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Jinx

30/10/2015

 
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Hugh McGinlay: Threekookaburras $22
 
’TIS the season for impractical headwear so it seems appropriate that the fictitious heroine of homegrown Melbourne novel Jinx should be a milliner.
One-time police investigator Catherine Kint – burned out by constant job pressure and now working to rebuild herself through a change of pace – is busy in her new career with client orders for the Spring Racing Carnival when her attention is diverted by a murder committed unnervingly close to home. The implication of trusted friend Melissa Zamansky as the only suspect leaves Kint with few options: in the interests of seeing justice served, she downs her hat-making tools immediately and goes in search of the model-like real-estate agent’s true killer.
Set on and around Sydney Road in suburban Brunswick, Jinx weaves elements of witchcraft, voodoo and the occult together with mainstream 21st-century Gen X living in a location that will be familiar to any Victorian who has visited Melbourne Zoo or Princess Park.
Can Kint – sleuthing along the local laneways between all-night Google searches with IT virtuoso Nealander Singh and all-day gin sessions with best mate Boris Shakhovsky – assemble sufficient evidence to both exonerate Zamansky and identify the actual culprit before any further deaths occur? With time already against her Kint finds her task complicated further by the presence of attractive New Age spiritualist Asher Marr – the victim’s long-term boyfriend – and his glowering, physically aggressive brother Shiloh. Could the twitchy, threatening, plainer Marr have been behind the young woman’s gruesome throat-slashing, carried out in an alley dressed with Wiccan symbols on a solstice?
Believable (if decidedly unconventional) characters, a rapid pace and unpredictable plot twists combine to make Jinx an entertaining few hours’ escapism from day-to-day reality and a glimpse into the eclectic, bohemian world of Melbourne’s inner north.
That Jinx has been produced locally is a bonus.

Last Days of the Bus Club

23/10/2015

 
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Chris Stewart: Profile Books $22.99 
 
EVER wondered what became of the original Genesis drummer? No, not Phil Collins – the gangly youth who kept the beat for the rock band long before it found both Collins and world-wide recording fame.
Having left the bright lights of school-hall performances well and truly behind him, Chris Stewart is ensconced these days in a ramshackle farmhouse outside Málaga in the hinterland of Spain’s Costa del Sol, where he juggles producing organic oranges with writing hilarious and self-deprecating autobiographical books.
The title of the fourth instalment in his series about life in rural Spain refers to the winding down of his role as taxi-driver to daughter Chloé as she sees out her final year at the local secondary school and moves on to university.
With an empty nest following their only child’s departure, Stewart and wife Ana occupy themselves with shelling waves of homegrown fava beans, scouting for industrial quantities of fine Spanish red wine with which to toast their ever-helpful neighbours and cooking wild boar from their own hillside for a “mystery guest” who turns out to be celebrity TV chef and fellow Brit Rick Stein. Along the way Stewart manages to inadvertently label himself bisexual while trying to extol the virtues of coeducation to Chloé’s schoolmates in a language he has yet to conquer. He is also forced by a stroke of meteorological bad luck to reprise skills learned half a lifetime earlier while still a student as he labours long and hard to create a bridge over the roaring river that separates his family from civilisation beyond their rocky farmlet.
Last Days of the Bus Club is a highly entertaining, fast-paced and colourful continuation of the story launched in Driving Over Lemons and can be read equally effectively as a natural follow-on from its three predecessors or independently in its own right.

The Sting

16/10/2015

 
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Kate Kyriacou: Echo $32.95
 
IF THERE'S one book that every Australian adult should read (and every child should be told about at an appropriate time), it’s The Sting. This is both a fascinating step-by-step account of the genius that eventually tripped up one of the country’s most dangerous pedophiles and a warning to unsuspecting mainstream citizens that psychopaths of this ilk are moving freely among us.
Since the morning on which Daniel Morcombe’s disappearance was first reported in December 2003, Kate Kyriacou – chief crime writer for the Courier-Mail newspaper in Queensland – has followed the case of the shy, quiet 13-year-old who set out from his family home on the Sunshine Coast early one Sunday afternoon to get a haircut and buy Christmas presents and never returned.
Local police quickly assembled a list of persons of interest – among them a twice-convicted child rapist who had already served three years in jail for two earlier attacks. Although investigators were convinced Brett Cowan was their man they were unable to find even the barest shred of evidence linking him to the missing boy, and with a reasonable alibi he appeared to be beyond their reach.
Rather than deter them, however, this potentially insurmountable roadblock merely inspired the team to adopt an innovative, demanding and resource-intensive approach: working with colleagues in Victoria and Western Australia, Queensland police devised an elaborate covert operation to convince Cowan he was being recruited as the newest member of a bicoastal criminal syndicate. The one thing standing in his way? He would need to confess to “the gang” of undercover officers any previous crimes, including specifically his role, if any, in Daniel’s abduction.
The unfolding events make for a fast-faced, twisting and turning storyline with all the hallmarks of a Hollywood script but with one gigantic asterisk: the victims in this sickening scenario are entirely real.

Down the Rabbit Hole

2/10/2015

 
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Holly Madison: Harper Collins $29.99
 
HOW does a quiet, clean-living, modest college student from Oregon’s small-town Twilight zone progress from being thousands of dollars in debt and homeless to finding herself ensconced as the “number one girlfriend” of the world’s most infamous womaniser – all within a matter of months? Inviting herself to move into then-75-year-old Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles is a handy first step, as Holly Madison discovered at the age of 21.
In Down the Rabbit Hole, Madison describes with grit, determination and a remarkable degree of grace and class the events and emotions surrounding her decade-long association with all things Playboy.
This is no titillating, salacious kiss-and-tell tossed together hurriedly by a ghost writer, nor is it a sugar-coated PR branding stunt. Rather, Madison presents a clear-headed, factual and intimate look back over the years of insecurity, intimidation and infighting that characterised life in captivity for the members of Hefner’s harem, revealing her one-time beau as a sly, manipulative, Machiavellian jailer who is mean-fisted both materially and emotionally and actively pits unhappy, bored young women against each other in a never-ending round of high-school-style cattiness. (That, despite Hefner’s immense legal resources as head of the Playboy publishing empire, he did not prevent this book’s release suggests in itself that Madison’s account is accurate.)
She also describes candidly the smoke-and-mirrors tactics that underpin so-called “reality” television; for five years Madison appeared on The Girls Next Door, a carefully manufactured peak into the lives of Hefner’s chosen women, and later had her own primetime show, Holly’s World.
Madison’s story encompasses her experiences outside the mansion’s walls as well, including the challenge of overcoming stereotyping in order to establish an independent stage career.
Does this fairytale-slash-nightmare end on a happy note? It’s well following this Alice in Wonderland-themed adventure with Madison in order to find out.

    ' Books are treasure for the spirit and ​the soul. '​
    — VB 2020

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    Book reviews

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