Australian Penthouse

Nine Dragons
Michael Connelly
(Allen and Unwin)

Review: Suzan Ryan

FORMER crime reporter Michael Connelly knows how to spin a ripping cop story. Devoid of unrealistic ‘me against the Force’ bullshit and extraneous romances, and on-the-money when describing the mundanities of police bureaucracy, Connelly’s latest Harry Bosch installment sees crime fiction’s most believable cop facing the most daunting task of his life: finding his kidnapped daughter in Hong Kong.

It’s been a while since Bosch’s daughter, Madeline and his former love, Eleanor Wish have featured (Lost Light, 2003, revealed the daughter Bosch never knew he had), and in typical Connelly style, there is little afterglow to both relationships. Maddie, 13, is living with her mother in Hong Kong where Eleanor is a professional gambler at a Macau casino. Bosch has never been the father or partner he hoped he would be and while his relationship with Maddie is distant, it’s improving; whereas his relationship with Eleanor remains prickly and full of blame.

The story opens with a robbery at Fortune Liquors, a convenience store in a predominantly black South LA neighbourhood, where store owner Mr Li was shot three times in the chest and left dead behind the counter to be discovered by his wife.

A security camera shows the store owner handing money to a stocky Asian male who the Robbery-Homocide cops peg as a Los Angeles-based Triad member. Perhaps Mr Li didn’t pay up? His family won’t say, and information is hard to come by for cops who don’t speak Mandarin. Harry and partner Ignacio Ferras are also finding it tough working together. The tight team they used to be is gone, and trust is hard to come by, with Ferras increasingly street-shy in the two years since he took a bullet on the job. With three kids and a wife phoning Ferras daily to ask when he will be home, Harry know he will soon have to look for a new partner. And he’s pissed off; he had hopes for the once-plucky Ferras.

To assist Robbery-Homocide in identifying the Triad stick-up man, Bosh enlists the assistance of Detective David Chu of the Asian Crimes Unit, who uses his connections to identify the banger from a tattoo on the man’s arm. But when they arrest him on Friday afternoon, Bosch receives a video on his mobile phone showing his daughter bound and gagged, followed by a phone call telling him to release the Triad or there will be repercussions. Knowing they can only legally hold the suspect until Monday morning, when court is next in session, Harry hops a plane with blood in his eyes and the determination to do whatever it takes to find and free his daughter.

The next 39 hours allow Connelly to reveal his most relentlessly paced and shocking Harry Bosch thriller yet, one that will have readers reeling in the shadow of their much-loved homicide cop long after the final page has been turned.

Australian Penthouse talks to Program Manager for Australian Aid International, Nathan Mullins, about his new book, How to Amputate a Leg, lessons he’s learned during his time in the services, and why guys with samurai swords are usually wankers… Continue reading “Author Interview: Nathan Mullins on “How To Amputate A Leg”” »

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Brute Force (Nick Stone, book 11)
Andy McNab
Bantam

DAYS after his car erupts in a ball of flame, Nick Stone narrowly cheats death a second time when a gunman opens fire on him from the back of a motorcycle.  Who knows his movements?

Who wants him dead, and why? Stone’s only chance of survival is to carry the fight to his attackers—but before that, he must uncover a trail of clues that leads from his own dark and complex past into the heart of a chilling conspiracy that threatens us all.

McNab’s book are so visceral due to the fact that the author is himself former SAS, and member of one of the military’s most famous escapes; during the Gulf War he commanded Bravo Two Zero, a patrol that, in the words of his commanding officer, ‘will remain in regimental history for ever’.

Awarded both the Distinguished Conduct Medal (DCM) and Military Medal (MM) during his military career, McNab was the British Army’s most highly decorated serving soldier when he left the SAS in 1993.

The Neighbour
by Lisa Gardner
Hachette

A young mother disappears in the middle of the night from her South Boston home, leaving behind her four-year-old daughter as the only witness and her secretive husband as the prime suspect.

But from the moment Detective Sergeant D. D. Warren arrives at the family home, she knows that something doesn’t fit.  On the surface, Jason and Sandra Jones are a hardworking couple raising a four-year-old.  But Jason Jones’ reluctance to immerse himself in the investigation; actively search for his wife or show any apprehension about her kidnapping is deeply unsettling.

In fact, he seems more intent on destroying evidence and isolating his daughter than on searching for his wife. Is the perfect husband trying to hide his guilt—or just trying to hide? And will the only witness to the crime be the killer’s next victim.

The Stranger
by Max Frei
Gollancz

A refreshing look at the fantasy genre by Russian wunderkind, Max Frei (author of the internationally bestselling series Labyrinths of Echo—starring lead character Max Frei).

Far from the dragons and damsels angle, The Stranger focuses on the concept of escaping from the banality of modern life via a parallel and somewhat similar fantasy world. Max Frei is an everyday nobody who is single, unemployed and without colour in his life, other than his persistent and unusual dreams of strange lands and a man named Juffin Tully.

In fact, Juffin is reaching out to Max via his subconscious, where he instructs him to walk to a specific street at a specific time and get on a cable car—which is a portal to a parallel magical world called Echo.

Once there, Max begins an apprenticeship as a wry, fast-paced and unique, it feels deprecatory to describe this as “the airport novel of the fantasy genre”, but I mean so in only the most positive and accessible way.

The Repossession Mambo
by Eric Garcia
Scribe

IN the future, where people live well into their hundreds, rarely dying of disease or old age, there’s big money to be made in the “artiforg” (artificial organ) business—the buying and selling of artificial organs that prolong life.

Companies, like banks, are happy to extend credit to anyone with financial means. Caveat emptor: if you fall behind in repayments, these organs will be repossessed.  Like many former US soldiers, Remy (the narrator) makes his living reclaiming organs from debtors who can no longer afford them. He’s one of the best, and business is good.. until Remy finds himself hunted by the same people he once worked with, and running out of places to hide.

Now, he’s holed up in a deserted building, writing his life story on a beat-up typewriter in the hopes of getting it all down on paper before the Bio-Repo Man shows up to collect on his debts.

The Scarecrow
by Michael Connelly
Allen and Unwin

Crime reporter Jack McEvoy made his career when he broke the story of The Poet, but he now faces unemployment due to the new media sensibility of hiring cheaper staff to replace the seasoned journo’s.

Jack might be on his way out,  but before he packs his desk he has one final story to file—and what seems a simple caught-in-the-act murder arrest and trial on the surface is quickly revealed as a covered-up who-dunnit. With just two days til he’s gone, Jack’s final story proves to be one that will bring him face to face with evil.

Jack’s final story focuses on Alonzo Winslow, a 16-year-old drug dealer jailed after confessing to murder.  But the facts don’t gel and it seems like the uneducated kid is really a convenient patsy for a smarter criminal.

Soon,  Jack is unpicking his biggest story since The Poet made his career—tracking a killer who operates below the radar and seemingly inside the system, reuniting the recalcitrant reporter with his former love, headstrong and beautiful FBI agent Rachel Walling, a woman who is  no longer keen to indulge a former flame with her assistance.  But does she have a choice?