Lindy Cameron

Who Sleuthed It? is an engaging anthology of nineteen short stories where pampered pets and animated animals help each other, or their human sidekicks, solve crimes.

There are fact-finding felines and clever canines including British Shorthairs, Sherlock and Watson, in Fin J Ross’s ‘A Rascal in Academia’, and a ‘smiley, loyal, obedient Golden Retriever’ in ‘When the Chips Are Down’ by Louisa Bennett (aka LA Larkin). Scotland Yard’s finest, Reggie Starling, flies into action when the Crown Jewels are stolen in a tale by Kat Klay; CJ McGumbleberry (a non de plume) writes of a Great Horned Owl who is bamboozled by a clever chipmunk; and a motivated magpie helps a policewoman to solve both a murder and a massacre in ‘The Tidings’ by Tor Roxborough.

I’m familiar with the work of several of the contributing authors, including Kerry Greenwood who offers a tale of theft featuring the indomitable Phryne Fisher and her pets, Ember and Molly, in ‘La Gazza Ladra’; Meg Keneally’s ‘The Flotilla’ is set at the turn of the 20th century in and around the quarantine station on Sydney Harbour, near a colony of Little Penguins; and a retired police dog is a protective watchman in ‘The Tiger Mothers of Bethlehem Maternity’ by Vikki Petraitis.

Most of the authors contributing to the anthology are Australian, while a few are from the UK or USA. The settings vary in period and place, including Victorian London and modern day Melbourne. Humour is common to most of the stories, while a few have a supernatural element.

Whimsical, inventive and canny, Who Sleuthed It? offers an eclectic collection of mystery tales that are sure to delight animal lovers.… (mais)

Political thrillers which loosely base their settings and characters on real world players run the risk of having the work become outdated quickly but Redback reads like it could just as easily have been ripped from today’s news headlines (and conspiracy websites) as those of four years ago. It is a romp of a tale that I can’t seem to summarise intelligently. It involves a team of ex-soldiers and other specialists who retrieve hostages, kidnap victims and hapless travellers from the trouble spots they find themselves in. The team of Australians (and the odd Canadian), known as Redback, have to perform several rescues throughout the novel while at the same time a world-wide terrorism plot is being played out. Thanks to the work of an American journalist researching the computer games that governments develop as recruiting tools it becomes obvious to Redback and others that the terrorist activity is being orchestrated, or at least plotted, via versions of a game which are far more sinister than the original programmers envisioned.

Earlier this year, after being put to sleep by half of a fairly un-thrilling thriller, I thought at length about what I like in a thriller and Redback ticks virtually all of the boxes I came up with at the time. The plot is terrifically fast, being played out in short chapters set in various exotic locations. We move from a Pacific Island where a group of hostages has to be rescued by Redback to France and Texas and Pakistan and a half-dozen more places besides at quite a breakneck speed but I didn’t once feel as though it was all going too fast and Cameron is a master at providing just the right amount of exposition and background to hold the many threads together. There’s also a good mixture of the big events themselves, exploding trains and the like, and the impact of those events on the families of those killed and the government players who feel impotent at not being in control. In this thriller at least there are human consequences of killing, even if it’s one of the good guys doing the killing.

The Redback team is headed by the woman who came closest to being accepted to the Australian Army’s SAS unit, Bryn Gideon. She is highly physically and intellectually capable for the job at hand but also has a sense of humour which means, for me at least, that she is not as annoying as so many thriller heroes can be. In fact the whole Redback team is full of capable, funny people and the banter between them all is a highlight of the novel and picks up beautifully on some truly Australian characteristics. Other characters of interest are Jana Rossi, one of the original hostages rescued at the beginning of the book who goes on to maintain her relationship with the team and the American journalist Scott Dreher who becomes involved due to his investigations into computer games.

Aside from the overt humour in the book there is additional fun for readers in pondering which real-world political players some of the characters are based on. You don’t have to be a super politics junky to spot some traits of a recent US President for example and Aussies will have fun too picking out which players might be modelled on which members of the former Howard government. There are even some nods to issues which continue to this day, such as Australia’s absurd obsession with the notion that smart, rich terrorists would be entering the country via leaky boats when it’s far easier for them to fly in virtually unchallenged.

It’s not until you read a thriller that isn’t populated by American ex-soldiers and/or English spies saving the world that you realise how much of this genre is populated by those voices. It’s a nice change to see this kind of story played out by people with a different world-view. The fact that it is superbly plotted, has tremendously funny dialogue and engaging characters is icing on the cake. All I need now is the sequel.… (mais)

Getting to generate the ebooks for Clan Destine Press has its advantages. Not the least of which is the "checking" phase which basically is code for a good read. And, despite this being my second reading of THE FIRST CUT, it was a very good read.

For the past 18 years the Australian Sisters in Crime have been awarding a range of prizes for short stories (the categories have shifted around over the years), and THE FIRST CUT was the first time that many of the prize winners were compiled into a single volume and published. (The current Clan Destine version is new edition).

It's a worthwhile collection to read for the sake of the stories included, as well as to discover some "name" authors who have since gone on to get books published, or have felt that they got a real kickstart from the Scarlet Stiletto Awards. You'll find stories here from some authors you may recognise (Tara Moss and Cate Kennedy for example), and some authors who have gone on to have books published (Liz Filleul and Josephine Pennicott come to mind immediately). This is a great way to find upcoming authors who are writing at the same standard!

One of the interesting things about THE FIRST CUT is the diversity of subject matters, and the sorts of categories that the stories fall into. Submission rules call for an active woman protagonist, a crime/mystery theme and that the story must be an original, unpublished work - from there there are a range of categories, including Verse, Malice Domestic, Possible Film Treatments and so on.

Every year there are submissions from a range of authors, previous winners, previous participants and brand new writers who give the competition a go. The judging is blind (I was lucky enough to be involved in this year's judging weekend), we have no idea who has written what, and can't find out until all stories have been read, and all deliberations completed and winners finalised.

THE FIRST CUT takes the reader through a wide gambit of styles, subject matters and contexts. There's humorous, twisting, scarey, odd and quite surprising. Given that these are all short stories, the variety is outstanding. As is the writing. Although sometimes it could make you wonder about who you're sharing dinner and a drink with before a Sisters in Crime Monthly event!

THE FIRST CUT is available in paperback, ebook and Amazon format via Clan Destine Press - http://www.clandestinepress.com.au… (mais)

I originally read and reviewed REDBACK when it was released in 2007 by MIRA Press, so when Clan Destine (run by Lindy / I'm her web wrangler by way of declaration) republished it, I was really really interested to see if it would hold up well, particularly given that it has a number of quite topical references (okay well some digs as well) for the time.

At the time I mentioned that REDBACK is a quite a step away from Cameron's Kit O'Malley series - it's very much a big, pacey thriller, peopled with strong characters (male and female), a complicated yet disconcertingly believable multi-threaded plot and a hefty dose of subtle humour.

An elderly British Lord is wined, dined and slaughtered. An American Journalist is following leads for a story on computer war games. The son of a wealthy Saudi family doesn't follow the path his father and uncle have set out for him. A hostage situation in the Pacific; a man dies in Japan; plans for mass destruction are triggered in Texas; a team watches and waits in Pakistan; a politician is shot dead in Sydney; and a young man is seduced in Paris. All of these threads slowly build their own individual tension and the connections start to be revealed.

Redback is a covert, very low profile hostage retrieval team. There is a reason that they were sent to that small Pacific Island and that reason slowly reveals itself as the team become involved in something much bigger than just hostage retrieval. Connections from that island, around the world, into terrorism, organised crime, money and influence reveal themselves as REDBACK builds momentum towards, amongst other things, the SETA conference to be held in Sydney - with major international political figures attending.

REDBACK's many threads are told in a series of, mostly short, chapters which address each plot element individually until the book starts to move towards the final conclusion and a web is revealed. Whilst this does have a feeling of chopping and changing the story elements, it works because each chapter quickly advances the story and then you dart somewhere else for a look at what is going on in that corner. The choppiness gives the whole thing a sense of urgency, compelling the reader to continue on - increasing the sense of foreboding or excitement at what is to come. This is enhanced by the strength of the main character's of each thread. You don't forget who Bryn or Jana are. You know about Scott and how the story of war games is starting to get bigger than he ever expected. You know the team who are quietly (but impatiently) watching events in Pakistan, feeling frustrated by not being allowed to act. You know that Jesse-Jay in Texas is easily manipulated and you know what he's about to do.

Now as I said at the start I was interested to see if the book would hold up 3 years on from its original timeframe. Undoubtedly there's some humour in being able to match the Political movers in REDBACK against some well-known players at the time the book was originally written. But I don't think you lose a lot of the suspense, or the intrinsic problem with .. well let's face it a politician is a politician is a politician and the little quirks may come and go with individuals, but the basic behaviour is all too sadly always the same. Much of the intrigue, the action within the book, the events that are occurring throughout the plot are unfortunately dateless and still quite chillingly believable.

In 2007 REDBACK was one of my favourite books of the year, and in 2010 it was still a rippingly good read. Fast paced, fantastic characters and great intrigue this is just flat out a good thriller.

I said at the time of the first release that I hoped REDBACK was finishing where another book could very well start off - not being sure if that was the plan at all. But Lindy - I know there's another book in your head and all I can say is Please Please Please.....… (mais)