And Fire Came Down,by Emma Viskic.
It's good to meet up with the lanky,reserved Falk again. The burns on his hands are healing,he has moved back to his tidy flat in the city and acquired a no-nonsense sidekick called Carmen who is one of the few people tall enough to look him in the eye. They work well together in a respectful partnership that skilfully sidesteps the usual moves.
Meanwhile,the story of what happened to the women on their four-day trek is outlined in a series of flashbacks that open with the observation of her former colleagues that whatever has happened to Alice,she brought it upon herself. This is a classic"blame the victim"line that will subsequently be put to the test.
Force of Nature,by Jane Harper.
What's brave about these flashbacks is that they take Falk out of the picture for a lot of the time. And yet the investigation is still personal for Falk when he discovers his father's old walking maps encompassing the same territory. As inThe Dry,this is an inquiry that will lead to new discoveries about Falk's own past that will accompany him into the inevitable next instalment.
Force of Nature thus manages to be two things at once. It's a financially skewed police procedural with a likeable detective with his own personal trajectory at its heart,and it's something of a"locked room mystery". The fact that the"locked room"is neither in a vicarage,nor on an island,but somewhere in the claustrophobic vastness of the Australian bush rendersForce of Nature all the more original and engaging.
Like Falk,Emma Viskic's character Caleb Zelic is something of a loner,although not necessarily by choice. Caleb may be a private investigator,but he is also profoundly deaf,a disability that shapes every encounter he has with the outside world.
It's also a disability that shapes the prose style,with Viskic opting for a staccato rhythm that mimics Caleb's attempts to follow what is going on. Take his encounter with the crack addict delivering him a message that sets the plot in motion:
"Words scuttled from the man's mouth and disappeared into the shadows. Was that a W? And an O? Definitely an M."
It is indeed a woman who is trying to send Caleb a message in a dramatic opening scene that ends with her violent death,but not before she has thrust a piece of paper into his hand that will take him back to where it all began,Resurrection Bay. In the absence of any other information,Caleb christens her Red,determining to discover who she is and why she died. So back to the bush he goes.
There is definitely a move afoot in Australian crime fiction these days,one that takes its characters out of the cities and into the small towns where so many of their authors grew up. Given the sensitivity of these not always flattering images of Australian regional life,it's no surprise that these instantly recognisable places are often rechristened in suggestive ways.
Such is the case of Resurrection Bay,the Victorian coastal town to which Caleb returns and which he discovers anew laid out before him,"silver roofs wedged between blue-green sea and bush,a dark metastasis of pine plantations spreading towards the west".
Viskic's descriptions of place are often so intense you can smell them.
For Caleb,this is a sort of coming home. The house his father built is still standing,now occupied by his brother Ant who is off the drugs,has acquired a girlfriend and usefully joined the rural fire service. Caleb's mother-in-law is there too,although his estranged wife Cat is absent,still licking the wounds she received during Caleb's last ill-fated case. Everything feels tenuous,and the bush is tinder dry.
These days the criminal fraternity comes in many guises,including the kid with the rat-tail on the BMX who seems to be everywhere and nowhere. The problem with regional towns,though,is everyone's a suspect and everyone's involved. Caleb knows them all.
Final verdict?And Fire Came Down andForce of Nature are fine books that will not disappoint,although I suspect thatThe Dry will shine the brightest for some time. While second acts may be hard,both Harper and Viskic have kept the momentum up and are on a roll.