|
[ Home ]
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
Garry Disher is a pro with over forty books under his belt, and his skill at juggling multiple plot lines is on display in this sixth entry in the Hal Challis series. The series follows the work of a team of police officers dealing with a variety of crimes, large and small, on the Mornington Peninsula of Victoria, Australia. A citizen reports a naked woman in the woods who has vanished by the time Detective Constable Pam Murphy responds to the complaint. A vandal is decorating gateposts of expensive homes with sarcastic messages. A bank robber may be headed their way, and Hal Challis has gotten in hot water for speaking frankly to a reporter about the effect of budget cuts on the police department. Though all of these stories are handled with brio, the reader is likely to be impatient to get back to scenes focused on a very talented cat burglar who goes under a variety of names and is always keeping an eye out for trouble - not from the police, but from a man she crossed, the man who taught her all she knows. The naked woman turns up, turning out to be a badly battered rape victim, who had been lured out of her car by a man wearing a police uniform. While the police are dealing with that crime, the burglar hits a house that yields a rather nice Paul Klee painting and a small and not terribly valuable Russian icon that has great personal significance for her, setting off a chain of events that leaves us with another mystery: why are the victims of one of her jobs claiming nothing was taken from their house? It's hard to convey the richness and fluidity of Disher's style as he sends us along the ride, switching tracks from one plotline to another effortlessly, keeping it all humming along at a nice clip, saving room for a perfectly placed line or the gesture that sums up a character. Readers who have followed the series will enjoy catching up with Murphy, Challis, and their colleagues and meeting Grace, the talented, complicated thief. Those who have only read Disher's Wyatt series will enjoy adding cops to their robbers. And those who haven't read Disher before will wonder why it took them so long. § Barbara Fister is an academic librarian, columnist, and author of the Anni Koskinen mystery series.
Reviewed by Barbara Fister, December 2012
[ Top ]
QUICK SEARCH:
Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
[ Home ]
| 
