Garry Disher

Another stand-alone crime novel from my favorite Australian author. This one features a suspended cop, Charlie Deravin, whose mother disappeared 20 years ago, and whose father, also a cop, has remained under a cloud of suspicion ever since. As Charlie undertakes his own unsanctioned--and unwelcome--investigation into his mother's cold case, family dynamics and personal emotional baggage are more front-and-center than procedure. Savvy readers won't be surprised when he turns up suggestions of show more incompetence and worse in the original investigation, but Charlie is not quite prepared for all the worms that crawl out from under the rocks he's turning over. Not my favorite Disher, but a page-turner, nonetheless. show less

Paul Hirsch, former big city detective, is now a small town constable in the Australian outback, demoted for his role in a police corruption scandal. He was cleared, but his reputation was tarnished, and he was labeled a snitch. This stand-alone crime novel begins at a leisurely pace as Paul confronts small town issues and crimes--the town drunk, a pair of teenagers joyriding in a stolen car, the malevolent town busybody spreading rumors. Things turn more serious when several horses are show more stabbed to death and several more are mutilated. Even so, we are more than half way through the book when the murder occurs. I like this pace, however. I liked getting to know the town and its inhabitants. I like that the crime(s) are solved through the steady accumulation of facts and evidence. I like that there are no car chases, shootout, bombs, etc., though there is a poisonous snake and a brush fire. Some may argue that there's a bit too much coincidence, but I didn't find that to be so. Things do get tied up very neatly in the end (the town drunk reforms, the busybody gets his comeuppance), but this really didn't bother me. I've pretty much liked every book I've read by Gary Disher, and this was no exception.

Recommended.

3 1/2 stars show less

Reprinted with permission from Reviewing the Evidence.

Garry Disher has written a great many books. You'd think he might run out of material, or simply grow tired of collecting Ned Kelly awards and publishing more than fifty books. Many a writer starts phoning it in, but Disher can't seem to help himself. His latest in the Hal Challis and Ellen Destry series, set on Australia's Mornington Peninsula, is as good as it gets if realistic police procedurals are your thing.

As the book opens, we show more meet two nasty characters who have gone to the countryside to do a job. They're not sure why they're being paid so much to take out a meth head, and they try to get some information out of him, but they're better at their profession than they are at interrogation. Job done, they drive off to collect their fee, but it's hot and dry in Australia. A brush fire has turned dangerously large and fast-moving and the two hit men, who don't know the terrain, make a wrong turn.

That leaves Hal Challis and his team with a murder scene and a puzzle: who are the two men whose charred remains are found in a burnt-out Mercedes? Things get more complicated when a drugs investigator arrives from the big city, itching to take over the murder of his small-town meth addict, but that's a problem: Another addict's little girl has disappeared, taken as collateral but likely to end up trafficked if they don't find her fast. Challis doesn't want her fate to slip through the cracks of a major drugs investigation that's more interested in busting a drug ring than in small children and their hapless families.

Challis's former partner at work and current partner in love has a nasty case of her own. At first it simply seems like a series of home invasions, the loss of some televisions and jewelry, a cell phone or two. Then a sharp officer, interviewing a victim, begins to realize there was more lost than property. Someone who may have started out as a burglar has moved on to serial rape. Destry has to revisit old cases and ask difficult questions while worrying about stopping an escalating pattern of sexual violence.

There's a lot going on, but Disher knows when to switch from one story line to another, a foot gently pressed on the accelerator at just the right pace, and the characters are vivid enough there's no chance we'll lose track of them. What really makes this series stand out, though, is Disher's laconic but strikingly evocative prose and pitch-perfect dialogue. No extra words. Lots of sly humor. Moments of grace.

There's no need to read the previous six books in the series to enjoy SIGNAL LOSS. Disher's an old hand who knows how to build a book that can stand on its own. But then - why deny yourself the pleasure? show less

The first in Disher's series about Wyatt, a high stakes burglar who isn't squeamish about killing associates who screw up or compromise his operation. He is competent, cool in a crisis, and totally unappealing to me. Disher's writing here is as fine as always, his plotting creative but not overdone, the twists and turns interesting to follow--until they turn deadly and Wyatt blithely eliminates human obstacles. Disher has turned the caper story on its head, making no attempt to make his show more readers like his protagonist. Oceans Eleven it's not. I'm not about it. Give me a flawed hero any day, but don't give me a man with no scruples at all whose primary satisfaction is pulling off a big job, and then sitting back in style "somewhere warm" until another great opportunity comes along or the money runs low. YMVV. show less