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Deadline

16/12/2016

 
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Simon Bouda: New Holland $32.99
 
AUSRALIANS know Simon Bouda – right? We know his name, we know his face, we know his voice and we certainly know the tragedies he covers as one of the National Nine Network’s most experienced hard-news journalists.
But what, really, do we know of Bouda as a person – as a son, husband, father, colleague, friend?
In Bouda’s public life he is the man behind the story: the on-screen professional speaking impassively from the scene of a stabbing, an abduction, an explosion, a disaster.
His early days in the print media led Bouda to choose crime as his specialisation, exposing him to some of Australia’s most detestable offenders and enabling him to forge relationships with police contacts that have grown stronger with every passing decade.
In more than 30 years of journalism Bouda has covered kidnappings, mine collapses, bushfires, earthquakes, assassinations, East Timor’s independence referendum, the Boxing Day tsunami and the Thredbo landslide (after which he was invited to become survivor Stuart Diver’s biographer). He has been based in London and Sydney and filed reports from wherever news has broken, almost always with virtually no time to prepare: Jordan, Israel, Greece, Fiji, New Zealand, Pakistan, Turkey, Iraq.
Along the way he has been beaten with an umbrella by Pixie Skase in Mallorca, Spain, and cursed by paedophile Phillip Harold Bell for tracking the millionaire to his hideaway in South Africa.
In Deadline he delves behind these events and dozens more, revealing the emotional and ethical dilemmas faced by a working journalist: the decisions made, the consequences considered, the possibilities weighed up and the personal plans abandoned.
From his expedition to trace his late father’s final movements in Papua New Guinea to his fundraising for the Homicide Victims’ Support Group, Bouda’s off-camera adventures are recorded alongside his official assignments with absolute sincerity, bravery, humility and candour.

The Ice Beneath Her

9/12/2016

 
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 Camilla Grebe: Allen & Unwin $39.99
 
STOCKHOLM'S crisp mid-winter perfection has been shattered, its pristine snowscape disfigured by a geyser of human blood. In an exclusive outer suburb of the city a woman has been murdered, her body crumpled in a hallway, the head propped upright and staring vacantly towards the millionaire homeowner’s front door.
The building’s only known occupant, Jesper Orre, is missing. The playboy CEO of Scandinavia’s fastest-growing clothing chain, Orre has vanished, presumed to have fled the scene of his crime.
Peter is one of the first police officers deployed to attend, a detective desensitised by constant exposure to the gruesome realities of homicide. His focus is all-consuming – a convenient distraction from the bitterness of a failed marriage and a lack of interest in his teenaged son.
In actual fact it’s Orre’s second disappearance in as many months, although only one person knows of his previous desertion. Wearing an impressive diamond ring on one finger, Emma has been waiting for Orre to share a glass or two of wine with her while toasting their yet-to-be-publicised engagement. He’s never missed so much as a phonecall, let alone his own celebratory dinner; his fiancée is distraught.
At the age of 59, behavioural scientist Hanne is also harbouring a personal secret: the humiliating signs of early-onset dementia. Recruited to assist investigators again after a 10-year hiatus, she uses her newly resurrected career as rebellion against a psychologically undermining husband.
A decade earlier, Hanne – at that stage drafted in as a police consultant for the first time – and Peter worked on another case together: a case with eerie similarities to the current one at Orre’s house. Then, professional collaboration morphed into a disastrous affair that sapped her self-confidence.
Narrated in rotation by Peter, Emma and Hanne, this thriller pivots on chilling parallel existences, unnerving delusions, festering resentment and lifelong regrets. 

Britt-Marie Was Here

2/12/2016

 
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Fredrik Backman: Sceptre $29.99
 
BRITT-MARIE is not the type of woman to put a coffee cup down without using a coaster, not does she eat pizza straight from its box.
Britt-Marie is proper, attentive, precise, correct – “normal”, in other words.
To less particular people, however, Britt-Marie could be described as obsessive-compulsive: a career homemaker who has used the same cleaning product for decades and who must disinfect a hotel-room mattress with bicarbonate of soda before being able to fall asleep.
Suddenly, at the age of 63, Britt-Marie finds herself looking for a job – not because she needs the income, mind you, but because she fears lying dead for weeks before being found because nobody is expecting her.
Britt-Marie has worked her entire adult life; she has helped her husband, Kent, with his business as an entrepreneur. Her role has been important: keeping their home “presentable”. Now, though, the marriage is over courtesy of a long-running affair that Britt-Marie discovered when Kent’s much younger mistress telephoned her after he suffered a heart attack.
At first her chances of finding employment seem bleak but then she is offered a poorly paying position as the caretaker of the recreation centre in Borg, a withering hamlet in which almost everything else has already closed down.
Borg’s singular passion is soccer; residents of all ages are fixated on the game. It’s the only thing standing between the township’s children and a future of delinquency and hopelessness.
Britt-Marie detests soccer, yet little by little she is drawn into the youngsters’ social circle and eventually finds herself nominated as their team’s official coach.
Will this be a bright new beginning for Britt-Marie – a chance to reinvent herself away from critical, emotionally controlling Kent?
Quirky and tender, entertaining and humorous, this novel delivers a thought-provoking yet light-hearted insight into an alternative way of viewing life.

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