Chain of Evidence

The further adventures of Inspector Hal Challis, Sergeant Ellen Destry and the sometimes hapless, sometimes conscience-less uniformed and plain clothes officers of the Waterloo Criminal Investigation Unit. If you're fan of police procedurals, and you haven't sampled this Australian series, you're missing out. The action is intense, the characters are more believable than some of their American counterparts, the setting (both coastal and outback) is intriguing, and the pages turn themselves. This makes 4 I have read in the series, and I admit that Superintendent McQuarrie's stupidity and self-serving interference is wearing a bit thin...but I'm going to keep going because I love everything else about these books.

One of the biggest strengths of this series is the setting - so different from anything else I had read, so Australian. This book looses this - yes, it is still in the same place but it does not feel as different as before - the places and the crimes could have happened anywhere. But that is not because Disher did not do his job properly - it is just that some things are the same - no matter where you go. Not that some things were not possible only in Australia (Trankard's car issues for example) but something was off, too generic in places.

Disher seems to be having a hard time dealing with the big cast he created so he puts a few of them on the virtual bench again - Hal Challis is summoned to his father's death bed near Adelaide (some show more 1000 km or so away from the Peninsula) and Pam is shipped to extensive training for most of the novel (but she is back just on time when Disher is out of options on who can help - a bit too neat but still believable).

And with Challis elsewhere the book splits into two separate narratives - one on the Peninsula, a second one, a lot shorter, with Challis somewhere in the middle of nowhere. He may have gone to be with his father but ends up in a real trouble - first a body surfaces, then he manages to alienate a few police officers, then people shoot at him and somewhere amongst all this racket, he manages to solve an old murder and help his own family.

Meanwhile on the Hal-less Peninsula, Ellen Destry's family had finally disintegrated and she is staying at Hal's house, house-watching while she is gone. Even if these two spend the novel never meeting and just talking on the phone a few times, the tension is there and I am not sure that she is moving out of this house any time soon. But we will see.

And while she is staying there, she gets the call for a missing girl. Search parties are dispatched and soon it becomes clear that the crime is a lot bigger - with a whole set of old crimes that connect to this one. Pedophilia is a hard topic and not all authors are handling it well. Disher uses the same style that allowed the previous novel not to sound too garish and despite the hard topic, the story remains about the people and the community. And when dirty cops are involved, things go crazy fast.

By the end of the novel, two of the main cast of characters are dead (solving Disher's issue with what to do with so many people), Hal is on his way back and the Peninsula is the same as before. Except not really - because the resolution of this case will reverberate through the force and the community for a while and I am curious to see how the next novel in the series handles it (if it does) - so far Disher had always managed to handle this kind if issues nicely in the next novels.

Overall a decent story in the series, even if it is the weakest of the 4 so far. show less

Garry Disher is a great craftsman. His characters live and breathe. The plots are about nasty but believable people, and the resolutions always take me by surprise. He has a fine sense of dialogue and leaves the reader wanting more.
In this book, the two main protagonists (Challis and Destry) are separated by distance as their relationship develops slowly. Challis is called back to his home town in remote South Australia, and Destry has to step in to the gap on the Peninsula while he is gone.
I found the two distinct storylines a little distracting, and I sometimes wished Disher would give a few of the side stories a rest, even if it means we don't get such detailed insight into the lives of the team at Waterloo police station.

An excellent police procedural set in Australia. Garry Disher has been compared to Ian Rankin and Peter Robinson, and based on this book, I agree. The characters are complex and the mystery is excellent. This is the 4th book in this series, and I plan to go back and read the others.

In the fourth volume of this crime series featuring Australian detective Hal Challis and his colleagues in a small police department on a peninsula south of Melbourne, Hal is in the outback at his childhood home, where he has been summoned because of his father's illness. While there, he decides to investigate the disappearance of his sister's husband several years before, a mystery that has never been solved. That leaves Ellen back on the Peninsula in charge of a child abduction and possible murder. She's missing Hal, and wondering whether she's in over her head, and it's beginning to look like there may be a child pedophile ring and possible police corruption involved.

As noted before, I enjoy this crime series, especially the show more characters involved in solving the varied crimes they encounter, from Hal down to patrolman "Tank."

3 star show less

Garry Disher has given us two fascinating protagonists to follow in this excellent series. DI Hal Challis, still coming to terms with the fact that his wife tried to murder him and was imprisoned for it, goes home to South Australia to wrestle with other family ghosts. He leaves behind his DS, Ellen Destry, to manage the unsettling case of a missing child in an eerie atmosphere of menace, both inside the station and without, as she struggles to keep control in his absence. Impossible to put this down until the last full stop! Very deserving of the Ned Kelly Award for Best Novel.

Detective stories set in a familiar, if fictional, milieu very like Westernport, Victoria. Disher writes strong characters with a clear sense of place. The plot of this one is double-barrelled, both with pleasant twists and turns and wrapped up without a strand loose. Part of a series, the back story is sufficiently fleshed out if you come at it fresh.