Leah Giarratano

This is one of those books. One of those mega-marketed, multi-stickered books that I put off reading because I figured it couldn’t possibly live up to the hype and I’d end up disappointed. Again.

Happily I was wrong.

Not that the book is a happy one mind you. The subject matter is skin-crawlingly awful enough to make any sane person consider the merits of the death penalty and/or becoming an armed vigilante. When several men are brutally bashed to death Police discover the men have all show more been accused of child molestation at some point. The somewhat reluctant investigation into the murders uncovers an entire club of such men who swap photographs, movies and children amongst themselves for their particular sick and sordid pleasures.

The plot is logical and contains no extraneous material which is an increasingly rare thing in this age of books the size (and weight) of house bricks. There are one or two passages, e.g. the incident at the prison, that almost push the story into “I can’t believe all that would happen to one human being” territory but they’re only short and they stretched my credulity rather than breaking it. Irrespective of them the build-up of suspense is perfectly timed and kept me awake long past my bed time. Besides, it’s all set in one of my favourite places on earth and Giarratano has captured the feel of the beachside suburbs of inner Sydney to a tee which makes up for any slight imperfections.

But it’s the characters in this book that are truly memorable. There’s Jill Jackson: an imperfect but very believable heroine who tackles the things she is afraid of despite her fears. Her white eyed companion is also perfectly written. But Giarratano hasn’t stopped with her main character. She’s written totally credibly in the voice of a kidnapped 11-year old boy, a transvestite and the most disturbing bunch of villains you’ll ever meet. For the record it will be Jamaal Mahmoud with his simmering violence and contemptuous hatred for every person he encounters who will inhabit my nightmares. Every passage in which he appears is terrifying. The kind of terrifying where a reader might close her eyes tightly while humming Walking on Sunshine and imagining pictures of puppy dogs before the dark thoughts consume her (I’m not saying I did that, just that some other, fraidy-cat reader might react that way).

For once the marketing was right: this is a killer read. It's my new favourite book of the year so far. show less

Jill Jackson is working undercover as Krystal Peters in Sydney’s Fairfield. In a long term operation she’s gathering intelligence on the area’s drug dealers and their suppliers in an effort to help clean up they city’s drug scene. At the same time Serendipity (Seren) Templeton is due to be released from prison after spending more than 12 months in jail for a drug related crime she did not commit. All she wants is to be reunited with her young son. And to extract revenge from the man show more responsible for her imprisonment. There are other forces at play too: Jill’s sister Cassie, a top class fashion model, has a new boyfriend and is living the high life in the harbour city and a young Chemistry student is learning that you can’t always stop what you start.

I’m sure part of the meaning of the title of this book relates to the drug at the heart of the tale. But as I started reading I was reminded of the winter I spent in the North-East of the US (i.e. a real winter as opposed to its rather laughable cousin we have here in Adelaide). As someone new to walking and driving in the conditions I was warned often of the black ice which was virtually transparent and so invisible until you were right on top of it (which in my case generally resulted in falling over or sliding off the road). There are elements of this story that are hidden in the same way: Jill’s undercover alter-ego whose personality is very different from Jill’s, Seren’s second persona which she uses to embark on the revenge she’s been plotting for months. Even air-headed Cassie, towards the end of the book, shows hidden depths. The unpredictable way all three of these strong female characters are revealed over the course of the story is utterly captivating.

It’s always the characters I love most about Giarratano’s books and this time I think it’s Serendipity who will stay with me after the rest of the book starts to fade. Her life of abuse, teenage pregnancy without any support, and betrayal when the one good thing that’s ever happened to her turns sour is painfully but beautifully depicted. In what might be a new record I was crying by page 38 when her two cellmates turned on her. Then each other. From that point on all I wanted to know was how would life treat Seren and how, or if, she would cope.

Jill is more mature in this book and at times takes a back seat to the other characters although she’s still quite a presence and it is interesting to watch her behaviour change and normalise over time. Aside from her and Seren there are Giarratano’s usual assortment of odd but memorable bit players who manage to leave lasting impressions even if they only appear for a few lines or a few pages. I won’t forget poor Damien who should have known better than to experiment or the nastily bureaucratic parole officer any time soon. And in this book the city itself plays a strong role. Two of its sides, rich and privileged versus limited by poverty, are shown inhabiting the same physical space yet practically operating as if on separate planets and it has quite a realistic feel for this former Sydney-sider.

Rather than answering the question ‘who committed that crime’ this book seems instead to be pondering the reasons why crimes happen and so is far less of a police procedural than its predecessors. Although some of the scenarios were completely foreign to my middle class existence with my happy childhood memories I found myself often wondering what I would have done in the scenarios being described. Although ‘turning to a jelly-like wreck’ is the most likely answer for most instances in this book I always enjoy reading that offers me any kind of vicarious living. And although parts of the book are bleak it’s not uniformly so. Call me an old softie if you like but I enjoyed it more because of that: there are limits to how much bleakness I want in my life.

I probably shouldn’t have liked this book. At least in part it’s about the drug scene (almost my least favourite plot theme ever for reasons I won’t bore anyone with) and, more importantly, it’s quite a departure from its much-loved predecessors. I was anticipating more of the same from Black Ice as I had enjoyed about the two earlier Jill Jackson novels: the creepiest of villains and a put-upon but valiant heroine. I didn’t have to hide undeer a blanket once here and the heroine wasn’t really who I expected her to be. However, despite that departure, or perhaps because of it, I found the book an emotional and satisfying read. It has retained the essence of what made the first two books great: wonderfully drawn characters and an exquisite build-up of tension towards the climax. But it’s also taken me somewhere unexpected, given me new ideas to think about. A thoroughly great read that I’d recommend to both fans of the previous books and people new to the series. show less

Clinical psychologist and best-selling author Leah Giarratano is known for exploring various criminal and/or psychological behaviours in all of her books, and in WATCH THE WORLD BURN, the fourth in the Sergeant Jill Jackson series, she's exploring family, along with extreme psychopathic behaviour. Whilst earlier books clearly demonstrate Giarratano's own background in her deft handling of the extremes of human behaviour, somehow, WATCH THE WORLD BURN is more assured, more informative, more show more affecting and profoundly unsettling.

Readers of the earlier books will know that Jill Jackson had an horrendous experience as a young girl - kidnapped, raped and tortured. Her ongoing battle to cope and move on is an underlying thread in all the books in this series, but in WATCH THE WORLD burn we see Jill put under the most extreme personal pressure and we watch as she completely falls apart, and starts to put herself back together again.

We also watch as a series of different sorts of families cope. Jill's family continue the struggle to support both of their daughters - both victims of Jill's childhood experience in their own ways. We also watch as a young Aboriginal ex-cop struggles to rebuild his life after he was shot, wounded, pushed from the force after he became a whistleblower. As the sole carer for his much younger brother and sister, Troy Berrigan has a family that was torn apart by so many of the problems in Aboriginal society, being put back together by their individual and collective strength. Then there is the family of Miriam Caine. Her son and granddaughter are pulled into Troy and Jill's circle after Miriam bursts into flames one night the very up-market restaurant that Troy manages, dying a painful and seemingly inexplicable death. Followed by a spate of seemingly unconnected acid and arson attacks around Sydney, the police investigation slowly weaves the stories of Jill, Troy and Miriam's families together.

Balanced well between the police investigation and the various personal stories, WATCH THE WORLD BURN quickly becomes an emotional rollercoaster, although don't for a moment think that means that the reader is left feeling manipulated or over-wrought. It's seering in its portrayal of desperation, pain, suffering, madness and hope. There's humour and great humanity here as well, there are strong and safe characters balancing out the damaged. And in creating a bad guy who is somewhat elusive Giarratano has created what seems to be a pitch perfect portrayal of a psychopath - distant, illogical, slightly out of focus even, but ultimately inexplicable.

Readers of Giarratano books need to be aware that they aren't going to be in for an easy read, but they are absolutely guaranteed to feel something. You may also learn something about the slender threads that some people balance on every day. But you cannot come away from WATCH THE WORLD BURN unaffected by the characters created, the pain that they feel, and the nature of nurture. show less

Sergeant Jill Jackson has been promoted since the first book in which she appeared, 2007’s [b:Vodka Doesn’t Freeze|3615580|Vodka Doesn't Freeze|Leah Giarratano|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1215221768s/3615580.jpg|3658351], and moves from beach-side Maroubra to Liverpool in the heart of Sydney’s western suburbs to work on a newly established Task Force investigating a series of violent home invasions. The Task Force brings together a range of new characters and Jackson is paired show more with a Federal Police Officer who has a knack for observing body language and the two lead the investigation in new directions when they re-interview victims and learn new information about the incidents.

I find it difficult sometimes to put my finger on the difference between a good book and a great one. But whatever that intangible thing might be, this book is well and truly in the second category. To try and define what makes this book better than good I’ll start with the story. It’s genuinely suspense-filled and surprisingly delicately constructed given the subject matter. Although it features a seriously twisted criminal it’s far more believable than the serial-killer-making-a-suit-from-human-skin type of thriller. And things you believe could happen are always scarier than fantasy. Believable makes you look at your neighbours a little more closely. Believable makes you pull the bed covers over your head even though it’s 40C. Believable makes you check the locks. Three times.

Then there are the characters. I love Jill Jackson and enjoyed seeing her deal with a case that had less of a personal involvement than in the first book. She’s not in nearly so much turmoil here and seems more centred and smarter about the way she works and the decisions she makes. The victims too are very well depicted. Even if they appear only briefly, such as the teenage Justine who struggles to voice what happened to her, they seem to leap off the page and sit in the room with you. There’s nothing two-dimensional about the people in this book. Again though Giarratano excels herself in creating the creepiest bad guys in crime fiction. As with Jamaal Mahmoud, who still occasionally troubles my sleep some six months after reading Vodka Doesn’t Freeze, Henry ‘Cutter’ Nguyen is a masterpiece of evil in human form. The thought that Giarratano may have encountered a non-fictional version of him in her work as a clinical psychologist working with, among others, trauma victims and in the prison system, is a sobering one.

To top it all off the book demonstrates the increasingly rare art of knowing when enough is enough. Unlike the many 500 page bricks that pepper the shelves these days it’s a tightly written 300 pages and didn’t once make me wish I had a red pen in my hand. All that remains is to wait with much anticipation for the next offering from Ms Giarratano. And perhaps buy an extra deadbolt or two for the back door. Just in case. show less