What Book to Read?

It’s always a pleasure to discover an Australian crime writer I haven’t read before, even though Kel Robertson is not exactly new on the scene, Dead Set having been published in 2006. A second in the series, Smoke and Mirrors, followed in 2009; it shared that year’s Ned Kelly Awards Best Fiction prize with Deep Water by Peter Corris.

Robertson has clearly looked for a vacant niche in the ‘outsider’ detective category, and has come up with Inspector Brad Chen, an ex-rugby player of Chinese extraction working for the Australian Federal Police. An ‘Asian bastard’ working for ‘the plastics’, as one NSW detective calls the AFP; how much further behind the eight ball could Robertson put him? Well, in this story, he’s given him the further challenge of a broken leg from a hit and run accident.

Chen is called back from sick leave to work on the murder in Canberra of Tracey Dale, the Minister for Immigration in the Labor government. She has been fighting to save her electorally unpopular Compassionate Australia Program, which involves an increase in the number of refugees accepted by Australia. Could the murder be somehow linked to the politics surrounding the program? Does it have racial overtones? Or is it linked to her personal life? Chen is supposed to be taking a back seat in the investigation, but of course he is soon in the thick of things.

The most appealing thing about the book is its irreverent tone. Here’s how it begins: ‘Even with a hangover, some of the classic side effects of narcotics abuse and a left leg encased in plaster, I was a whole lot better off than Tracey Dale.’ He looks round the Minister’s apartment: ‘Nothing on the walls but middle period Dulux’. And when a witness gives him an odd look, he wonders if it is his cast, his Aussie accent, or simply that most Australians think of their detectives as ‘middle-aged Anglo males in dark, badly tailored suits.’ I thought immediately of Shane Maloney’s Murray Whelan stories, and sure enough, Maloney has endorsed the book by saying ‘Kel Robertson is a real threat’.

Naturally the story is imaginary; it is not based even loosely on fact. The Australian Labor Party was not in government when the book was written. It has never had a Compassionate Australia refugee program. There is no rank of Inspector in the AFP. But despite this, Robertson has managed to give a sense of reality to both the policing and the broader speculations about politics and racism that underlie the story. Australian political history is one of his interests, and I like his occasional political anecdotes. Did you know that the AFP was founded by Prime Minister Billy Hughes in 1917 because someone threw an egg at him? ‘A very dangerous projectile, the egg’, says Brad.

The weakness of the story for me is in the ending, which is a pity because I set great store – possibly excessive store – on tight endings. Robertson keeps his options open as to who has committed the crime – and various other ones discovered along the way – for most of the book. However the final denouement seems clunky to me, contrived more for the sake of action than explanation. But perhaps I’m missing something. And it doesn’t mean the rest of the book isn’t enjoyable.

You can find out more about Robertson here. I see from his website (‘Come to think of it,’ he says, ‘it seems a bit presumptuous having a web site’) he likes the same crime writers I do  – Peter Temple, Robert Harris, Martin Cruz Smith and Michael Robotham. And the greatest spy writer of them all – John le Carré – is a favourite. Robertson’s got to have a lot going for him.