Sand on the Gumshoe: a century of Australian crime writing

Mather and Warnock have found their niche, if not local celebrity, with thrillers. Less appealing has been the writing of Leon de Grand, a former mining tycoon who set out to emulate Robert Ludlum with three novels, The Von Kessel Dossier (Sydney, Fontana, 1985), The Two-Ten Conspiracy (Sydney, Fontana, 1986) and The Whittington Pact (Sydney, Collins, 1988) but proved that a well-tried formula doesn’t necessarily ensure a best-seller.

The fashionable technique of making fiction from actual characters and situations, widely known via Nicholas Meyer’s partnering of Sherlock Holmes and Sigmund Freud in The Seven Per Cent Solution (New York, Dutton, 1974; London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1975), was used by media personality Derryn Hinch and author Nigel Krauth. Hinch’s Death in Newport (Sydney, Angus & Robertson, 1987) is a murder mystery set during the 1974 America’s Cup challenge while Krauth’s Matilda, My Darling (Sydney, Allen & Unwin, 1983) won the Vogel Prize for his story of nineteenth century private detective Hammond Niall and the help he receives in solving a case from no less than Banjo Patterson.

Successful Australian crime writers exhibit markedly different styles, from the slick professionalism of Arthur Mather and the late 1980s re-emergence of Jon Cleary’s Scobie Malone thrillers to the stylistic integrity of Peter Corris. So plentiful has been the supply of material from new and established writers that they begin to assume the range and variety of a golden age.

Corris cornered the market on the private eye tradition early on, although today he is far from dominating it. Keith Dewhurst’s McSullivan’s Beach (Sydney, Angus & Robertson, 1985) is an amiable nod in this direction while Marele Day’s The Loves of Harry Lavender (Sydney, Allen & Unwin, 1988) with a female gumshoe, the redoubtable Claudia Valentine, amply demonstrates just how entertaining gender-switching can be in good hands.

Hossana Brown similarly has a female investigator rejoicing in the unlikely name of Frank le Roux. She is an, ‘Investigator Extraordinary. Toast of the governments and big corporations over five continents’. I Spy You Die (London, Gollancz, 1984) is set in England whilst Death Upon A Spear (London, Gollancz, 1986) deals with the prickly subject of Aboriginal race relations. Le Roux, despite a jokesy nature, is a fine creation and traced with an element of absurdity that brings to mind Michael Moorcock’s character Jerry Cornelius.

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Nor are the traditional forms completely abandoned. Tom Howard, the pseudonym of Sydney author John Howard Reid, masquerades as author, narrator and central character, a device beloved of such writers as Norman Lee and, perhaps best known, Ellery Queen, all self-published, which have an old-time American police procedural flavour. Howard is a loner hero whose motives and methods have been honed by the little-seen bureaucracy of a big-city police force. In such novels as The Health Farm Murders (Sydney, Rastar, 1985), The Beachfront Murders (Sydney, Rastar, 1985), All Possible Avenues (Sydney, Rastar, 1986) and Howard’s Price (Sydney, Rastar, 1985), Howard has touched on most of the available influences known to the crime writing genre. It is an interesting approach and short circuits the potential deadness of situation and character that could easily befall such a series.

William Leonard Marshall also writes police procedurals. Born in Sydney and educated at the Australian National University, Marshall travelled the world and eventually settled in Ireland. He returned to Australian in 1983. His Yellowthread Street series, set in Hong Kong, are similar to Ed McBain’s (the pseudonym of Evan Hunter) 87th Precinct novels and include Yellowthread Street (London, Hamish Hamilton, 1975), Gelignite (London, Hamish Hamilton, 1976; Holt, Rinehart & Winston, New York, 1977), Skulduggery (London, Hamish Hamilton, 1975) and Head First (London, Seeker & Warburg 1986).

Another resurgent trend is toward the cosy English-influenced clue puzzle mysteries used in Australia by the likes of the Nevilles and Pat Flower. Publishing identity (and award-wi

However it is a form that requires considerable skill and talent. Joan Flanagan’s The Murder Game (Sydney, Hutchinson, 1988) ventures into the same territory, even going as far as adding some Gothic atmosphere for good measure, but the feeling remains that there are far too many potholes in this particular stretch of the road. Flanagan rides her plot a little too hard and has difficulty keeping track of the characters, but she displays an obvious talent and further novels should be well received.

Thrillers have returned to prominence in the 1980s. Morris West has produced some excellent examples, the best being Masterclass (London, Hutchinson, 1988). Yet many thrillers often begin with great ideas which fail in the execution. Colin Mason, formerly a Democrat senator for New South Wales and an author of some note, has produced a thriller, Copperhead Creek (Sydney, Sun Books, 1987). The plot mixes multi-national mining interests, the uranium debate and the kidnap of the Prime Minister’s daughter – potentially assured ingredients for a best-seller. Not so, it appears, for Copperhead Creek is a leaden weight of little interest. Although the political background is first-class, Mason has not exercised the wordcraft necessary to make the novel interesting.

A more practiced exercise came from Kit Denton, noted military historian and scholar of the Breaker Morant legend. Fiddler’s Bridge (Sydney, John Ferguson, 1986) concerns the ambitious robbery of an Australian Army payroll by a group of ex-service misfits. Laura Jarman, the daughter of a regular soldier, assembles a team of specialists, all with their own reasons for turning to crime, to carry out the raid in a small country town.

Denton reworks the caper novel for Fiddler’s Bridge. It is married only by his knee-jerk puritanism – after building considerable rapport with the characters, the reader is disappointed to have them nabbed by a police presence that appears virtually out of nowhere. Another author may well have allowed the team to get away with it; it would have been a preferable option.

Another staple component of the thriller is the conspiracy theory, a common device used by such giants of the form as Robert Ludlum, Frederic Forsyth and Jack Higgins. Leon Le Grand abused it but poet and academic Robert Brissenden, like Arthur Mather, has proved the form can be well exploited south of the equator. Brissenden’s Poor Boy (Sydney, Allen & Unwin, 1987) tells the story of Tom Caxton, a foreign correspondent chasing the story of his career in South-East Asia. Caxton, like many heroes of the thriller genre, is an ordinary man thrust into extraordinary circumstances.

A similar exponent of the form is Philip Cornford. The central character in his The Outcast (London, Michael Joseph, 1988) is also a journalist. Paul Macki