Tangled Web UK Review June 2007
The Dragon Man by
Garry Disher
pbk out May 07
(Bitter Lemon Press)
at £8.99
None for some time – and then two come along together. Australians of course.
Unlike Peter Temple however, Mr Disher is on a return
trip. Perhaps best known in the UK for his series of Richard Stark-inspired
Wyatt novels (or for his wonderfully titled collection of crime short stories
Straight, Bent and Barbara Vine), this one is rather different. It's the first in a
series featuring Detective Inspector Hal Challis and Sergeant Ellen Destry,
and it's a serial killer novel.
Yes, I know. But this was first published in Australia back in 1999, so perhaps
he can be forgiven. Besides there are none of the excesses and few of the
clichés of the genre. Taunting notes to the police do feature (as in many a
real-life case) as well as an opening chapter in italics (a device thankfully
used only twice more). Instead we get a beautifully plotted police novel,
atmospheric, packed with incident and awash with living, breathing
characters.
It's Christmas on the Peninsula, an area south east of Melbourne, slowly
changing under the impact of tourism. In Waterloo, one of the main towns in
the area, local hoods amuse themselves with low-level burglaries and by
setting mail-boxes on fire. Hal Challis is a CIB senior homicide investigator
(presumably the Criminal Investigation Bureau – it is never explained),
assigned to the local uniformed branch to investigate an abduction. It is he
who is the Dragon Man, so-called because of his obsessive if therapeutic
restoration of a de Havilland Dragon Rapide, a short-haul passenger
aeroplane of the 1930s (cf the part-time cabinet-making of Peter Temple's
Jack Irish). Ellen Destry is the CIB local officer. And can that abduction be
connected to the recent rape and murder of another young woman in the
area?
Disher is a class act. The cops are a varied and well-characterised bunch:
one a bully, for instance, another a philanderer, another teaching herself
surfing as therapy after an accident. Disher's female characters (Pam Murphy
the fledgling surfer amongst them) in particular are deftly and effectively
evoked. Plotting and pacing are top-notch. This book won the 2002 Deutsche
Krimi Preis, one of Germany's major crime awards. It is well worth seeking
out.
(
Bob Cornwell
)
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