A more practiced exercise came from Kit Denton, noted military historian and scholar of the Breaker Morant legend. Fiddler’s Bridge (Sydney, John Ferguson, 1986) concerns the ambitious robbery of an Australian Army payroll by a group of ex-service misfits. Laura Jarman, the daughter of a regular soldier, assembles a team of specialists, all with their own reasons for turning to crime, to carry out the raid in a small country town.
Denton reworks the caper novel for Fiddler’s Bridge. It is married only by his knee-jerk puritanism – after building considerable rapport with the characters, the reader is disappointed to have them nabbed by a police presence that appears virtually out of nowhere. Another author may well have allowed the team to get away with it; it would have been a preferable option.
Another staple component of the thriller is the conspiracy theory, a common device used by such giants of the form as Robert Ludlum, Frederic Forsyth and Jack Higgins. Leon Le Grand abused it but poet and academic Robert Brissenden, like Arthur Mather, has proved the form can be well exploited south of the equator. Brissenden’s Poor Boy (Sydney, Allen & Unwin, 1987) tells the story of Tom Caxton, a foreign correspondent chasing the story of his career in South-East Asia. Caxton, like many heroes of the thriller genre, is an ordinary man thrust into extraordinary circumstances.
A similar exponent of the form is Philip Cornford. The central character in his The Outcast (London, Michael Joseph, 1988) is also a journalist. Paul Mackinnon is the sort of hard-edged character commonly found in the world of thrillers. Set onto a story suited to his talents and reputation, he soon finds himself out of his depth, the expendable tool of the Australian security forces and the KGB. Cornford’s attempt to colour Australia ’s strategic position, particularly the matter of American defence bases in the outback, with international intrigue does not hold the self-conscious hues of many less-talented writers. The Outcast is one of the better thrillers to come from an Australian pen.
Yet another sub-genre exploited in recent times is best illustrated by John Carroll’s Catspaw (Apollo Bay, Pascoe Publishing, 1988). A police informer set up by an unscrupulous cop, Don Bartholomew is above all a survivor. The prison scenes early in the novel are well drawn and set the scene for his anti-hero’s later employment as an enforcer for a Sydney drug-runner. By implication, life is safer inside a cell. Bartholomew remains a stoolie long enough to report on crooked cops and drug deals then engineers his own escape with a girl and suitcase full of cash.
In comparison, Ray Mooney’s A Green Light (Melbourne, Penguin, 1988) is far too realistic and raw a story to dwell satisfactorily within the conventions of crime fiction. Mooney began his writing career while serving time in prison. After several plays, his first novel is a chilling portrait of a sociopath whose addiction to violence is stronger than any drug. Johnny Morgan, the central character, is said to be based on a real-life Australian crime figure. At over 800 pages, it is an extremely long book and Mooney’s downfall as a novelist comes from his success as a playwright. The plot is carried along by enormous slabs of dialogue but it nonetheless stalls. The characters, particularly Morgan, are bleak and dangerous, like guard dogs long abandoned. While dialogue-laden prose can be well utilised (like the novels of American author George V. Higgins), A Green Light diminishes a worthy premise.
It is unfair to expect that all the recent Australian crime titles should be masterpieces. Maybe it is enough that they were published at all, that local publishers noticed the resurgence of the genre and took the chance. As the 1980s draw to a close, opportunities for new writers are booming as never before. Some publishers seem intent on establishing local crime imprints to supplement their overseas lists, while a growing number of American and British houses are taking well-gambled chances on Australian authors. There is one important reason for this renewed growth; there is a market for crime writing by and about Australia.
The sad fact is that for too long Australian crime writing languished in obscurity. Such talents as Waif Wander, Max Afford, Pat Flower, Margot Neville, Sidney Courtier, A.E. Martin and Bant Singer have been out of print for decades and it remains for Australian publishers to discover, as their British and American counterparts have long known, that a lucrative market exists for nostalgia re-releases.
This anthology is an attempt at evaluating Australia ’s past in crime writing and the final choice is as wide-ranging as it is eclectic. Fergus Hume, Arthur Upfield and Carter Brown are musts for such a collection. Each are important historical figures; Waif Wander is equally important although her contribution is only now being realised. Hornung, despite being an Englishman (like Hume) and only a brief visitor, gave the world a major series character and it was in rural Victoria that Raffles embarked on a life of genteel crime.
In selecting the remaining authors, the emphasis has been on talent and entertainment. Randolph Bedford, with his outback Sherlock Holmes, more than fits the bill. So too does A.E. Martin with a truly Australian nice twist. Vince Kelly spent most of his life writing about real crime cases and celebrating the triumphs of the police over the criminal mind. His little known fictional effort is a neat blend of the hard-boiled American school and the British police procedural, coloured by some concerned sociology. Max Afford shows the ability of fine series characters to transcend the seeming gulf between literature and radio – the most popular entertainment forms during the period he gained his most remarkable success.
One regret is that such other important players as Flower, Neville and Courtier, Geraldine Halls, Paul McGuire and Percival Rodda didn’t utilise the short story as a vehicle for their skills. As taking extracts from novels is not a good way to gauge an author’s talents it is not possible to include samples of their writing herein.
This anthology celebrates the pioneering spirit of our literary forebears. Peter Corris, Robert G. Barrett, Tom Howard, Jennifer Rowe and the many others who are now so familiar to modern readers are not the sudden result of some mysterious form of artistic spontaneous combustion. Rather they are a continuation of a grand tradition and to enjoy their works to the fullest it is necessary to glimpse that which has preceded them.
For many fans this will be a journey of discovery, a chance to meet and greet those figures that have for too long been relegated to the very edge of the genre’s crowded universe.
WAIF WANDER
It is both encouraging and disheartening to find a talent such as Waif Wander. Encouraging because she is such a fascinating talent, disheartening because so little is known of her. The author of a large number of crime stories written in the latter half of the nineteenth century for the Australian Journal, Waif Wander (together with W.W., another of her pseudonyms) was in reality a Victorian woman by the name of Mary Ellen Fortune. For her output alone, she should be at the forefront of Australian literary history. The quality of her writing also makes her work significant in the evolution of the genre.