Garry Disher
You might question how someone whose list of writing credits runs to more than forty titles might have slipped under the radar, but a glance at his list of publications reveals number of titles in the Young Adult and Children’s Fiction section and a couple of historical titles. He’s obviously a very skilled writer (sit me down with a Wyatt or Challis and Desrty and you’ll probably find I’ve knocked it over in a session or two because they’re genuine page-turners) who produces onsistently high work in the crime genre and you’d have to assume his other work is at least as good. Would be investigating further if his other titles were available in the local library.
Read:
The Wyatt Series:
Paydirt, which opens with Wyatt investigating the possibility of knocking over an armoured payroll van making a delivery to a mining site in semi-outback South Australia.
Wyatt’s been forced to lie low after whatever transpired in Kickback (that seems like a safe assumption, based on how things have panned out to date) but may not be totally aware how severely he’s managed to irritate the Sydney-based Outfit, who’ve sooled crooked ex-cop Letterman onto his trail, contract in hand.
Pulling off the payroll heist means he’ll need to pit together an outfit of his own, and the fact that he has to enlist assistance from people he doesn’t know opens the possibility of significant double crossing, particularly when one of his accomplices has a close association with crooked car dealer and entrepreneur Ray Trigg, who has money worries of his own.
Easy to read, and knocked over in the space of a couple of hours, Paydirt has tipped the scales towards seeking out and buying the remaining Wyatt titles, and I’ll be keeping my eyes peeled for new titles in the series.
Deathdeal opens with Wyatt lying low after the Paydirt debacle, unaware that someone other than the authorities is trying to track him down. They’re not, however, out to get rid of him. Someone wants his expertise in a two million dollar bank job in Brisbane..
The predictable complications, apart from the fact that there’s someone out there who’s good enough to track him down and the questionable motive behind the job, take the form of a drug smuggling pilot, a bank's manager with serious money problems and the murky figures that loom behind them.
When I manage to track down Crosskill I’ll be able to fill in a bit of missing detail.
The Wyatt Butterfly (omnibus edition comprising Port Vila Blues and The Fallout)
In Port Vila Blues he starts off with what seems like a straightforward burglary which yields a valuable piece of jewellery that was part of the haul from another robbery and when the corrupt police responsible for that one learn it's back in circulation it comes as no surprise to learn they want to find out what's going on.
The Fallout. After escaping from Port Vila with a different bundle of jewellery Wyatt is inveigled into helping his nephew with an art heist while the nephew is being conned into joining a search for bullion in a sunken wreck.
Much of the attraction in both stories lies in the characters that surround Wyatt.
While his nephew is in some ways a chip off the old block, he's an interesting contrast to the cautious, business-like unemotional Wyatt, blowing the proceeds of a series of bank robberies across rural Victoria at the Crown Casino, and keeping a collection of annotated press clippings in his semi-swisho apartment.
The central baddie in Port Vila Blues, the crooked judge De Lisle, is a suitably loathsome piece of work, and the corrupt cops seem professional enough on the surface, but they have their fatal flaws while good cop Liz Redding ends up on the other side, suspended for failure to follow S.O.P.
There's a lengthy chronological break between The Fallout and Wyatt, and in the interim Wyatt has done rather well for himself, acquiring, among other things, a couple of units in a development on Melbourne's Southbank. The proceeds of his last job are, however, running low when his old friend Eddie Oberin comes up with a lucrative jewellery heist, thanks to his ex-wife Lydia.
Predictably, Eddie has his own agenda and things aren't quite as they seem on the other side of the operation. The target are the Furneaux brothers, whose cousin, international courier Alain Le Page is intent on feathering his own nest once his connections with the Russian mafia are severed.
While the robbery works out more or less as planned, the proceeds turn out to be international bonds, interesting pieces of paper rather than jewels that would be much easier to dispose of and Le Page, predictably wants them back.
Challis and Destry Novels:
The Dragon Man, the first title in the series set on the Mornington Peninsula, where a serial killer is on the loose, taunting the investigating police with anonymous letters, which find their way onto the front page of the local paper, which is edited by Challis' emerging love interest Tessa Kane. As media attention grows, the investigation goes nowhere as the regular side issues and distractions kick in, though Disher manipulates them cleverly, tweaking predictable responses and tying the ends together with an impressive flurry at the end. Will be watching for others.
Kittyhawk Down comes in about a year later with multiple fatalities that may or may not be related and, where related may not be the work of the obvious suspect. Challis is still on with the newspaper editor, though one doubts whether that’ll last, is still under pressure from his incarcerated wife and spends his spare time restoring his 1935 Dragon Rapide while trying to identify has a corpse fished from the sea. Ellen Destry has plenty on her own plate, with missing toddlers, disgruntled citizenry and other diversions to be sorted out before Challis’s friend, Kittyhawk-flying aerial photographer Janet Casement is murdered.
Snapshot, reviewed here.
Chain of Evidence, reviewed
.
Blood Moon, reviewed here.
Investigate availability of
Wyatt:
Kickback (1991)
Crosskill (1994)
Challis and Destry:
Whispering Death (working title)
Literary/General Novels for Adults
Steal Away (1987)
The Stencil Man (1988)
The Sunken Road (1996)
Past the Headlands (2001)
Play Abandoned (2011)
