Robert Goodman: Hi, and welcome to Crime Fiction Down Under, where we review and discuss the latest in Australian crime fiction releases, crime fiction news, and give you some recommendations from the wider world of crime fiction. I'm Robert Goodman. I review books for Pile by the Bed and was a longtime judge of the Australian Crime Writers Association Ned Kelly Awards. Joining me is my co-host Jackie Horwood, library nerd, reader, writer, and former Ned Kelly Judge for the Australian Crime Writers Association and former convener with Sisters in Crime Australia. Hi, Jackie.
Jacqui: Hi Robert. I can't believe another fortnight has whooshed past and here we are. What have you been up to?
Robert Goodman: look, I've been doing a lot of reading, but I have to admit my guilty pleasure has been catching up with NCIS Sydney. Now, I've never been a big fan of the NCIS franchise. I don't know if I've ever watched any of the other NCIS franchise entries, but I thought I'd give this one a go and I'm really enjoying it. the thing I really love about this is its commitment to using Sydney locations and not just your usual Bondi Harbor Bridge, But they have been they've been to the Ocean Pool at Marubra, they've been out to Royal National Park, they've been to Terry Hills, to Strathfield, to Darlinghurst, all over, really. And it it's got a really Australian sensibility and sense of humor to it. Sure, it's cheesy, and you have to suspend your disbelief a long, long way to accept there's a joint team of US Navy and Australian Federal Police who can just investigate whatever crime comes their way. But it's a series that's grown on me, it's a lot of fun, and it's just a great popcorn crime show. so what have you been doing, Jackie, besides obviously reading more Australian crime novels?
Jacqui: Well, if we're speaking of guilty pleasures, we've started watching season one of The Gentleman created by Guy Ritchie. And I know Guy Ritchie is not everyone's taste, but you do know what you're going to get with him. in this series, we meet Freddie and Eddie, who are the sons of the Duke of Halstead, who's just died. In his will, the Duke leaves everything to the second son, Eddie, who's a captain in the UN. The firstborn, Freddie, is a coke-sniffing disaster. So I can see why he skipped the firstborn and went straight to the second. Eddie soon discovers that his father has been making extra money by renting space on his property located underground to a criminal enterprise to grow dope. The criminal enterprise is run by Bobby Glass, played by the wonderful and always reliable Ray Winston. Unfortunately for us, Bobby's in jail, so we don't get to see nearly enough of Ray Winston. While he's in jail, the enterprise is being managed by his very capable daughter, Susie Glass. So it's Guy Richie, it's You know, it's very stylised, lots of hijinks ensue and it's very funny and very entertaining. So that that's what I've been watching.
Robert Goodman: Awesome. Yeah, I remember the movie version of that. so Jackie, what books are we gonna cover today?
Jacqui: Well, I'm going to talk about a character with some unique abilities who lives in a very small Australian town where children are going missing, in Samantha Ross's debut, Possible Springs. And I believe you're heading to Perth, to the Perth suburbs for a bit of urban noir in Alex Duke's second novel, Nothing Personal.
Robert Goodman: So let's get to it.
Jacqui: Possible Springs is written by Samantha Ross. And Samantha Ross is originally from Melbourne, but she's now moved to Port Douglas, which is probably a smart move. She is a script writer, and Possible Springs is her first novel. So this book is about Jimney, who we meet at 11 years of age. It's 1987. Jimney is a free spirited kid who is a bit of an outsider, but an adventurous one. She lives with her family, mum, dad, and older brother Taylor, who she adores. Well should it be whom she adores, either way, she adores him. Throughout the book we see the difficult relationship she has with her mother, Jude. Jude is dissatisfied with her country life and yearns to be accepted by the popular women in town. She takes her frustrations out on her daughter and the mum is hypercritical and controlling. Jimmy and her family live in Possible Springs, a regional town in the central west of New South Wales. It's a very conservative, quite judgmental town.
Robert Goodman: So not one of those literary Australian towns full of quaint and quirky characters then.
Jacqui: No, no. People here are catchy and they're gossipy. There are drunks, there are criminals, there are dodgy characters. The town really sees itself as, you know, conservative and highbrow and looks down on the nearby towns of Canton, which they see is full of hippies and weirdos, so think Nimbon, and Clary Downs, which they think are f is you know full of unemployed layabouts and criminals. So one day, Jimney has a near-death experience where she nearly drowns in the the local river, but is saved by a teacher. When she emerges from her coma, she discovers she's gained an ability to hear what's going on in people's heads, but only when there's music playing. Jimney keeps this discovery to herself, scared of being seen as more of a freak than she already is. On occasions when she hears someone make a decision they intend to act on, she can also see the short and long term ramifications of that decision.
Robert Goodman: I love a bit of a genre match, particularly crime and speculative fiction. but I'm interested in what Ross is trying to explore by giving her protagonists that ability.
Jacqui: It creates some interesting and ethical moral dilemmas throughout the book. The first time she realizes she can do it is when she's 14, and it's now 1990. Jimmy's got friends. She's friends with Tiffany and Eva. On this fateful night, Jimmy tries to stop what she can see will happen if Taylor, her brother, goes out with Jake, the local troublemaker. Jake's planning to rob the town cricket clubhouse. Unfortunately, Jimney ends up having to decide whether to save her brother. Or save the townspeople attending a dance from dying in a gas explosion. It's an unenviable choice and one of many she will have to make.
Robert Goodman: The trolley problem rears its head again. but Ross isn't the first author to play with an investigative character with psychic powers. Stephen King has done this. there's Jim Butcher's Dresden Files. There's Philip K. Dick's Minority Report. sorry, I've gone a bit sci-fi there.
Jacqui: You're allowed to, we like it. look generally I don't mind a bit of woo-woo in a crime book as long as it's done well and it's not used as an excuse to discover things they shouldn't really discover. it's like it should be a natural part of what's going on. So there's been a few Australian crime series with psychic characters. In the mid-n noughties, P. D. Martin had the Sophie Anderson series, and that character could see visions and could see behind the killer's eyes. The first book in that series, Body Count, is a ripper. It's a really good read. In the 2010s, there was the Tara Sharp series by Marianne Delacourt, and Tara could see auras. And I realised last night I'm reading the latest Tea Ladies book by Amanda Hampson. One of the Tea Ladies, Hazel, feels a tingle in her ears when someone's lying to her, which is a pretty good power to be having. And of course, young adult crime is full of characters with powers. So back to Possible Springs. About this time we start to get the perspective of an unknown person. We get short snippets of a stream of consciousness thinking about the ills of the world. It's a bit Travis Beacle, but not quite as full-on. And this person wants to save children from these ills. In 1993, a 16-year-old girl from nearby Clary Downs disappears. The police think she's run off, but her dad disagrees. Then finally we get to 1994, where the action really takes off. Jimney and her friends have finished school and are considering their futures. Jimmy's trying to manage her ability. And try to keep it a secret, she's slowly building her confidence. She gets a job at the local pub and moves out of home away from her mum. Children keep disappearing. The local police and the townspeople are frantic to know where these children are. Into the action comes Seamus, who's a journalist and a bit of a ladies' man, who wants to write a story about Jimney, because there's always been whispers about her and her ability. She continues to deny them, but when Tiffany's little sister is taken, Jimney needs to harness her skills and help the police. Suspicions are thrown around, particularly on Jake and his family, who are secretly growing a huge marijuana crop. We also have dodgy local politicians and an outlaw motorcycle gang. There's a lot going on this book, and I don't want to cover everything, but essentially, this is a story about a young girl finding herself, finding her voice and accepting who she is. It's about shaking off those labels we get when we're young and we try to grow up and try to escape them. While it's Jimmy's story, we get a multitude of perspectives, including the person taking the children, the local police sergeant, and Jimmy's friends. It's a solid debut with a fresh take on rural living, one that more people living in a small town would recognise. I think Samantha Ross writes herself into this book. She gains confidence as she goes and is particularly strong once Jimmy becomes a young adult. Each chapter is named after a song from the period, which reminds me of the Adrian McKinty Sean Duffy books, and they're all named after Tom Waite's songs, and I really like the use of music to evoke a flavour of a era or a mood that that's being written about. I have no idea whether Samantha Ross will continue with Jimney, but she's created a great character with a lot of depth and insight, and I really enjoyed spending time with her. So that's Possible Springs by Samantha Ross, and it's published by Penguin Random House. Over to you, Robert.
Robert Goodman: Thanks, Jackie. Alex Duke is a Western Australian author based in Perth. On his website he lists his influences Patricia Hysmith, Gary Disher, Adrian McKinty, Mick Heron, and Jane Harper.
Jacqui: That is a pretty solid list and I'd probably put all of them on my list as well.
Robert Goodman: Yeah, there are a lot of my favorites there too. But interesting reading his books, I tend to identify other influences on the types of characters, action, and plotting that he uses. his first book was called Gunpowder Creek. In that book, an ordinary woman gets a call at work to learn that her son has been kidnapped, and then in order to get him back, she will need to do his job on his behalf. And that job is driving a mysterious package to the northern part of Western Australia. It was a great hook and all set up in the first chapter, leading to a kind of Australian road movie action thriller. It definitely had hints of McKinty's The Island, which was a survivalist thriller with a fairly ordinary family in the middle of it. and also actually one of Candace Fox's recent books, Highwire. But there are other influences, more cinematic ones that crept in. And I'm thinking particularly of Quentin Tarantino and the Cohen brothers. And it feels like Duke has definitely drawn from these filmmakers. But actually I think their films have had a huge influence on crime fiction more broadly.
Jacqui: Yeah. So how does this relate to his new book?
Robert Goodman: So Duke's new book, Nothing Personal, again puts an ordinary person into extraordinary and criminal circumstances. The person in this case is a young woman called Lola Mackenzie. The opening of the book finds Lola in a pawn shop buying back her mother's necklace that her father had pawned. We quickly learn that Lola is having to support both herself and her father Alan, a former academic who was scammed out of his life savings. Lola works an admin job at a car park for a lectrist boss called Darren. But this is hardly sufficient to support both her and her father. And that's before she finds out that he actually has additional debts that she didn't know about. And then things get weirdly worse for Lola. there's a scene where an owl crashes through the window of her house and dies, which leaves her with another big bill. And I was never really sure if there was any significance to the owl, but it's kind of the straw that breaks Lola's financial camel's back. And it's a really weird incident that kind of keeps coming back up in the story. Anyway, at the same time as we're introduced to Lola, we're also introduced to another character, Bradley Parker. Bradley is the eldest of two sons of a local crime boss. The Parker family runs a protection racket in Perth, but Bradley's aging father has been sick, and there are other criminal forces who are moving in on the Parker's business. Bradley is in charge of picking up envelopes full of cash from the business as they shake down, but he thinks he should be doing more. And to this end, he's in competition with his younger, flashier, possibly smarter, half brother Johnny. Johnny is the favored son and he's already probably been groomed to take over the business. but it becomes clear fairly quickly to the reader that Bradley has probably hit his level as a criminal.
Jacqui: Okay, that's a great setup. So what happens to bring Bradley and Lola together?
Robert Goodman: So, what you call the inciting incident revolves around Lola's shady boss, Darren. Lola knows it is up to no good, but she turns a blind eye to his extracurricular activities. But one day he comes back to the shop drunk, carrying a brown paper bag. He puts the bag in his safe, but being drunk, he doesn't properly lock the safe. Lola, both curious and desperate, looks in the bag and finds that it's full of money. In a moment of weakness, she takes the bag. Darren doesn't come after the money because the next morning, Darren has disappeared. so while Lola doesn't know what happened to Darren, readers do, because turns out that Bradley has been sent by his brother to pick up the bag. worried about potential violence, he's taken his stoner offsider Krusty. and neither of them are particularly good crims. And Krusty ends up shooting Darren before he can tell them what's in the bag. The whole scene is one of those typical Cohen brother moments of what happens when you put three subpar criminals in a room with a gun. Lola soon discovers that what they're after was not actually the money per se, but a USB stick that was hidden under the money, and with her financial position getting worse and her father seeming to need more care, she decides to try and make some more money by blackmailing the Parkers for the USB stick.
Jacqui: I like the sound of these. It sounds like you like this one too.
Robert Goodman: I did, I did. Plenty of Australian crime fiction is procedural. You know, you have the central police investigator who solves a crime, or you have an amateur detective. But we also have a great tradition of crime fiction that focuses on criminals. Gary Dish's Wyatt series is a great example of that. Wyatt is like a is a thief. recently we've had Fiona Hardy's Unbury the Dead, And then there was Tanya Scott's Stillwater, both of which revolved around main characters who live in the grey. that said, Lola doesn't start in the gray. She starts off as a as desperate. and one of the things I like about this is that Duke doesn't turn her into a master criminal. She's just trying to make things up as she goes along, probably also drawing from the movies that she's watched. Luckily for her, she's up against Bradley, who is not the sharpest criminal in the shed. And but he knows how he's supposed to behave, again, probably from the movies. So when he does get in touch with Lola, he calls himself Mr. Black, which of course gives shades of Tarantino's reservoir dogs.
Jacqui: Yeah.
Robert Goodman: I really love the milieu as well. Nothing personal is said in the Perth suburbs. There's no trips down to Codgeslow Beach. There's no cruising down the Stwan River. this is all car parts shops and cafes and warehouses. I'll just give you a couple of examples. There was one part where I laughed out loud, and Bradley goes out to where Krusty lives, which is kind of right on the suburban fringes, and he finds Krusty's house and it's it says, Bradley didn't think it could be possible, but by day, Krusty's shack looked even more like a primary school diorama held together by popsticks and clag paste. A chicken aimlessly paced the overgrown grass. So he just gives this great feel for this kind of
Jacqui: How far but
Robert Goodman: landscape. and you know, this is from this is a bit from when Lola's trying to offload the USB and she's kind of hiding in this industrial estate. And it says She was parked in the darkness out the front of a wholesale tile warehouse. A couple of hundred meters away was lunch to go, a little cafe nestled between a couple of palm trees and advertising hot beef rolls and fresh sushi. So it's very atmospheric. It really gives you a feel for that, for that l that landscape of suburban
Jacqui: Yeah.
Robert Goodman: Perth. but again, like Gunpowder Creek took and anchors the whole thing in a family relationship. So in Gunpowder Creek, it was a mother. Who will do anything for her son. In nothing personal, he flips it and makes the protagonist a daughter who's trying to have her own life, but also make sure her father is also okay. and the relationship between Lola and her father gives this book a really solid emotional core that counterbalances the violence. because there is quite a bit of violence. I mentioned Tarantino and the Cohen brothers. And if you know their style, then you know to expect a more than a little bit of blood and mainhem, but also a strain of very black humor in there as well. Look, this is part of a a tradition of great crime fiction coming out of Western Australia. another new author I wanted to mention while I was talking about Duke, who has followed a similar trajectory, is Emma Stiles. she's a Western Australian by birth. She's currently living in the UK. Her debut was No Country for Girls, and that followed a couple of young women on a criminal road trip to the north of Western Australia. And that one made plenty of sh short lists and won the Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize. that surprise has also been won by the likes of Abbe Mukherjee and Steph Penny. her follow-up to No Country for Girls was a book called The Shark, which is a serial killer thriller. it also features two young women as a protagonist, and it's set in the urban enclave of Fremantle, just to the south of Perth. both of those are great reads. so lots of great crime fiction coming out of Western Australia at the moment. that one was Nothing Personal by Alex Duke, and it's published by Echo. And now it's time for our crime fiction news. The long list for the 2026 Patrona Award for the best Scandinavian crime novel of the year is out. I think it's safe to say that a lot of crime fiction readers are into Scandinavoir. There are 12 books on that list. We won't mention them all, but we'll put the link to the Patroner Award in our show notes. And maybe we'll come back to this one when they announce their short list later in September. Some really unsurprising names on that list, including the likes of Joe Nespo and Isra Siudotir. I hope I pronounced that correctly.
Jacqui: But closer to home, we have two more Ned Kelly Award shortlists to talk about. The first is for Best International Crime Fiction. There's only four books on this list, but really any of them could win this. The first one is Lucky Thing by Tom Barragwanath, Ben Bacula by Graham McRae-Burnett, The Proving Ground by Michael Conley, and The Death of Us by Abigail Dean. Lucky Thing, we talked about last time, I think you talked about it. This one was also on the No Marsh long list. Graham McCrae Burnett actually won this award last year for a case of matricide. That was the third book in his incredibly meta-series of for Porterly classic French crime novels featuring a detective called Brunei. Michael Conley is an American crime writer who knows no introduction. The Proving Ground is the latest in his Mickey Haller series, which started with The Lincoln Lawyer back in 2006. And I did that's the one I have read out of the four. And that one looks at AI and chatbots. And was a good read. So Connie also is famous for his Bosch theories. Abigail Dean has already won the British Crime Writers Association Golden Dagger for her book, The Death of Us.
Robert Goodman: Yeah, I haven't read that one, but I did read her book Day One, which was an excellent thriller that deals with the very fraught topic of school shootings.
Jacqui: Hmm. Yeah. we also have a best crime fiction short list. should drum drum roll for this one. There are eight books on this list, and they're again, as always, a very diverse bunch. There's The Liars Game by Jack Beaumont, Liar Bird by Jane Carrow, The Other Child by Susie Fox, Maid Mabel by Sally Hepworth, The Ghost Walk by Karen Herbert. Fire in the Head by Daniel Oakman, The White Crow by Michael Robotham, and The Casino by Ian Ryan. Now I have to confess I didn't do a lot of crime reading last year because I was on a John LaCare Jag. So I haven't read any of these, but I have read all the George Smiley books. So, you know, I think it balances out. What about you, Robert?
Robert Goodman: Look, I haven't got to all of these. I've had read a few of them though. I'm a huge Michael Robotham fan, and
Jacqui: Mm.
Robert Goodman: but I thought The White Crow was one of his best for a long time. I loved that book. I ripped through it. Liar's Game is the third book in an espionage series set in France. the author Jack Beaumont is actually ex-DGSE and he brings a real element of versimilitude to the adventures of his main character, Alec De Payne. listeners who are interested in that kind of crime novel and want to run the series should really start with his taboo, which was called The Frenchman. and the other one I've read is Jane Carrow's The Liar Bird, which is a procedural with a great hook that relates to that bird's ability to mimic any sound. and it also delves into environmental issues. but I haven't read the rest. there are just too many books and too little time.
Jacqui: Too true. And of course a quick reminder, speaking of crime fiction awards, if you want to go to the Sisters and Crimes David Awards, which is being held in Melbourne on the twelfth of September, there is still time to buy tickets, head off to sistersandcrime.org.au f to book yourself a seat. It is always a fun night. So two episodes in, Robert, and we've already been given some listener feedback. We've been asked if we can recommend books that have a little more of an international flavour. So, Robert, do you have anything international to recommend this week?
Robert Goodman: Do. I actually wanted to recommend Sylvia Moreno Garcia's latest book, The Intrigue. Moreno Garcia is a Mexican-Canadian author who writes across a range of genres. She hit the big time in 2020 with her novel Mexican Gothic. Since then, she's released a diverse array of fantasies, science fiction, horror, and historical dramas, which has actually become a bit of a problem for her because when the intrigue came out, she had to kind of go out publicly and assure people that there were no fantastic elements to it.
Jacqui: Mm.
Robert Goodman: the intrigue is set in Mexico in 1943, during the Second World War, although the war actually seems very far away in this book. It revolves around a minor con artist called Ulysses. Ulysses learnt from his con man father how to scam women out of their fortunes by romancing them, although you get the impression that his father was better at this than he was. When the book opens, Ulysses has fallen on hard times and needs to score. So he goes to a boarding house in a small town called Puerto Jogado in Veracruz to romance its own owner, Perla, with whom he has been carrying out a romance through the mail. but he's soon rumbled by Inez, Perla's niece, who works in the boarding house and desperately wants to escape. Inez wants wants to work with Ulysses to fleece her aunt and run away. Only things don't go as smoothly along the way, and readers find out that Perla has her own dark secrets. Moreno Garcia explains in her afterward that she drew her inspiration from the traditions of the costumbrista, which are traditional stories that focus on the customs, habits, and idiosyncrasies of the lower and middle classes. But she also draws on the traditions of the telenovela and the golden age of noir cinema. interestingly, she also notes that the 1940s is when Mexican detective and crime fiction first emerged, including the creation of the first Latin American woman detective by an author called Maria Elvira. Bermudez. The Intrigue is a really fun tale of con artists, seduction, strivers, and revenge plays. It's full of twists and turns as the three main characters revolve around and manipulate each other. Moreno Garcia delivers a cast of likably unlikable characters and a plot that often zigs just when you think it's going to zag. This is not the first crime genre novel that Moreno Garcia has written. And while I would highly recommend her other genre works, if you just want to stick to historical or Prime output, then I would also recommend both Velvet is the Night, which was her drama set during the student riots in Mexico in 1971, and Untamed Shore, which was another thriller that drew heavily on sort of 1950s and 60s cinema noir traditions, and is set in Baja, California in the 1970s. So that's The Intrigue by Silvia Moreno Garcia, and it's published by Hachette. How about you, Jackie?
Jacqui: Well I headed to Japan this week with the final six by Akonari Asakura and translated by Hayden Trail. I think one of the great strengths of crime fiction is that it holds a mirror up to society. So whatever's happening out there in community, in politics and society, will be reflected back in crime novels. So that right now we're getting books with discussing the manosphere or using podcasts and really reflecting what's going on around us. That's why I love reading international crime books because I get to s see inside another culture. Although I always wish I could read those books in the original language so I can get the rhythm and the nuances of the writing, but I I have to trust the translation. So this book, The Final Six, is about Shukatsu, which is the annual job hunting process for young graduates in Japan. And I understand it's pretty full-on. It happens once a year and it's a full-on process that is very competitive. And very driven by etiquette and ritual. We meet six young graduates, two women and four men, who've made it to the final round of interviews for a social media company. The final interview is going to be a group interview and they're advised to prepare for it together. They become a tight-knit group and they feel like they're all going to get a job out of this. Just before the final date for the interview and after a big night out drinking together, they all get a text to say the company now can only offer one position. So at the group interview, They have to discuss who's the most worthy of that final job offer and then vote on it.
Robert Goodman: That's a great setup. It's sounding very familiar, but I'll let you keep going.
Jacqui: Yeah, yeah, it was the first of my gasped moments. That was my I was reading, I thought, my goodness, that's a good one. So now they're true competitors. They get to the group interview, which will be two and a half hours long, and if any of them leave the room, they are no longer eligible. The six establish how they'll do things. They'll they decide they'll hold discussions and then vote every half hour and then tally up the votes at the end. Into the first hour and after the first vote, they discover an envelope by the door. No one knows who left it there. Inside the envelope are six smaller envelopes, each addressed to one of the six. As we discover, each envelope holds a secret about one of the other six. Needless to say, the rest of the group interview is fraught. And I don't want to say any more because it's intricately plotted, and to say more would be to ruin the fun. The book is told in two timelines. So there's the original timeline with the graduates and the interview, and the point of view for this timeline is one of the graduates, Hatano. The other timeline is ten years down the track and is told by the person who did get that job, and that person is trying to piece together what happened on that fateful day. The book uses the absurdities of the recruitment process to ask the central question, how well can you truly know someone? And it's a great read. I really, really enjoyed it.
Robert Goodman: Yeah, now that you describe it, I do remember seeing the trailer for it. they made a movie of it a couple of years ago and it was at last year's Japanese Film Festival. And the even the trailer was really, really tense. the movie version was called Six Lying University Students, which I think gives you what it says on the tin.
Jacqui: yeah. Yeah. I'd love to look that up and see if it's on one of the streaming 'cause I'd love to see it played out on on film.
Robert Goodman: so we've managed to mention a lot of books. If you're interested in any of the titles we've talked about, we have tried to list them all in the show notes and have links to any of the websites that we've mentioned as well.
Jacqui: Thanks Robert. And if people are interested in following up and reading your other reviews, and they should, where can I find you?
Robert Goodman: I can be found on Instagram at Pile by the Bed. That's all one word. you can hit me up there also if you have any feedback about the show. and you can find all of my reviews at pile by the bed.com. hit the subscribe button at the bottom of the page to get new reviews a couple of times a week. The link is in the show notes. Crime fiction down under was recorded on the lands of the Gadigal people in Sydney and the Wadawarong people in Ballarat. While we do receive copies of books for review, neither Jackie or I have any financial relationship with publishers. The opinions expressed in this podcast are purely our own. Thank you, Jackie.
Jacqui: Thank you, Robert. See you in a fortnight and see everybody else in a fortnight.
Robert Goodman: See See you in a fortnight.
Jacqui: Hi Robert. I can't believe another fortnight has whooshed past and here we are. What have you been up to?
Robert Goodman: look, I've been doing a lot of reading, but I have to admit my guilty pleasure has been catching up with NCIS Sydney. Now, I've never been a big fan of the NCIS franchise. I don't know if I've ever watched any of the other NCIS franchise entries, but I thought I'd give this one a go and I'm really enjoying it. the thing I really love about this is its commitment to using Sydney locations and not just your usual Bondi Harbor Bridge, But they have been they've been to the Ocean Pool at Marubra, they've been out to Royal National Park, they've been to Terry Hills, to Strathfield, to Darlinghurst, all over, really. And it it's got a really Australian sensibility and sense of humor to it. Sure, it's cheesy, and you have to suspend your disbelief a long, long way to accept there's a joint team of US Navy and Australian Federal Police who can just investigate whatever crime comes their way. But it's a series that's grown on me, it's a lot of fun, and it's just a great popcorn crime show. so what have you been doing, Jackie, besides obviously reading more Australian crime novels?
Jacqui: Well, if we're speaking of guilty pleasures, we've started watching season one of The Gentleman created by Guy Ritchie. And I know Guy Ritchie is not everyone's taste, but you do know what you're going to get with him. in this series, we meet Freddie and Eddie, who are the sons of the Duke of Halstead, who's just died. In his will, the Duke leaves everything to the second son, Eddie, who's a captain in the UN. The firstborn, Freddie, is a coke-sniffing disaster. So I can see why he skipped the firstborn and went straight to the second. Eddie soon discovers that his father has been making extra money by renting space on his property located underground to a criminal enterprise to grow dope. The criminal enterprise is run by Bobby Glass, played by the wonderful and always reliable Ray Winston. Unfortunately for us, Bobby's in jail, so we don't get to see nearly enough of Ray Winston. While he's in jail, the enterprise is being managed by his very capable daughter, Susie Glass. So it's Guy Richie, it's You know, it's very stylised, lots of hijinks ensue and it's very funny and very entertaining. So that that's what I've been watching.
Robert Goodman: Awesome. Yeah, I remember the movie version of that. so Jackie, what books are we gonna cover today?
Jacqui: Well, I'm going to talk about a character with some unique abilities who lives in a very small Australian town where children are going missing, in Samantha Ross's debut, Possible Springs. And I believe you're heading to Perth, to the Perth suburbs for a bit of urban noir in Alex Duke's second novel, Nothing Personal.
Robert Goodman: So let's get to it.
Jacqui: Possible Springs is written by Samantha Ross. And Samantha Ross is originally from Melbourne, but she's now moved to Port Douglas, which is probably a smart move. She is a script writer, and Possible Springs is her first novel. So this book is about Jimney, who we meet at 11 years of age. It's 1987. Jimney is a free spirited kid who is a bit of an outsider, but an adventurous one. She lives with her family, mum, dad, and older brother Taylor, who she adores. Well should it be whom she adores, either way, she adores him. Throughout the book we see the difficult relationship she has with her mother, Jude. Jude is dissatisfied with her country life and yearns to be accepted by the popular women in town. She takes her frustrations out on her daughter and the mum is hypercritical and controlling. Jimmy and her family live in Possible Springs, a regional town in the central west of New South Wales. It's a very conservative, quite judgmental town.
Robert Goodman: So not one of those literary Australian towns full of quaint and quirky characters then.
Jacqui: No, no. People here are catchy and they're gossipy. There are drunks, there are criminals, there are dodgy characters. The town really sees itself as, you know, conservative and highbrow and looks down on the nearby towns of Canton, which they see is full of hippies and weirdos, so think Nimbon, and Clary Downs, which they think are f is you know full of unemployed layabouts and criminals. So one day, Jimney has a near-death experience where she nearly drowns in the the local river, but is saved by a teacher. When she emerges from her coma, she discovers she's gained an ability to hear what's going on in people's heads, but only when there's music playing. Jimney keeps this discovery to herself, scared of being seen as more of a freak than she already is. On occasions when she hears someone make a decision they intend to act on, she can also see the short and long term ramifications of that decision.
Robert Goodman: I love a bit of a genre match, particularly crime and speculative fiction. but I'm interested in what Ross is trying to explore by giving her protagonists that ability.
Jacqui: It creates some interesting and ethical moral dilemmas throughout the book. The first time she realizes she can do it is when she's 14, and it's now 1990. Jimmy's got friends. She's friends with Tiffany and Eva. On this fateful night, Jimmy tries to stop what she can see will happen if Taylor, her brother, goes out with Jake, the local troublemaker. Jake's planning to rob the town cricket clubhouse. Unfortunately, Jimney ends up having to decide whether to save her brother. Or save the townspeople attending a dance from dying in a gas explosion. It's an unenviable choice and one of many she will have to make.
Robert Goodman: The trolley problem rears its head again. but Ross isn't the first author to play with an investigative character with psychic powers. Stephen King has done this. there's Jim Butcher's Dresden Files. There's Philip K. Dick's Minority Report. sorry, I've gone a bit sci-fi there.
Jacqui: You're allowed to, we like it. look generally I don't mind a bit of woo-woo in a crime book as long as it's done well and it's not used as an excuse to discover things they shouldn't really discover. it's like it should be a natural part of what's going on. So there's been a few Australian crime series with psychic characters. In the mid-n noughties, P. D. Martin had the Sophie Anderson series, and that character could see visions and could see behind the killer's eyes. The first book in that series, Body Count, is a ripper. It's a really good read. In the 2010s, there was the Tara Sharp series by Marianne Delacourt, and Tara could see auras. And I realised last night I'm reading the latest Tea Ladies book by Amanda Hampson. One of the Tea Ladies, Hazel, feels a tingle in her ears when someone's lying to her, which is a pretty good power to be having. And of course, young adult crime is full of characters with powers. So back to Possible Springs. About this time we start to get the perspective of an unknown person. We get short snippets of a stream of consciousness thinking about the ills of the world. It's a bit Travis Beacle, but not quite as full-on. And this person wants to save children from these ills. In 1993, a 16-year-old girl from nearby Clary Downs disappears. The police think she's run off, but her dad disagrees. Then finally we get to 1994, where the action really takes off. Jimney and her friends have finished school and are considering their futures. Jimmy's trying to manage her ability. And try to keep it a secret, she's slowly building her confidence. She gets a job at the local pub and moves out of home away from her mum. Children keep disappearing. The local police and the townspeople are frantic to know where these children are. Into the action comes Seamus, who's a journalist and a bit of a ladies' man, who wants to write a story about Jimney, because there's always been whispers about her and her ability. She continues to deny them, but when Tiffany's little sister is taken, Jimney needs to harness her skills and help the police. Suspicions are thrown around, particularly on Jake and his family, who are secretly growing a huge marijuana crop. We also have dodgy local politicians and an outlaw motorcycle gang. There's a lot going on this book, and I don't want to cover everything, but essentially, this is a story about a young girl finding herself, finding her voice and accepting who she is. It's about shaking off those labels we get when we're young and we try to grow up and try to escape them. While it's Jimmy's story, we get a multitude of perspectives, including the person taking the children, the local police sergeant, and Jimmy's friends. It's a solid debut with a fresh take on rural living, one that more people living in a small town would recognise. I think Samantha Ross writes herself into this book. She gains confidence as she goes and is particularly strong once Jimmy becomes a young adult. Each chapter is named after a song from the period, which reminds me of the Adrian McKinty Sean Duffy books, and they're all named after Tom Waite's songs, and I really like the use of music to evoke a flavour of a era or a mood that that's being written about. I have no idea whether Samantha Ross will continue with Jimney, but she's created a great character with a lot of depth and insight, and I really enjoyed spending time with her. So that's Possible Springs by Samantha Ross, and it's published by Penguin Random House. Over to you, Robert.
Robert Goodman: Thanks, Jackie. Alex Duke is a Western Australian author based in Perth. On his website he lists his influences Patricia Hysmith, Gary Disher, Adrian McKinty, Mick Heron, and Jane Harper.
Jacqui: That is a pretty solid list and I'd probably put all of them on my list as well.
Robert Goodman: Yeah, there are a lot of my favorites there too. But interesting reading his books, I tend to identify other influences on the types of characters, action, and plotting that he uses. his first book was called Gunpowder Creek. In that book, an ordinary woman gets a call at work to learn that her son has been kidnapped, and then in order to get him back, she will need to do his job on his behalf. And that job is driving a mysterious package to the northern part of Western Australia. It was a great hook and all set up in the first chapter, leading to a kind of Australian road movie action thriller. It definitely had hints of McKinty's The Island, which was a survivalist thriller with a fairly ordinary family in the middle of it. and also actually one of Candace Fox's recent books, Highwire. But there are other influences, more cinematic ones that crept in. And I'm thinking particularly of Quentin Tarantino and the Cohen brothers. And it feels like Duke has definitely drawn from these filmmakers. But actually I think their films have had a huge influence on crime fiction more broadly.
Jacqui: Yeah. So how does this relate to his new book?
Robert Goodman: So Duke's new book, Nothing Personal, again puts an ordinary person into extraordinary and criminal circumstances. The person in this case is a young woman called Lola Mackenzie. The opening of the book finds Lola in a pawn shop buying back her mother's necklace that her father had pawned. We quickly learn that Lola is having to support both herself and her father Alan, a former academic who was scammed out of his life savings. Lola works an admin job at a car park for a lectrist boss called Darren. But this is hardly sufficient to support both her and her father. And that's before she finds out that he actually has additional debts that she didn't know about. And then things get weirdly worse for Lola. there's a scene where an owl crashes through the window of her house and dies, which leaves her with another big bill. And I was never really sure if there was any significance to the owl, but it's kind of the straw that breaks Lola's financial camel's back. And it's a really weird incident that kind of keeps coming back up in the story. Anyway, at the same time as we're introduced to Lola, we're also introduced to another character, Bradley Parker. Bradley is the eldest of two sons of a local crime boss. The Parker family runs a protection racket in Perth, but Bradley's aging father has been sick, and there are other criminal forces who are moving in on the Parker's business. Bradley is in charge of picking up envelopes full of cash from the business as they shake down, but he thinks he should be doing more. And to this end, he's in competition with his younger, flashier, possibly smarter, half brother Johnny. Johnny is the favored son and he's already probably been groomed to take over the business. but it becomes clear fairly quickly to the reader that Bradley has probably hit his level as a criminal.
Jacqui: Okay, that's a great setup. So what happens to bring Bradley and Lola together?
Robert Goodman: So, what you call the inciting incident revolves around Lola's shady boss, Darren. Lola knows it is up to no good, but she turns a blind eye to his extracurricular activities. But one day he comes back to the shop drunk, carrying a brown paper bag. He puts the bag in his safe, but being drunk, he doesn't properly lock the safe. Lola, both curious and desperate, looks in the bag and finds that it's full of money. In a moment of weakness, she takes the bag. Darren doesn't come after the money because the next morning, Darren has disappeared. so while Lola doesn't know what happened to Darren, readers do, because turns out that Bradley has been sent by his brother to pick up the bag. worried about potential violence, he's taken his stoner offsider Krusty. and neither of them are particularly good crims. And Krusty ends up shooting Darren before he can tell them what's in the bag. The whole scene is one of those typical Cohen brother moments of what happens when you put three subpar criminals in a room with a gun. Lola soon discovers that what they're after was not actually the money per se, but a USB stick that was hidden under the money, and with her financial position getting worse and her father seeming to need more care, she decides to try and make some more money by blackmailing the Parkers for the USB stick.
Jacqui: I like the sound of these. It sounds like you like this one too.
Robert Goodman: I did, I did. Plenty of Australian crime fiction is procedural. You know, you have the central police investigator who solves a crime, or you have an amateur detective. But we also have a great tradition of crime fiction that focuses on criminals. Gary Dish's Wyatt series is a great example of that. Wyatt is like a is a thief. recently we've had Fiona Hardy's Unbury the Dead, And then there was Tanya Scott's Stillwater, both of which revolved around main characters who live in the grey. that said, Lola doesn't start in the gray. She starts off as a as desperate. and one of the things I like about this is that Duke doesn't turn her into a master criminal. She's just trying to make things up as she goes along, probably also drawing from the movies that she's watched. Luckily for her, she's up against Bradley, who is not the sharpest criminal in the shed. And but he knows how he's supposed to behave, again, probably from the movies. So when he does get in touch with Lola, he calls himself Mr. Black, which of course gives shades of Tarantino's reservoir dogs.
Jacqui: Yeah.
Robert Goodman: I really love the milieu as well. Nothing personal is said in the Perth suburbs. There's no trips down to Codgeslow Beach. There's no cruising down the Stwan River. this is all car parts shops and cafes and warehouses. I'll just give you a couple of examples. There was one part where I laughed out loud, and Bradley goes out to where Krusty lives, which is kind of right on the suburban fringes, and he finds Krusty's house and it's it says, Bradley didn't think it could be possible, but by day, Krusty's shack looked even more like a primary school diorama held together by popsticks and clag paste. A chicken aimlessly paced the overgrown grass. So he just gives this great feel for this kind of
Jacqui: How far but
Robert Goodman: landscape. and you know, this is from this is a bit from when Lola's trying to offload the USB and she's kind of hiding in this industrial estate. And it says She was parked in the darkness out the front of a wholesale tile warehouse. A couple of hundred meters away was lunch to go, a little cafe nestled between a couple of palm trees and advertising hot beef rolls and fresh sushi. So it's very atmospheric. It really gives you a feel for that, for that l that landscape of suburban
Jacqui: Yeah.
Robert Goodman: Perth. but again, like Gunpowder Creek took and anchors the whole thing in a family relationship. So in Gunpowder Creek, it was a mother. Who will do anything for her son. In nothing personal, he flips it and makes the protagonist a daughter who's trying to have her own life, but also make sure her father is also okay. and the relationship between Lola and her father gives this book a really solid emotional core that counterbalances the violence. because there is quite a bit of violence. I mentioned Tarantino and the Cohen brothers. And if you know their style, then you know to expect a more than a little bit of blood and mainhem, but also a strain of very black humor in there as well. Look, this is part of a a tradition of great crime fiction coming out of Western Australia. another new author I wanted to mention while I was talking about Duke, who has followed a similar trajectory, is Emma Stiles. she's a Western Australian by birth. She's currently living in the UK. Her debut was No Country for Girls, and that followed a couple of young women on a criminal road trip to the north of Western Australia. And that one made plenty of sh short lists and won the Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize. that surprise has also been won by the likes of Abbe Mukherjee and Steph Penny. her follow-up to No Country for Girls was a book called The Shark, which is a serial killer thriller. it also features two young women as a protagonist, and it's set in the urban enclave of Fremantle, just to the south of Perth. both of those are great reads. so lots of great crime fiction coming out of Western Australia at the moment. that one was Nothing Personal by Alex Duke, and it's published by Echo. And now it's time for our crime fiction news. The long list for the 2026 Patrona Award for the best Scandinavian crime novel of the year is out. I think it's safe to say that a lot of crime fiction readers are into Scandinavoir. There are 12 books on that list. We won't mention them all, but we'll put the link to the Patroner Award in our show notes. And maybe we'll come back to this one when they announce their short list later in September. Some really unsurprising names on that list, including the likes of Joe Nespo and Isra Siudotir. I hope I pronounced that correctly.
Jacqui: But closer to home, we have two more Ned Kelly Award shortlists to talk about. The first is for Best International Crime Fiction. There's only four books on this list, but really any of them could win this. The first one is Lucky Thing by Tom Barragwanath, Ben Bacula by Graham McRae-Burnett, The Proving Ground by Michael Conley, and The Death of Us by Abigail Dean. Lucky Thing, we talked about last time, I think you talked about it. This one was also on the No Marsh long list. Graham McCrae Burnett actually won this award last year for a case of matricide. That was the third book in his incredibly meta-series of for Porterly classic French crime novels featuring a detective called Brunei. Michael Conley is an American crime writer who knows no introduction. The Proving Ground is the latest in his Mickey Haller series, which started with The Lincoln Lawyer back in 2006. And I did that's the one I have read out of the four. And that one looks at AI and chatbots. And was a good read. So Connie also is famous for his Bosch theories. Abigail Dean has already won the British Crime Writers Association Golden Dagger for her book, The Death of Us.
Robert Goodman: Yeah, I haven't read that one, but I did read her book Day One, which was an excellent thriller that deals with the very fraught topic of school shootings.
Jacqui: Hmm. Yeah. we also have a best crime fiction short list. should drum drum roll for this one. There are eight books on this list, and they're again, as always, a very diverse bunch. There's The Liars Game by Jack Beaumont, Liar Bird by Jane Carrow, The Other Child by Susie Fox, Maid Mabel by Sally Hepworth, The Ghost Walk by Karen Herbert. Fire in the Head by Daniel Oakman, The White Crow by Michael Robotham, and The Casino by Ian Ryan. Now I have to confess I didn't do a lot of crime reading last year because I was on a John LaCare Jag. So I haven't read any of these, but I have read all the George Smiley books. So, you know, I think it balances out. What about you, Robert?
Robert Goodman: Look, I haven't got to all of these. I've had read a few of them though. I'm a huge Michael Robotham fan, and
Jacqui: Mm.
Robert Goodman: but I thought The White Crow was one of his best for a long time. I loved that book. I ripped through it. Liar's Game is the third book in an espionage series set in France. the author Jack Beaumont is actually ex-DGSE and he brings a real element of versimilitude to the adventures of his main character, Alec De Payne. listeners who are interested in that kind of crime novel and want to run the series should really start with his taboo, which was called The Frenchman. and the other one I've read is Jane Carrow's The Liar Bird, which is a procedural with a great hook that relates to that bird's ability to mimic any sound. and it also delves into environmental issues. but I haven't read the rest. there are just too many books and too little time.
Jacqui: Too true. And of course a quick reminder, speaking of crime fiction awards, if you want to go to the Sisters and Crimes David Awards, which is being held in Melbourne on the twelfth of September, there is still time to buy tickets, head off to sistersandcrime.org.au f to book yourself a seat. It is always a fun night. So two episodes in, Robert, and we've already been given some listener feedback. We've been asked if we can recommend books that have a little more of an international flavour. So, Robert, do you have anything international to recommend this week?
Robert Goodman: Do. I actually wanted to recommend Sylvia Moreno Garcia's latest book, The Intrigue. Moreno Garcia is a Mexican-Canadian author who writes across a range of genres. She hit the big time in 2020 with her novel Mexican Gothic. Since then, she's released a diverse array of fantasies, science fiction, horror, and historical dramas, which has actually become a bit of a problem for her because when the intrigue came out, she had to kind of go out publicly and assure people that there were no fantastic elements to it.
Jacqui: Mm.
Robert Goodman: the intrigue is set in Mexico in 1943, during the Second World War, although the war actually seems very far away in this book. It revolves around a minor con artist called Ulysses. Ulysses learnt from his con man father how to scam women out of their fortunes by romancing them, although you get the impression that his father was better at this than he was. When the book opens, Ulysses has fallen on hard times and needs to score. So he goes to a boarding house in a small town called Puerto Jogado in Veracruz to romance its own owner, Perla, with whom he has been carrying out a romance through the mail. but he's soon rumbled by Inez, Perla's niece, who works in the boarding house and desperately wants to escape. Inez wants wants to work with Ulysses to fleece her aunt and run away. Only things don't go as smoothly along the way, and readers find out that Perla has her own dark secrets. Moreno Garcia explains in her afterward that she drew her inspiration from the traditions of the costumbrista, which are traditional stories that focus on the customs, habits, and idiosyncrasies of the lower and middle classes. But she also draws on the traditions of the telenovela and the golden age of noir cinema. interestingly, she also notes that the 1940s is when Mexican detective and crime fiction first emerged, including the creation of the first Latin American woman detective by an author called Maria Elvira. Bermudez. The Intrigue is a really fun tale of con artists, seduction, strivers, and revenge plays. It's full of twists and turns as the three main characters revolve around and manipulate each other. Moreno Garcia delivers a cast of likably unlikable characters and a plot that often zigs just when you think it's going to zag. This is not the first crime genre novel that Moreno Garcia has written. And while I would highly recommend her other genre works, if you just want to stick to historical or Prime output, then I would also recommend both Velvet is the Night, which was her drama set during the student riots in Mexico in 1971, and Untamed Shore, which was another thriller that drew heavily on sort of 1950s and 60s cinema noir traditions, and is set in Baja, California in the 1970s. So that's The Intrigue by Silvia Moreno Garcia, and it's published by Hachette. How about you, Jackie?
Jacqui: Well I headed to Japan this week with the final six by Akonari Asakura and translated by Hayden Trail. I think one of the great strengths of crime fiction is that it holds a mirror up to society. So whatever's happening out there in community, in politics and society, will be reflected back in crime novels. So that right now we're getting books with discussing the manosphere or using podcasts and really reflecting what's going on around us. That's why I love reading international crime books because I get to s see inside another culture. Although I always wish I could read those books in the original language so I can get the rhythm and the nuances of the writing, but I I have to trust the translation. So this book, The Final Six, is about Shukatsu, which is the annual job hunting process for young graduates in Japan. And I understand it's pretty full-on. It happens once a year and it's a full-on process that is very competitive. And very driven by etiquette and ritual. We meet six young graduates, two women and four men, who've made it to the final round of interviews for a social media company. The final interview is going to be a group interview and they're advised to prepare for it together. They become a tight-knit group and they feel like they're all going to get a job out of this. Just before the final date for the interview and after a big night out drinking together, they all get a text to say the company now can only offer one position. So at the group interview, They have to discuss who's the most worthy of that final job offer and then vote on it.
Robert Goodman: That's a great setup. It's sounding very familiar, but I'll let you keep going.
Jacqui: Yeah, yeah, it was the first of my gasped moments. That was my I was reading, I thought, my goodness, that's a good one. So now they're true competitors. They get to the group interview, which will be two and a half hours long, and if any of them leave the room, they are no longer eligible. The six establish how they'll do things. They'll they decide they'll hold discussions and then vote every half hour and then tally up the votes at the end. Into the first hour and after the first vote, they discover an envelope by the door. No one knows who left it there. Inside the envelope are six smaller envelopes, each addressed to one of the six. As we discover, each envelope holds a secret about one of the other six. Needless to say, the rest of the group interview is fraught. And I don't want to say any more because it's intricately plotted, and to say more would be to ruin the fun. The book is told in two timelines. So there's the original timeline with the graduates and the interview, and the point of view for this timeline is one of the graduates, Hatano. The other timeline is ten years down the track and is told by the person who did get that job, and that person is trying to piece together what happened on that fateful day. The book uses the absurdities of the recruitment process to ask the central question, how well can you truly know someone? And it's a great read. I really, really enjoyed it.
Robert Goodman: Yeah, now that you describe it, I do remember seeing the trailer for it. they made a movie of it a couple of years ago and it was at last year's Japanese Film Festival. And the even the trailer was really, really tense. the movie version was called Six Lying University Students, which I think gives you what it says on the tin.
Jacqui: yeah. Yeah. I'd love to look that up and see if it's on one of the streaming 'cause I'd love to see it played out on on film.
Robert Goodman: so we've managed to mention a lot of books. If you're interested in any of the titles we've talked about, we have tried to list them all in the show notes and have links to any of the websites that we've mentioned as well.
Jacqui: Thanks Robert. And if people are interested in following up and reading your other reviews, and they should, where can I find you?
Robert Goodman: I can be found on Instagram at Pile by the Bed. That's all one word. you can hit me up there also if you have any feedback about the show. and you can find all of my reviews at pile by the bed.com. hit the subscribe button at the bottom of the page to get new reviews a couple of times a week. The link is in the show notes. Crime fiction down under was recorded on the lands of the Gadigal people in Sydney and the Wadawarong people in Ballarat. While we do receive copies of books for review, neither Jackie or I have any financial relationship with publishers. The opinions expressed in this podcast are purely our own. Thank you, Jackie.
Jacqui: Thank you, Robert. See you in a fortnight and see everybody else in a fortnight.
Robert Goodman: See See you in a fortnight.
