this earth so eerie in their austere beauty that they fairly demand to be used as the setting for a mystery. In RAVEN BLACK (Thomas Dunne/St. Martin's Minotaur, $24.95), Ann Cleeves obliges with a chilling tale set in a remote Scottish village in the Shetland Islands. The murder plot is fairly straight-forward: a teenage girl is found strangled, and the killer, according to local rumor, is a crazy old man who lives alone and has long been suspected in the disappearance of another local girl. But before the police can make a case, yet another child disappears. On these bare bones, Cleeves drapes moody descriptions of the harsh climate conditions on "bare wastes of heather moorland," stark observations on the revolting instincts of birds of prey and suggestive profiles of characters who have lived too long in these lonely parts. Never mind the murders; her study of a forgotten soul waiting for someone to come to his door and wish him a happy new year is enough to freeze the blood. In THE BROKEN SHORE (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $25), Peter Temple drops the clipped delivery that gives a hard edge to his popular Jack Irish mysteries and delivers a mature and measured account of the kind of crimes committed in the dead quiet of rural Australia. Joe Cashin, his Victoria Police homicide detective, is also a different breed of hero. Unlike Jack Irish, who is as tough as old boots, Cashin has been sensitized by a close call with death and is making a slow recovery in the coastal area where he grew up. But when two Aboriginal youths caught with goods belonging to a murdered white man are killed in a police shootout, Cashin can't ignore the region's virulent strains of racism. Along with giving us mournful scenes of civilization's slow encroachment on an idyllic countryside, Temple offers some provocative and painful views of Australia's inner landscape. John Burdett Even the urbane detective who narrates Burdetts Bangkok thrillers is appalled by the snuff film that sets his latest plot in motion.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [October 27, 2009]
Review by Booklist Review
Thanks largely to Hollywood, Americans tend to picture Australians as genial, sunburned rednecks who enjoy beer, barbecue, and bare-knuckle brawling. Without countering all of those stereotypes--the only touching Temple's men do is with their fists-- The Broken Shore offers a cold-weather vision of the continent that, despite its rural setting, is more Ian Rankin than Crocodile Dundee. Melbourne homicide detective Joe Cashin has been temporarily assigned to his hometown, dinky Port Monro. Rehabilitating (with aspirin and whiskey, mostly) from injuries only slowly explained, he broods over family history and mistakes made. But when a local eminence is assaulted--and an attempt to detain the suspect goes fatally wrong--Cashin finds that small-town crimes offer complications worthy of the big city. Though the dense slang will be unfamiliar to U.S. readers (a glossary is provided), what's striking is how easily South Australia anagrams to the American West. Substitute Indians for Aborigines, and land-use issues for land-use issues (Australia has lots of coastline, but waterfront property is waterfront property), and you have a familiarly troubling tale of race and class conflict--with an even darker crime at the heart of it all. Temple's novel racked up the awards in Australia, and it's easy to see why: this deeply intelligent thriller starts slowly, builds inexorably, and ends unforgettably. --Keir Graff Copyright 2007 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In Temple's beautifully written eighth crime novel, Joe Cashin, a city homicide cop recovering from an injury, returns to the quiet coastal area of South Australia where he grew up. There he investigates the beating death of elderly millionaire Charles Bourgoyne. After three aboriginal teens try to sell Bourgoyne's missing watch, the cops ambush the boys, killing two. When the department closes the case, Joe, a melancholy, combative cynic sympathetic to underdogs, decides to find the truth on his own. His unauthorized inquiry, which takes him both back in time and sideways into a netherworld of child pornography and sexual abuse, leads to a shocking conclusion. Temple (An Iron Rose), who has won five Ned Kelly Awards, examines Australian political and social divisions underlying the deceptively simple murder case. Many characters, especially the police, exhibit the vicious racism that still pervades the country's white society. Byzantine plot twists and incisively drawn characters combine with stunning descriptions of the wild, lush, menacing Australian landscape to make this an unforgettable read. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Despite our common Anglo-Saxon heritage, Australian mysteries have never done well in this country. Perhaps they aren't exotic enough for readers who prefer their murders set in the chilly climes of Scandinavia or the sultry heat of Italy. But if this superb novel by one of Oz's finest crime writers breaks out here, pop open a can of Fosters beer and get ready for an Aussie crime wave. Melbourne homicide detective Joe Cashin, reassigned temporarily to his hometown on the south Australian coast after an incident that left him severely injured and a partner dead, is called to investigate the brutal attack on Charles Burgoyne, a prominent and wealthy local citizen. Suspicion soon falls on three Aboriginal teenagers; two are killed in a botched stakeout, and the third drowns himself in the Kettle, a jagged piece of coastline also known as the Broken Shore. Case closed, but Joe, who has Aboriginal cousins, probes further and uncovers far darker crimes. Temple's (Identity Theory) eighth novel deservedly won the Ned Kelly Award, Australia's highest crime fiction prize; in prose that is poetic in its lean spareness, though not without laconic humor (a character has the "clotting power of a lobster"), it offers a haunting portrait of racial and class conflicts, police corruption, and strained yet unbreakable family ties. A helpful glossary defines such colorful Down Under terms as "stickybeak." Highly recommended. [See Pre-pub Alert, LJ 2/15/07.]-Wilda Williams, Library Journal (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
An Australian cop sent to the hinterlands after narrowly escaping death finds that life in the slow lane is just as nasty. Someone's bashed in the silvered head of Charles Bourgoyne, industrialist and philanthropist, and left him for dead. The evidence of Bourgoyne's pricey missing watch points to three aboriginal boys who tried to pawn a similar watch. But when Detective Sergeant Joe Cashin, head of Port Monro station, tries to bring them in, the pinch goes horribly wrong. Suddenly Cashin, a homicide cop whose partner was killed by a murderous drug dealer aiming for Cashin as well, is treading on eggshells. His old schoolmate Bobby Walshe, a political activist leading a radical new party, serves notice that he intends to make hay of the debacle. Helen Castleman, another old schoolmate who's now an attorney defending one of the accused, rails against him and then, adding insult to injury, buys the place next door and starts a quarrel over the boundary between them. With every inducement to declare the case closed, Cashin finds himself reopening it instead. What he learns about Bourgoyne and a trail of other victims is devastating. Temple (Identity Theory, 2004, etc.) drops disclosure after grim disclosure into his tale as discreetly as if he were trying to keep each revelation secret, and the behavior of several suspects defies belief. The densely layered narrative is less a whodunit than a superior mood piece and psychological portrait. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by New York Times Review
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
