The Dragon Man - Garry Disher

The Dragon Man is a cracking read. It’s hard to believe I wasn’t aware of this series, given I’m an Aussie who reads crime almost exclusively and the series is set on the Mornington Peninsula where I live. What does this say about how poorly Australian crime fiction is promoted? And Garry Disher is a writer I knew of. I’d even studied some of his short stories at university a zillion years ago. But it wasn’t until I saw him speak on his crime fiction at my local library that I thought, hhhmmm, must check that out....

The talk was so interesting I went up and bought the first in the series, then got him to sign it for me. The Dragon Man, was first published way back in centuries past - 1999. It isn’t dated, though. There are computers and mobile phones but not everyone has one. Aside from that this book might have been published last year. Or the year before that, when summers were still blisteringly hot down here and the land and people were parched. Disher captures this perfectly; his main character – copper Hal Challis, is introduced showering with a bucket at his feet to catch the run-off. We did that for about a decade of summers. I loved it. The bit in the book, that is... not the awkward showering.

The Dragon Man is a police procedural set on the Mornington Peninsula, at a mythical town called Waterloo, which is really based on Hastings. The main characters are Hal Challis and his offsider a female detective called Ellen Destry. Four other coppers are very well developed as characters – there’s a youngish female constable Pam Murphy, policeman Scobie Sutton whose mind is never far from his young daughter, a couple of bend-the-rules coppers whose names I don’t recall, but who pull central roles and really flesh out this rich, complex, multi-layered cast.

This Garry Disher bloke can really write. I mean really. The Dragon Man is understated. Stark in places. He’s mastered completely the “show don’t tell” of writing. The character clues are there and the reader’s intelligence and imagination fills in the rest. There is mood and atmosphere galore. And the people – his creations - feel so real they could be my neighbours.

It's a literary read, from an accomplished writer. But it's also genuine crime writing at its best. The Dragon Man has tremendous pace. And I need pace in my literary reads, I really do. Or I get bored. Not a problem here. Events occur in rapid succession, over just a few days. There are multiple stems to this story: a serial killer raping and murdering young women, a pair of petty criminals with one graduating to violence arson and murder; seemingly unrelated crimes happening in parallel that somehow do have a connection. All interconnected with the police themselves and the dodgy stuff they get up to when they think no one is watching. Disher pulls it all together perfectly.

I lost sleep because of the The Dragon Man. It was very difficult for me to stop reading each night. The chapters are unusually long for a crime novel, but each time I got to the bloody end of one, it left me with such questions that I had to just taste the next... and so it went on, into the wee hours...

So I loved it. It made me think. I’m still thinking about it. One thing that occurred to me the day after I’d finished it was that although the victims of a serial killer were women, in other respects this book explores ways in which women can be proactively callous, ruthless or even dangerous. The women in this book do some not nice stuff.

A female detective is planning on cheating on her husband. One character’s wife is in prison for trying to murder him. Another female character is a respected professional but is also a criminal planning home invasions. A likeable 30 year old police constable dreams of seducing her 17 year old surfing instructor. A “gypsy” woman is going around town ripping off the elderly and gullible. A cocaine addict entraps a policeman into supplying her with drugs in exchange for sex. A woman being tailed by a road rage maniac parks in her neighbour‘s driveway to throw her pursuer off her tail – and get the neighbour murdered... This is quite a list  of sneaky female villains in a little book about police chasing a serial killer.

Did any of this bother me? Not especially.  I wondered if maybe Disher didn't like women, but it was just something that occurred to me. In some ways it’s pleasing that women get such a run in this book. They’re not just the bodies on the slab and they’re not cool superwomen fighting crime. There are no cardboard cut-outs, here. There is complexity and fallibility. It made me cheer all the more when breakthroughs came.

Another thing I really loved about The Dragon Man is the way the author deliberately chose not to try to get into the head of the killer who wrecks the lives of young women and their families. There was no relishing of him. This is no dark hero, no mesmorising, fascinating, ultra intelligent Hannibal Lecter. It’s a creep who ruins lives and Disher’s not going to give him the time of day. His main character says exactly that at the end – the guy’s a loser and he won’t waste his energy giving him much thought. The title is significant here. You might think "The Dragon Man" refers to some new exciting psychopath Disher's conjured up to scare the pants of us (note the similarity to Thomas Harris's The Red Dragon). You'd be wrong. It refers, instead, to the central character - Hal Challis - and his hobbies. Hal Challis is a good man. He is someone I do want to know more about. Good on you Garry! Courageous choice. Awesome book.

And a bit of a post script to this. I turned up to my new book group the other night. It was time for the selection of reads for next year. I’d found Disher’s third novel in the series – Kittyhawk Down – in the catalogue and had selected it. When I mentioned this to the group, the reaction surprised me. They’d read it the year before and were unanimous in their complete  hatred of it. It had been read as a stand-alone and I wondered – does the series deteriorate? Or should these books be definitely read as a series and in order? Is there simply too much in the earlier books to make Kittyhawk Down work on its own... alternatively I might find this new book club isn’t really for me...

Overkill - Vanda Symon

I read the first few pages of Overkill while waiting to hear the author speak at a recent conference; talk about gripping. I wanted to keep going right there and then, but shut the thing up long enough to listen politely and get myself home. It is a cracking opening... and I won’t spoil it.

And the rest of the book? Cracking?

Not exactly, but a good read, for sure.

Overkill is the first novel of New Zealander Vanda Symon, who used to be a pharmacist and decided to write a crime novel after the birth of her first child. This is years ago now, of course. I’m a bit behind the times and hadn’t heard of her. Now Overkill is the first in a popular series all featuring a young female detective Sam Sheppard. It’s set in small town south island New Zealand. And I really liked that. For me reading is like travelling and it’s great to go somewhere new. And Symon has done a good job of painting the lives of the  characters who live in this small community, without peppering it with cliches.

Sam is a good character. You’d need her to be because Overkill is told from Sam’s point of view alone. She’s young and enthusiastic. Not too many scars, skeletons and neurotic personality flaws – not that I mind those. But Sam’s young and somewhat naive, an early career copper who still thinks she can make everything right in the world. She should be like that. I was like that once myself without the job.

She’s also very likable. Admirable. Kind of tough, but also vulnerable without being a sook. I love the embarrassing dumb stuff she’s done breaking up with her ex and I like the problem she has still fancying him even while she’s investigating the murder of his wife. I would certainly be keen to follow Sam into other books. This is especially because she’s young and there are so many different directions for a character like her to go in the years to come. Plus the very understated sex in this book (she gets it on, but retreats behind closed doors for the deed) was pretty sexy. Reminded me of when things like that sometimes used to happen to me.

What didn’t crack for me? Actually the plot ended up being a let-down. The underlying premise that explains the murder – which I won’t give away – was really interesting and kept me up late trying to get to the solution. But when I got there it ended up being a tad over-done and a bit far-fetched.

Don’t want to spoil it, but hiring a hit man (revealled in first chapter, so not much of a spoiler) when you’re in the position/condition of the murderer (revealled at the end, so I wont elaborate) would be unbelievably difficult to do from a small town in New Zealand. It’s never explained. And we find out that a lot of people know what the murderer has done (after the event), but for their own self interest, say nothing. It didn’t ring true to me. The murder of a young mother in front of her child and townspeople are colluding to hush it up? I don’t think so.

Aside from that, the writing wasn’t quite strong enough for me to totally forget myself in this book. The prose is competent but isn’t really a feature – and I’m a sucker for fantastic writing be it in crime or anything else. It was also a bit by-the-numbers for me, which is often the case with police procedurals. I like big surprises and twists and there weren't many of them. For me, Overkill also lacked a sense of danger and suspense – a spooky mood - which was captured in the first few pages and never really recovered. I enjoy that in a book and missed it here. For these reasons  Overkill isn't really what I'd call a cracking read.

But there was enough good stuff for me to want to read more from Vanda Symon. There’s some really nice humour and a cool character. The story moves along and builds mystery. I was certainly interested enough to want to know what happened. And I will eventually read the next in the series and that’s big tick from me. I’m not generally one who gets hooked into characters in series these days. Too often writers lose the edge they originally had that made them stand out from the pack and get published and noticed in the first place – but by then they are so popular no one will say anything. I’m scarred for life by the Kay Scarpetta novels which I started out loving and ended up hating. Let’s hope Sam Sheppard doesn’t go the same way.

And there we have it. It doesn’t have to be cracking to be recommended!