Kittyhawk Down

Garry Disher is a new find from Australia. I really appreciated his first Hal Challis novel entitled "Dragon Man" and launched into this, his second Challis novel, with the hope that Disher hadn't gotten an attack of sophomore slump. He did not. He built nicely on that first novel without using it as a crutch, and expanded and enriched our familiarity with the sounds and surrounds of peninsular Victoria province Australia. The only problem is that he built too much. This is a good book with too many story lines and it took a lot of work to read it. Which doesn't mean that I didn't like the book. I just could have liked it more. One thing I did really like about this book is that Challis starts by easing us back into the lives and work environment of the police officers and detectives we got to know in "Dragon Man". It was a good, effective way to reestablish them. And even as I type this, I realize that this book is all about these people and the crimes they investigate are secondary to their own lives and interactions. And that's just fine. There is kind of a voyeuristic quality to the way we get to see so much. The crimes here run the gamut from strange happenings at the local airfield where Challis keeps his forever-being-restored Kittyhawk plane, to an anonymous Meddler who spies and reports on local wrongdoers, to a pot-growing anarchist, to a suicide that isn't, to an especially kinky rapist, to Challis's wife who tried to have him killed (you notice I didn't say ex-wife), to...well, you get the picture. And it really is all very well-written. It's just a little too much. But it does leave me with the feeling that I could walk into just about any house on the Peninsula and feel at home, right down to management of the loo.

Garry Disher has another winner with Kittyhawk Down. Protagonist, Hal Challis, and his team of investigators are realistically portrayed in their fears and cognitive skills on the job. Disher books contain a great deal of "noir" with a glimmer of hope for humankind that keeps avid mystery readers turning pages to find that grain of good. Nice descriptive text for those of us who haven't been to Australia.

Disher's thoughtful, emotionally charged police procedurals, set in a bucolic coastal area of Australia, feature Inspector Hal Challis, a lonely loner, beset by pathetic calls from his ex-wife, who's imprisoned for the attempted murder of Hal himself. Hal's relationship with journalist Tessa Kane suffers a bit from his wife's suicide threats and then a bit more with Hal's interest in a fellow small-plane buff, a woman who takes aerial photographs and suddenly needs his help when she's inexplicably attacked. Meanwhile, readers of Disher's first Challis book, "The Dragon Man," will remember his team. Ellen Destry nabs a rapist with satisfaction, but drags her feet going home to her nagging husband; Scobie Sutton bores everyone silly with the joys of fatherhood, but his daughter has head lice again; young Pam Murphy can't seem to curb her spending or her ambition and boorish John Tankard lusts after her while despising her zeal for work. And the Meddler, a local busybody and inveterate letter writer, who has just discovered his hurtful nickname, decides to take his meddling a step further. Shifting viewpoints keep us a couple steps ahead of the cops as the murders pile up, but with the deft use of twists and red herrings Disher keeps his mysteries until the page-turning conclusion. Character drives these absorbing, darkish procedurals from an award-winning author whose success in Australia deserves to be echoed here.

Though it took him years, Melbourne Homicide Squad Inspector Hal Challis' believes he has moved past his former wife's efforts to have her lover kill him now that he is seeing newspaper editor Tessa Kane and making new friends. Still Angela keeps in contact using the threat of suicide as a blackmail ploy to get Hal to forgive her and to help get her out of her life imprisonment. Hal knows the suicide threat is real, but wants nothing to do with his ex spouse who still haunts him as he regularly visits her anyway. Hal meets Kitty Casement, an aerial photographer who he likes in spite of his seeing Tessa. Someone threatens Kitty's life so Hal assumes she took pictures that threaten the illegal activity of the culprit although this could be part of nasty letter writer the Meddler or her spouse Rex. While searching for a missing toddler and working the latest homicide, Hal and his team struggle to identify who succeeded in ultimately killing Kitty. Though the above paragraphs concentrate on Hal, this terrific Australian police procedural provides numerous perspectives especially that of other cops working the mundane like a teen party or the homicide. The story line is fast-paced, but the key is that all the cast seem genuine even those that could have easily slipped into stereotypes. KITTYHAWK DOWN is a fabulous tale due to the solid caseload and strong characterizations starting with Hal whose life is moving forward one day at a time. Harriet Klausner