What Book to Read?

It’s always a pleasure to read a good new crime novel. That it is an Australian crime novel is a bonus for me, especially when it explores the social context, as this one does.  This isn’t to say that crime stories set elsewhere are not equally enjoyable – it’s just nice to see Australian material so well handled.  The Old School (2010) is P.M. Newton’s first book, and I certainly hope she keeps writing.

It is 1992. Nhu Kelly – inevitably known as Ned – is a detective constable in the NSW Police, based at Bankstown, an outer Sydney suburb. Her working life usually consists of burglary, assault or rape, but this time it’s murder. Two bodies have been found encased in concrete on a demolition site in Bankstown. Both are female. One is soon found to be a missing Aboriginal activist who disappeared without trace sixteen years ago. The other is Asian, but her identity is a mystery. What could have brought them together in death? Soon a number of possible theories emerge – and one of them is uncomfortably close to home for Nhu.

The process of investigation is compelling in itself. But two other aspects of the book raise it above the level of the average police procedural. One is the writing about Nhu herself, her relations with other police, her sister and her sense of her position in the world. As the investigation starts to involve her dead parents, all of these come under threat. Who can she trust? ‘Befriend and betray’ is the mantra of the undercover police; how far does it apply elsewhere in the Force, and in personal relationships? Newton writes well about human relationships under strain. Is Nhu being lied to? ‘Suspicion grew, like an insect bight: at first a feathery brush against the skin, then a growing burning, consuming need to scratch.’  She fights with her sister over their memories of their parents. Her sister asks her why she wants a job ‘where you spend your life meeting people for the first time on the worst day of their lives.’ Nhu retaliates. They ‘Took deep breaths, trying to decide just how hurtful they’d got, whether they’d gone over the abyss this time or still just teetered on the brink.’

The second aspect is the context in which Newton places the story. This isn’t just backdrop; it’s crucial to how the narrative unfolds.  In 1992, the NSW Police Force was being scrutinised by the Independent Commission Against Corruption for its dealings with criminals – the bribes, the backhanders, the drug deals. This public investigation forms a backdrop to the book. ‘This was a world Ned could barely believe existed.’ But she senses that some of ‘the badness’ may still be there. Certainly the police culture remains ‘old school’ in many ways. Being female and part Vietnamese, she is exposed to it herself.  Sergeant ‘Ugly’ Urganchich is an ‘equal opportunity- racist’; he abuses the Aboriginal people he comes into contact with, and calls Ned a ‘slopehead’ – though not in front of witnesses. Sexism is ingrained: ‘nothing short of arson would eliminate the essential scent of maleness that permeated every detectives’ office Ned had ever set foot in.’ But is the new breed of detectives any better?

Aboriginal-white relations are also a central to the plot, and again, the context is remarkably relevant. The Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody reported in 1991, and sharply criticised police treatment of Aboriginal people.  How do the police respond? In 1992, the High Court ruled on the Mabo case, declaring that Aboriginal land rights are not extinguished by white settlement; in the story, no one yet knows what practical effect this will have. There are weak jokes, and the local ‘warb’ is nicknamed Mabo. Putting Prime Minister Keating’s Redfern speech into the book – his acknowledgement that ‘the problem starts with us non-Aboriginal Australians’ – might seem a bit cheeky, but I think it is completely appropriate to the themes being explored.

And if the ICAC investigation and Mabo weren’t enough, there is also an examination of the effects that the war in Vietnam had on some of the participants. This is terrific social history.

If I have any reservation at all, it is about the high level of coincidence that links a serving detective to a murder that she is now investigating. It’s just a bit too convenient. But I can live with it. The air of gritty reality about the book outweighs such carping.

One of the amazing things about the book is that much of this air of gritty reality is actually reality. J.M. Newton served for thirteen years in the NSW Police, first as an officer, then as a detective. You can’t do much better than that.

I note that between 1995 and 1997, there was a further Royal Commission to determine the existence and extent of corruption within the New South Wales Police; specifically, it sought to determine whether corruption and misconduct were ‘systemic and entrenched’. Sounds like a good subject for another Ned Kelly story.

There’s not much about P.M. Newton on the internet, but she blogs here.