Phryne Fisher #22, THE LADY WITH THE GUN ASKS THE QUESTIONS

Whether you met her in one of the series on Public Television, or in one of the 21 earlier books by Kerry Greenwood, it's not surprising if you wish you ran into her more often. Australian sleuth Phryne Fisher is elegant, stylish, and a liberated woman of the 1920s. With her friends among the police and her ever-loyal assistant Dot, Miss Fisher exerts her lively curiosity and sharp wits to solve all sorts of murders and related crimes.

Book 22 in Kerry Greenwood's Miss Phryne Fisher series, THE LADY WITH THE GUN ASKS THE QUESTIONS, is a story collection crammed with delight. Only half of that pleasure involves the crimesolving -- the other half is the way Greenwood allows the stories to reveal her writing process and how she chooses her adventures. Her "Apologia" at the start of the collection offers:

As you will see, sometimes I try out some of the cast of a novel in a short story to see if they like me enough to stay for a whole book, there being a great difference between 3,000 and 85,000 words, and an author needs to pick her company if she has to give them house room for so long.

Greenwood follows this short introduction with a second, called "On Phryne Fisher," that reveals how she began the series. If you're already a fan of the books, some of this won't be new -- but it's still fascinating. For instance, "Because I wanted her to be a female wish-fulfillment figure, I wanted her to be like James Bond, with better clothes and fewer gadgets." Bingo! Greenwood adds, "She's a bold creature for the 1920s but not an impossible one. None of the things she does are out of the question for that brittle, revolutionary period." And then there's the author's insight on the balance that good historical fiction must convey: "Too much detail and the reader is bored. Too little and it fails to convince."

But of course, the whole point of this collection is to present the stories themselves. It's actually a republication of a 2007 group, with four brand new stories added, all set in 1929. The author admits she's done a light re-edit on the earlier stories to tidy up some loose ends -- and then explains more. "Hotel Splendide" is based on an urban myth first written down in the 1920s; "The Vanishing of Jock McHale's Hat" was written for a Christmas collection ("I wanted something light and frivolous, yet with dark undertones"). "Marrying the Bookie's Daughter" explores Phryne's personal independence (can you really expect her to accept a marriage proposal?). And in the midst of all this, of course, these are proper mystery stories, embedded with neat clues, clever puzzle twists, and Phryne's marvelous personal style: "You horrible little insect," she tells one criminal, adding, "I suppose it is educational to find out that you can't have everything that you want," as she offers to lock up the perpetrator with a snake, instead of turning him over to the police.

Summer's just about here — and this is a great addition to the reading pile for real relaxation and plenty of smiles. If you read a copy ASAP, you might even be ready to re-read it at the opposite end of the season. Think of how frugal you'll prove yourself to be! And by that point, you may even have decided which of Phryne Fisher's tea gowns would suit your own style. (Right?)

PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Strong Stand-Alone from Garry Disher, UNDER THE COLD BRIGHT LIGHTS (Australia)

Australian author Garry Disher now has more than 50 books to his credit, but is not yet well known in America. Thanks to Soho Crime, his two crime series—the gritty yet often tender Hal Challis books and very very dark "noir" of the Wyatt series—have mostly traveled to the United States. In July, Soho Crime (the crime fiction imprint of Soho Press) brought out a stand-alone from this author: UNDER THE COLD BRIGHT LIGHTS.

The book's closer in tone to the Hal Challis series than to the Wyatt books. Detective Alan Auhl, now an acting sergeant, is much older than most of the force and has been pulled back into action to tackle the cold cases. He is clearly wounded, himself. His former wife sometimes visits, but not always to share affection with him; in addition, Auhl owns a boarding house that caters to people with hard-luck stories yet decent hearts, among them an abused woman named Neve and her young daughter Pia, still being emotionally strangled by their ties to Pia's father. While Auhl struggles to help Neve and Pia find a position of strength, he's also tangled up in the cold case of John Elphick, whose daughters insist he was murdered, and with a newly discovered body that clearly dates back to a much earlier death, as well as a murderous doctor—and maybe it's just as well he's so busy. Otherwise he'd drown in the grief and angst of his boarders.

The delight of Disher's investigation novels is the depth he unfolds in his investigators, and UNDER THE COLD BRIGHT LIGHTS is a great example -- and also, for that reason, a good starter if you haven't yet read any of this Down-Under author. Here's a sample:

As the evening deepened, Auhl brooded. Men like Kelso, Fanning—Alec Neill. Their assumptions,  cronyism, power, sense of entitlement. Pre-emptive strike kinds of men: they seized the advantage while the rest of the world was thinking things through. Like Neill with his accusations against his wife,  thought Auhl. And as soon as we move against him he'll surround himself with lawyers and colleagues. ... Quite suddenly, a deeper unease settled into Auhl. Saturday morning. Janine Neill, pale, dizzy, uncoordinated. She had speculated blithely that Neill might shoot her or push her off a rock, but what if he'd poisoned her? Surely he couldn't be that arrogant? But he'd succeeded three times before Maybe he thought he was untouchable. ... [Auhl] dressed in dark clothing, backed his elderly Saab out of the garage and headed across to East Melbourne, heart jumpy and mouth dry.

Like Karen Slaughter, Tucker Coe (a Westlake nom de plume), or Louise Penny, Disher gives us an investigator whose sense of his own belonging to the world depends on taking action against the cruel, malicious, and criminal. Thanks to his deep experience and careful craft, UNDER THE COLD BRIGHT LIGHTS is one of the most satisfying mysteries of 2019.

[More Disher reviews here.]

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Backstory #2: Criminal Masterminds Cut Loose in SIGNAL LOSS, by Australian Author Garry Disher

Garry Disher lives on Australia's Mornington Peninsula, southeast of Melbourne, and his Challis and Destry police procedural series often takes place right there. The seventh book in the series, SIGNAL LOSS, came out in late 2016 in Australia, reaching American readers via Soho Crime in late November. Now that the holiday season is wrapping up, it's a great time to treat yourself to a copy of this well-written and lively traditional crime investigation -- with the wry, dark twists of humor that are particularly Disher's own.

The book opens with an intro that could have come from that classic wisecracking mystery master, Donald E. Westlake himself:

Lovelock and Pym. They sounded like some kind of show-business duo -- magicians, maybe; folk singers.

In fact they worked for Hector Kaye, who used to run the Finks out of Kings Cross. That was before he set up as a legitimate businessman and started importing crystal meth from China. They didn't come cheap, Lovelock and Pym. Kaye paid them well and he'd bought them each a house and a car in the past year.

When the pair tackle a murder-for-hire and get overly ambitious, though, their fumbles turn deadly for more than just the intended victim. Add to this chaos the more dangerous threat of an Australian bush fire, and "mistakes are made." The kinds of mistakes that, for investigating Inspector Hal Challis, crack open the past conflicts of a crime ring and turn a small case into major impact.

Meanwhile, Challis's lover Sergeant Ellen Destry -- recently made the head of her department's sex crime unit -- realizes her own investigations are revealing a serial rapist with more skills than most. She and her team tug at each loose thread, working the details until they develop into solid leads. But Destry's distracted at times by another ambitious woman in the force, Sergeant Coolidge (Destry names her Sergeant Cleavage at one point!), who's trying to lure Hal out of Ellen's circuit.

They looked at each other, faintly challenging, bringing back old academy memories to Ellen but probably nothing at all to Coolidge.

"Haven't seen you for ages. You're sex crimes now," Coolidge said, as if that were a side path to nowhere in policing terms.

"And you're drugs," Ellen said.

Coolidge gave her a slow-burning smile and Ellen wondered at the intent: to tease me, unsettle me. She returned the smile, a quick hard nastiness in it, and opened the door of the car. "Good luck," she said and got in and drove out of there. Not much of a victory -- not much of anything -- but why get bogged down fighting the woman? 

As it turns out, Hal is the one who'll get bogged down by Coolidge's interference, but that's jumping a ahead some. Pick up this fast-paced investigation and you'll get the details quickly, because even though it would be great to have a Disher crime novel last a long time, the tension pushed the page turning. In fact, clear the schedule if you can -- here's your winter vacation between the covers in a 345-page "Down Under" romp through twinned cases that are hard to control, and incredibly satisfying to solve.

This is Disher's more accessible, easy-to-enjoy series (read chapter 1 here if you like); his other is the Wyatt series, darkly reminiscent of the Dexter mysteries yet somehow likeable (but, please note, very very dark). He also offers occasional stand-alones and "young adult" (YA) books, which Soho Crime doesn't yet bring across. Check the Soho website for the American releases of Disher's books. So far, I've appreciated all of them (Disher reviews here).

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Humor, History, and Very Very Human: DEATH EX MACHINA, Gary Corby

Sure, I was skeptical at the start -- this is the fifth Athenian mystery set by Australian Gary Corby in "Classical Athens" and it involves a group of actors, as well as the husband-and-wife investigative team of Nicolaos and Diotima. And a ghost!

But it didn't even take a chapter for Corby's breezy and quick-paced style to draw me into this 459 BC mystery. And although each chapter brings more revelations about "real life" in Athens and its surroundings, the information is deftly tucked (with smiles) into what Nico and his wife discover. There are some notes at the end of the book, and it turned out that the quirks that most raised my eyebrows came directly from Corby's research (yes, I peeked), so I relaxed and went with this very entertaining and just-complicated-enough romp through murder and mayhem.

Anyone who's heard of the way Shakespeare performers refer to Macbeth  as "the Scottish Play" already knows actors tend to be superstitious. So it's no big stretch to assume the ones in Ancient Athens would refuse to work if convinced that their performance space is haunted -- especially if accidents keep happening. When Nico and Diotima accept the task of exorcising the ghost in the city's grand theater, Nico at least is matter-of-face enough to rephrase the assignment to himself as "catch the killer," and figure out who's working to sabotage the show before the grand Dionysius festival begins.

The motives for murder turn out to hinge on employment and immigration, issues I never would have guessed were crucial in Athens "back then." As Nico and Diotima interview the newly promoted second lead actor for the show, Romanos, it's clear the actor is an eager and imperiled immigrant, and Nico assesses the situation and the actor:

I tried to estimate the age of Romanos, but it wasn't easy. He was one of those men who could be an old-looking twenty-five or a young-looking thirty-five. There were lines of experience about his eyes, but I guessed that he'd had a hard life and he could have acquired those at an early age.

Romanos looked out from our shelter, into the pouring rain.

He said, "I would like to be a citizen of Athens one day." ...

I asked, "Would it help you?"

Romanos looked surprised. "Of course it would. Citizens get all the best parts."

But what seems to be theater-motivated crime takes a new twist when Nico follows some leads into the surrounding countryside, and sniffs the trail of both beer and wine, as well as scandal.

I had a great time reading DEATH EX MACHINA and I'll be scooping up Corby's earlier work, as well. It''s a great treat for summer vacation, and reading the series will fit any time there's good reason to take a break -- for a challenge to preconceptions, a good plot, enjoyable characters, and a sense of fresh discovery. No need to read the earlier books before this one, but I'm sure I won't be the only reader who decides to invest in the whole series! From Soho Crime, and a dandy mix of caper crime fiction and amateur sleuth.

Australian Crime Fiction: Cato Kwong Series, Alan Carter

There are two significant anchors for Australian crime fiction, and they couldn't be more different: At one pole are the "Bony" investigations by Arthur Upfield, published from 1928 to 1963, taking the "puzzle mystery" into serious terrain with half-caste Aborigine Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte. If you pride yourself on knowing your Agatha Christie and think you'd enjoy a more  gritty terrain of both landscape and character conflict, look for one of the Upfield paperbacks that still rattle around. (Caution: They're engrossing. You may want them all.)

At the other pole, much more darkly, are two series from today's grand master of Australian mystery, Garry Disher. His Wyatt books work from inspiration in the Richard Stark (Donald Westlake) character of Parker and endow Wyatt himself with more bitterness, fewer emotions, and a single vulnerability -- and a career as a jewel thief, loner, and sociopath. In extreme contract, Disher's other series, featuring Hugh Challis and Ellen Destry, fingers the social fabric of Australia's Mornington Peninsula, southeast of Melbourne, through the emotional tension of being police investigators who fall into a complex love affair that becomes serious and committed -- and a challenge for two workaholics.

Now add a third significant author to the Australia crime fiction shelf: Alan Carter.

Born in 1959 in the United Kingdom, Carter emigrated to Australia in 1991 and worked as a TV documentary director. With 2011 publication of his first crime novel, GETTING WARMER, Carter shot onto the award lists, and his second in the Cato Kwong series is PRIME CUT. Both were released in the United States in 2014; the third book is due this year (Bad Seed) but seems to have hung up in the publication process, as it's now past due.

And what a series. Detective Senior Constable Philip Kwong -- nicknamed Cato, a dig at his Chinese heritage (after the Chinese character in The Pink Panther) -- has sunk so low in the opinion of the police administration that his assignment at the opening of PRIME CUT is to the Stock Squad: the team that investigates dead cows among the ranches. It's dull and demanding at the same time, and it's utterly humiliating. So when Cato has a chance to fill in on a real investigation, he's quickly engaged in the only part of a mining-town crisis that nobody else seems to care about: the discovery on the shore of a headless, armless, legless human torso that nonetheless suggests Asian origin.

Even though he's clearly destined to be shipped back to his tedious assignments, Cato clings to the case day by day, and finds motive, means, and opportunity among the hardscrabble workers and bosses at the booming and brutal mining operation. When he starts to pry into the Chinese workers and their situation, he sets off a cascade of further brutality.

Cato's a complex investigator, hungry for his work and career but caught up in both the social stratification that pushes Asians downward, and his own mistakes in rushing both evidence and accusations. Half the pleasure of reading PRIME CUT is seeing him fall, rise, fall, and possibly move forward.

So it's a delight to have the second book in the series already on hand. GETTING WARMER takes Cato Kwong back to an urban policing slot, where he has a chance of resuming parenthood with his young son. This time, though, he's too ready to jump into a case, risking his own child's safety as well as his own. Politics in the police squad turn as dangerous as the urban criminals. And the endless summer heat and fire danger add to the tension. Soon he's assigned to work with his superior and a very unpleasant prisoner, Gordon Wellard, trying to find out where a young kidnapped girl's being held -- or been buried. It's confusing, even afterward:

The heat bounced off the prison car park. The sky was painfully blue. Cato zapped the locks of the Commodore and they drove off with the air con up to full. The fires were on again: two columns of smoke over the southern hills of the Darling Scarp out Karagullen way, and one close by in bushland near Success. Whoever chose that name for a suburb needed to be strung from a lamppost. ...

"Wellard seems to think he's in charge."

"And?"

"You and him go back a long way. Aren't you meant to be the one in charge?"

"You saying I'm not?"

"Again, you tell me."

Cato's suspicion of his fellow officer turns out to be well founded. But it's all more complicated than that, and soon the summer fires will make it worse.

These books slide along the line of gritty and grim, but with plenty of emotion -- Cato may sometimes wish he doesn't feel pain or loss, but the truth is, he's involved as both an investigator and a dad. His struggles against department politics and pervasive racism add to the tension and interest, and author Alan Carter spins a taut, engaging plot that's so closely bound to the landscape, you can almost feel the grit in your teeth in some of the chapters.

No extraordinary gruesomeness, but a steady surge of urban violence here -- and a very masculine world of crime-fighting and challenge. I enjoyed both books (although I needed to get outside and walk afterward, to reassure myself that I live in an easier, calmer place). It's good to know the third one, Bad Seed, is on its way from Down Under to the American market sometime this year.

Australian Noir Gets Complicated: HELL TO PAY, Garry Disher

Garry Disher's mysteries have come in two basic flavors: crime with a dash of satisfaction in the investigation (try his Hall Challis/Ellen Destry series), and crime from the point of view of sociopaths who make it their lifestyle -- and then find themselves puzzling out some humanity around the edges (that's the Wyatt series). I'd be willing to call them bittersweet chocolate and unsweetened dark.

But with HELL TO PAY, Disher begins what looks like a new series from Soho Crime, featuring Constable Paul Hirschhausen, known to himself and others as Hirsch. The stakes are far different, and the emotions more complex, as Hirsch buckles down to his new assignment as a local constable in a stretch of barren back-country, on the Barrier Highway, under the thumb of the malevolent Sergeant Kropp, his superior officer. Everything appears bitter and painful as the book opens (especially the situation with Kropp and his associated bullies). And it gets worse, as Hirsch's own past becomes clear: He's in disgrace, assumed to have been the whistle-blower who informed on his own "boys in blue" allies in the metropolis of Adelaide, Australia.

That's the reason Hirsch is isolated, despised, tormented by the local police and by Sergeant Kropp: no loyalty to his own kind.

So when Kropp sends Hirsch to respond to a report of "shots fired," Kropp's tone is nasty from the start, even though the call is probably related to some sheep farmers taking pot shots at rabbits or something similar: "No dropkicks on my watch, and no smartarses," Kropp warns Hirsch. An air of unease out at "the scene" turns dangerous as shots fly at Hirsch himself, nearly killing him. But nothing's as it seems -- not the shooters, or their reasoning. And almost before this opening foray into back-country life has resolved, Hirsh is on call again from Kropp, for a body next to the road, possibly from a hit-and-run. When he finds the body, all his instincts and experience go on alert.

So he ran crime scene tape around the area and sat down to wait.

Late afternoon before the accident investigators arrived. Hirsch wanted to hang around, he wanted to propose his theories, but they ignored him, two men and one woman conscious of the dwindling light, the sun smearing itself across the horizon, long shadows playing visual tricks. They took their phtos measured distances, crouched and poked and grid-searched and marked up their diagrams.

"You're blocking the light," the female offices said, her tone indicating she knew exactly who Hirsch was.

His reputation means his efforts are consistently misread, but Hirsch soon has reason to probe this death of a 16-year-old girl more deeply.  Like everything else Hirsch connects with, this isn't what is seems, and his efforts to uncover the truth put him repeatedly into danger, both physical and at the level of soul and self-esteem, as word spreads of who Hirsch is and what he's done in the past.

All of that spells darkness, "Australian noir," and Disher makes us work for insights into Hirsch's character: not a man defend himself fruitlessly, or to lay his grief and fears out in public. But unlike Disher's iconic character Wyatt, Hirsch is readily touched by the pathos and stress of the communities and families around him -- their confusion and sorrow and anger harmonize with his own -- and small details in the way he treats people and the way, despite himself, he falls under the back-country spell of sere beauty win us to his side.

Disher makes a feast out of this layered complexity where personal reserve and the careful distance of career policing mean that the heart is often silenced. There's no gratuitous gore here, no horror show -- but plenty of insight into simple and more intentional evils, and into what it takes to bring goodness back into the light, among those long twisted shadows.

I'm already hungry for the next "Hirsch" book from Disher. I can even let go of the other two series for a while, to fall in with the power and potential redemption ahead in this (presumed) series.

If you're collecting Disher already, buying HELL TO PAY is an easy decision; if you're new to this author, HELL TO PAY is probably his most accessible and rewarding book yet, and a great place to start getting to know his work.

PS: Disher's author site often isn't up to date, but it's still of interest, with extra tidbits giving insight into this well-established author: http://www.garrydisher.com.

Arthur Upfield and THE SPIRIT OF AUSTRALIA

I have a generous stack of recent and upcoming mysteries/crime fiction read, about to get reviewed -- but before I launch into those, here's a quick mention of Arthur Upfield. Dave and I have always been a little surprised at how few mystery fans know the name of this Australian author whose series featuring the Bush-wise Napoleon Bonaparte reached publication during the time when Agatha Christie's books were also being published. But ... that may be changing. We've noticed four orders in the past two weeks for Arthur Upfield books from the Kingdom Books shelves.

So, here's a link to a piece we provided on Upfield's mysteries, as well as a handful of other authors we think you'll enjoy if you're already reading the "Bony" books: http://kingdombks.blogspot.com/search?q=Upfield

And we do still have two copies of THE SPIRIT OF AUSTRALIA, the ultimate bibliographer's compilation on Upfield and his books—click here.

Let us know what you think as you dig into this intriguing series.

Garry Disher, WHISPERING DEATH: Police Procedural with Depth

Australian Garry Disher writes two series of mysteries that I follow closely: his very dark and violent Wyatt group, where the protagonist is a sociopath that Wyatt manages to present in ways that let readers sympathize with (what does that say about our inner selves?); and the Hal Challis/Ellen Destry series, in which WHISPERING DEATH is title six.  I look forward to each Challis/Destry mystery, both for the Australian police procedural aspects (Disher usually include cross-jurisdiction conflict and challenges within the police force, such as sexual discrimination and political pressure), and for the warmth of Challis as a conflicted yet committed person of "good heart."

Reading WHISPERING DEATH will be a spoiler for some of the earlier books, so if you haven't yet read them, I strongly recommend starting at the beginning, with Dragon Man, which Soho Crime brought to the US in 2005. But if you're headed directly into this newest book instead, you'll find plenty of background to let you enjoy it directly. The only part seriously missing is Challis's lover Ellen Destry herself, as she's headed away on a European training in her newly embraced field of solving sex crimes. But her role as investigator of this aspect is quickly assumed by the edgy and sharp sergeant Jeannie Schiff, on hand to help deal with the crime that Challis's team needs to rapidly resolve.

"Thanks for coming down," Challis said. "As I said on the phone, our sexual offences team isn't in place yet, so we could do with some help."

"Well, yeah," drawled Schiff. "Abduction and rape? A bit different from some sad bloke waving his penis at schoolgirls." Her voice was raspy, low, not unpleasant, but sharp underneath.

Disher sets up, at the same time, a different sort of serial criminal in action in the same terrain: a career burglar with an eye for high-value items, including artwork. Grace -- clearly a pseudonym for some of her crimes, but still significant as a name -- is a highly trained pro, with rules for her operations, and plenty of financial success from them. But on the inside, she's desperate for the connections that her career forbids, and she's also close to being a sociopath herself: isolated, with feelings cut away, and a past that speaks of abuse and loss. Because she tend to rob empty houses in carefully planned heists, she isn't as violent as Wyatt, the grim criminal in Disher's other series. Yet I kept hearing Wyatt's voice in Grace's. So the two series are echoing in each other.

If you explore the series in sequence, you'll have the delight of seeing Disher's writing become ever tighter, every more impeccably paced. Even the dialogue, inner and between characters, ascends in skill, to the point where conversations in WHISPERING DEATH have clearly been fine-tuned, one word at a time, for maximum impact and elegant revelation of character. Disher is now being called a grand master in the field, and I agree.

One last note on this book: Sure, there's violent crime in it. But what drew me through the pages, turning me antisocial for the weekend, was the affection, comradeship, and commitment that Disher's characters exhibit. And that's what I'll remember most about WHISPERING DEATH: the goodness in the ordinary police detectives, that positions them in true opposition to the forces of evil.

PS -- Click here for other Kingdom Books reviews of Disher's books.

Australian Crime Fiction: Garry Disher, Again

Dave and I have both written about Australian author Garry Disher's books. There are two crime series to follow, among Disher's more than 40 books; both series have been available in Australia for quite a while. Here they are:

The Wyatt Series
Kickback 1991
Paydirt 1992
Deathdeal 1993
Crosskill 1994
Port Vila Blues 1996
The Fallout 1997
Wyatt 2010

The Detective Inspector Hal Challis Series
The Dragon Man 1999
Kitty Hawk Down 2003
Snapshot 2005
Chain of Evidence 2007
Blood Moon 2009
Whispering Death 2011

In some ways it's a bit strange that the books have taken so long to reach the US market, but there are two factors to note: the gaps of years in the series (especially the 13-year gap in the Wyatt books), and the relative youth of international crime fiction imprint Soho Crime. It's hard for a publisher to make good progress when releasing more than one book per year by a given author (although see the recent blog post on Timothy Hallinan's "Junior Bender" series -- NOT a young adult series in spite of the word "Junior"). When the Wyatt series took flame again in 2010, Soho Crime began bringing the rest of Disher's books here.

Most recently, in August 2012, Soho Crime brought us PORT VILA BLUES. It's a fascinating look into Wyatt's life, a life that's remained mostly mysterious through the series. And we don't get details of his childhood or any other normal "sheet" on a criminal. What we see, though, through the quiet consistent narrative from Wyatt's point of view, is how the world can make sense to a psychopath. Wyatt knows his emotions are not "normal" but they are normal for him and he has no choice -- he operates on a basis of well-planned criminal activities, spread apart by stretches of a mostly uninteresting and anonymous life. Without family, without close friends, he's almost safe from long-term identification, other than the scary rumors about him that circulate in the underworld.

At the opening of PORT VILA BLUES, Wyatt is neatly conducting a technologically savvy, methodically planned burglary, based on a tip from a  dying colleague. In an almost compassionate move, Wyatt's linked himself to Jardine, who still has the capacity to connect Wyatt with a good fence. Or so the two men think.

Wyatt watched Jardine carefully. Jardine's face had grown more elastic in the past few minutes, as if his mind worked well if he had something to stimulate it. Wyatt even recognized an old expression on Jardine's face, a mixture of alertness and absorption as he calculated the odds of a problem.

"Fine."

But the burglary wasn't as simple as it should have been, and the fence turns out to be a "sheila," Liz Redding, who's also not what she appears. Eventually, despite the opposition that will rise between Redding and Wyatt, there's also realization of a similarity: Redding's drive may oppose Wyatt's, but it comes from an interior that's nearly as emotionally stripped. When someone on the side of law enforcement verges on being a psychopath, do we name that tendency, or do we label it an asset instead?

I'll be reading this again. Disher's steady-fingered probing of Wyatt's psyche and of his reluctant connections to others creates a back-music to the books that stays fresh even during a second or third reading, and continues to raise questions about the criminals among us today.

There's a "new" book from Disher releasing in the US on December 18, in the other crime series, the one featuring Hal Challis and Ellen Destry. It's called Whispering Death and I'm about to order a couple of copies for Kingdom Books. I started out more deeply drawn to the Challis and Destry series -- it probes a warmer, more "human" part of the psyche -- but by now, after comparing Wyatt favorably with Donald Westlake's darker books and also Lee Child's Jack Reacher, I'd say I want both Disher crime series on my shelf. And my desert island.