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...
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