Dark Deeds Down Under 2 |Edited by Craig Sisterson

In rugby, Australia and New Zealand are sworn enemies. Off the pitch, they have more in common than they care to admit, whether it’s their shared landscapes, culture, troubled histories or love of the great outdoors. When it comes to crime fiction tastes are similar and Craig Sisterson’s second Dark Deeds Down Under anthology underlines this.

Craig is a relentless proponent of antipodean crime fiction, which is seen in his journalism and his work as an organiser of the Ngaio Marsh Awards in his native New Zealand. Here he presents short stories by 21 Aussie and Kiwi authors with a mix of established writers such as Peter Corris, Peter Papathanasiou, Emma Viskic and Helen FitzGerald, as well as newcomers like Dani Vee, Shelley Burne-Field and Jennifer Lane. Each brings something unique to the table, and with a variety as diverse as the Australian landscape, there is something for everyone’s taste and plenty new to discover.

Read the full review on Crime Fiction Lover where it was originally published.

Return to Blood | Michael Bennett

In his debut novel, Better the Blood, New Zealand crime author Michael Bennett explored the wounds and after effects of colonialism and picked up the Ngaio Marsh Award for Best First Novel. In this sequel, Hana Westerman, a Māori detective in the Auckland Crime Investigation Branch, returns to take on both her own and society’s challenges.

Six months have passed since the traumatic incident that concluded Better the Blood. Hana has left the police and returned to her home town to live with her father. In the small coastal village of Tātā Bay, Hana’s life consists of teaching teenagers to drive and conducting insurance investigations. Despite leaving her police career behind, Hana continues to be drawn to crime and the dangers that come with it.

Read the rest of this review on the Crime Fiction Lover website where it was originally published.

Mrs Gulliver | Valerie Martin

In her most recent work, renowned historical fiction author Valerie Martin gives Romeo and Juliet a contemporary, original and feminist twist.

In 1954, on the fictitious island of Verona, Italy, Lila Gulliver runs a profitable high-end brothel with an impeccable reputation of discretion and privacy. Here prostitution is legal, and Mrs Gulliver takes pride in her business.

“Tourists come because it’s warm, fishing is good, lodging inexpensive , drugs are widely available, and prostitution is legal. San Alfonso is pleasure-loving, and notoriously corrupt, drawing the world’s endless supply of crooks and con men to our shores.”

Lila Gilliver’s personal and professional lives take an unexpected turn when a beautiful blind woman, Carità Bercy, 19, knocks on her door seeking employment. Carità and her sister, Bessie, come from a wealthy family and have been left to fend for themselves after their rich bachelor uncle, who raised them, lost all his money and committed suicide. Before their uncle’s death, the sisters had a tragic history. Their father died in a car accident, as did their mother after Carità’s birth. Before shooting himself, he did give the girls money and two bus tickets to the city, instructing them to pitch at the brothel’s door.

Lila sees the potential in hiring an educated, beautiful blind girl, and Carità quickly proves her worth. Lila, though, misjudges her new employee. Ian Drohan, the handsome son of the richest family on the island, visits the brothel and falls in love with Carità instantly. Lila doubts that it is true love and believes that he only wants to be the saviour who rescues Carità from the modern-day slavery she has been forced into. But the fearless young woman knows exactly what she’s doing. Ian is merely a means to advance her social standing.

Fate intervenes, and the two star-crossed lovers are forced to flee San Alfonso after Ian gets into an argument with gang members and severely injures one of them. Mike Drohan, Ian’s judge father, approaches Lila to assist in finding the couple. Lila feels responsible for Carità, but she also finds herself drawn to Mike, a married man.

This is a story about two lovers, but the strongest characters are the two women: Lila and Carità. Both must prove their worth in difficult circumstances. Although Lila is the narrator and observer in Carità’s story, we gain a good understanding of her own background growing up in a poor village in the mountains. Having succeeded she finds herself in a male dominated “… run by hypocritical men whose passion for controlling women’s bodies knows no limit”. Prostitution is legal, but abortion is not, as it serves male needs. Carità needed to fight to be seen as an equal because she was not only a woman, but also blind in a in a society that discriminated against people who couldn’t see. Her unshakable determination and ability to judge people correctly works in her favour and unlike Juliet, she survives.

In comparison, the men appear weaker. Ian was afraid of failure and had a strained relationship with his father, who treated him with contempt. He sees women as either inferior beings who need to be rescued or villainized, as in the case of Mrs Gulliver. When he discovers Carità is his equal and has her own opinions, he is not pleased.

“Men are expected to succeed, women to fail. Every woman knows the deck is stacked. The world I live in isn’t benign; it’s the world men allow to women. They made it for us. They have all the power, and we work around them.”

In Mrs Gulliver, Martin strikes the ultimate balance between great storytelling and feminism. Without sacrificing the complex and engaging plot, she deftly interweaves these two unabashedly strong women’s stories and sets them against the weaker men. Intelligent, razor-sharp, witty and captivating, Mrs Gulliver is a must-read if you crave a novel with strong and interesting female characters.

Mrs Gulliver is published by Serpent’s Tail and Jonathan Ball, kindly gifted me with a copy of the book for review.

The Talented Mr Ripley | Patricia Highsmith

The recently released Netflix series, Ripley, starring Andrew Scott is generating a great deal of buzz. As with the 1999 film starring Matt Damon and Jude Law Ripley is based on the Patricia Highsmith novel The Talented Mr Ripley.

There’s a common belief that the book is always better than the film (or, in this case, series), but based on the comments, Ripley is a formidable adaptation of the novel. Furthermore, it impresses because it remains truer to the novel than the film did. To coincide with the series, Vintage Classics reissued the novel with a new film tie-in cover. Before binge-watching the series, I decided to revisit the original.

Published in 1950 The Talented Mr Ripley was the first of five books about the life of Tom Ripley. This first introduction to Ripley depicts the evolution of a nondescript con man into a full-fledged, psychopathic serial killer.

Tom Ripley is a minor league con artist who obtained official papers while working for the Internal Revenue Service as a stockroom clerk to defraud unsuspecting taxpayers. He’s unemployed and having a hard time avoiding his creditors. When we meet him he suspects he’s being followed. He is indeed being followed, not by the police or credit collectors, but by Herbert Greenleaf who believes him to be one of his son’s friends. Rather than correcting him, Tom accepts an all-expenses paid offer to track down Dickie Greenleaf, who is living it up in Italy, and convince him to be return to America. Tom sees this as an opportunity to escape his mundane life, shed his old skin and and start anew. The timing couldn’t be more perfect.

“He had imagined himself acquiring a bright new circke of friends with whom he would start a new life with new attitudes, standards and habits that would be far better and clearer than those he had had all his life.”

Tom not only locates Dickie in the picture-perfect town of Mongibello, south of Naples, but also fully inserts himself into Dickie’s life. And who wouldn’t envy Dickie Greenleaf’s lifestyle? He doesn’t have a care in the world; all he does is paint and sail, and his trust fund cheque arrives in the mail every month without lifting a finger. The difference is that, while most people would be envious of Dickie’s lifestyle, Tom wants to be Dickie and he will stop at nothing to fulfil this desire—even if it means committing murder.

“A crazy emotion of hate, of affection, of impatience and frustration was swelling in him, hampering his breathing. He wanted to kill Dickie. It was not the first time he had thought of it.”

The only fly in the ointment is Marge Sherwood, Dickie’s lukewarm love interest who Tom is obsessively jealous of. Marge isn’t as trusting as Dickie and is immediately suspicious of Tom moving into Dickie’s house. Tom’s ambivalent sexuality is an important aspect of the novel. This was written at a time when homosexuality was not as widely accepted as it is now, therefore creating a gay villain was a bold move on Highsmith’s part. Tom develops a type of sexual infatuation with Dickie, but never pursues it—he’d much rather become him than be with him. At the same time, Tom is violently offended when anyone suggests that he or Dickie are gay. When one of Dickie’s friends implies this, Tom kills him without hesitation. In the back of his mind, he remembers Aunt Dottie, who raised him, lashing out at him, saying “Sissy! He’s a sissy from the ground up. Just like his father!”

Tom is as slick as an eel, avoiding the cops primarily through sheer luck, even after killing two people and adopting Dickie Greenleaf’s identity. Tenente Roverini, the determined Italian detective, conducts multiple interviews with Tom, thinking he’s particularly helpful in the investigation. Meanwhile, he is purposefully leading him down other paths, including the possibility of suicide. When a bank discovers that Dickie’s signature may be forged, it benefits Tom—a convenient coincidence.

Tom revels in his new life in Venice, mixing with the upper class and gaining popularity through notoriety. However, he understands that he will always be an outsider and must maintain a distance from others in order to protect himself. He would never have a fixed group of friends. He could reinvent himself, but he can never escape the real Tom Ripley.

What makes Highsmith’s character so compelling is her ability to transform a serial killer into a likeable character with whom the reader grudgingly almost sympathises. This is despite the fact that Tom is an actual psychopath with absolutely no conscience.

There’s a reason The Talented Mr Ripley and its eccentric author have remained popular for nearly seven decades. It’s dark, disturbing, and absolutely—and I despise using this word, but it’s certainly appropriate here—unputdownable. Thankfully, there are still four books in the series to read and a Netflix series to binge watch. Onwards and upwards!

The Talented Mr Ripley was reissued by Random House UK as part of their Vintage Classics series. They kindly provided me with a review copy via NetGalley

Lady Life | Ahmet Altan

For almost five years Turkish journalist and author, Ahmet Altan, was jailed after being charged with providing “subliminal messages” to incite those behind the coup attempt in 2016. In this period, Altan released two books: Lady Life, a literary work, and I Will Never See the World Again, his memoirs. On April 14, 2021, Altan was released from prison despite having received a life sentence.

At the centre of Altan’s story is Fazıl, a young man accustomed to a comfortable life. After “a major country” announced it would no longer be importing tomatoes from Turkey, his father unexpectedly declares bankruptcy. Fazıl and his family’s lives are drastically altered when their father dies from a stroke just one day after facing financial ruin.

Fazıl aspires to become a literary critic and hopes to spend his life “… among people who loved literature, who taught it, who discussed it” despite his sudden plunge into poverty. A week after his father’s funeral, he boards a bus bound for Pera. Fazıl compares himself to a baby turtle without its shell, “helpless, unsheltered, and weak.” He sells everything he owns, including his clothes, books, laptop, and phone, and moves into an old boardinghouse in a sketchy neighbourhood. Immigrants, sex workers, activists, and busboys from all over the world make up the boardinghouse’s diverse inhabitants.

Fazıl gets a job as an audience member in a television programme featuring podium dancers in order to help fund his education. In this unlikely setting, he meets two women who will change his life. He can discuss literature with the pessimistic young student Sıla, with whom he shares a family background. When the government took over her father’s company, she too lost everything.  Sıla’s only objective was to get out of Turkey as quickly as possible and join her cousin in Canada. Fazıl is also attracted to Hayat, the show’s star, an ebullient, sensual, and unapologetic older woman who leads a happy life free of regrets. Hayat, who does not read, satisfies her thirst for knowledge by watching television documentaries, impressing Fazıl with her exceptional memory. Sıla has meticulously planned for their future together. Hayat, on the other hand, does not believe in planning for the future and would rather live life to the fullest in the moment.

“Time would teach me that to understand such things as they were unfolding one needed a certain kind of experience, a maturity that was shaped by coming into collision with “real life:, something I lacked then.”

Fazıl exhibits the actions of a young man who lacks maturity and self-awareness, as he is caught between these two women. He’s unable to deal with reality since he’s unrealistically modelled his life after the novels he reads. Subsequently he’s frequently sulky, changes his mind at the drop of a hat and disappoints the two women in his life.

“Time would teach me that to understand such things as they were unfolding one needed a certain kind of experience, a maturity that was shaped by coming into collision with “real life:, something I lacked then.”

Lady Life is so colourful and captivating that it is hard to imagine Altan was incarcerated when he wrote it. Undoubtedly, the Turkey he portrays is a troubled nation run by an authoritarian government, plagued by political and economic hardships.

“It was as if we were sitting in the palm of a giant who, whenever he wanted, could make a fist and crush us in it.”

When Fazıl is offered a new editorial post at a newspaper he learns of all the horrific actions of the government that are never heard of due to severe censorship. At night pro-government men loiter in the street of the boardinghouse, beating up people who are dare to oppose the government.

Altan doesn’t gloss over these grim realities, but he balances it by painting vivid cityscapes that captivate our attention by describing the sights, sounds, and scents.Through exquisitely rendered vignettes, Altan presents Pera’s everyday life, offering an insightful look into contemporary Turkey.

Lady Life is more than just a poignant coming-of-age story, it’s populated with philosophical ponderings and life wisdoms. Although it depicts a carefree youth, there’s more to discover beneath the surface.