I remember some discussion when this book was first published about whether it is a novel, as the publisher claims, or a collection of short stories.

The setting is an underbelly of life in Melbourne. While the stories do appear to be in sequential order, the actual timing is not very clear. In addition there are characters and incidents that connect some of the stories. Sometimes John Dorn takes on some seriously unsavoury tasks, at other times he appears to be following a thread that he thinks will earn him some money. He is constantly in need of money. Many of the jobs he carries out do not yield any income at all. Over the period covered by the stories John Dorn's own life goes into a downward spiral. Mostly the stories are very dark, with an underlying black humour.

So in a sense there is a underlying narrative through which we see Dorn's character fleshed out, the overall story progresses, and various issues are resolved. So does that make it a novel?

This is the second time I have read this novel. See my earlier review here.
I suspect that I haven't warmed to the novel any more second time around than I did on first reading, although I recognise that it is cleverly constructed. Probably it just isn't my cup of tea. ( )

An entertaining read working within a fairly formulaic noir genre - the main character is a cynical small-time detective who gradually descends into a mess of drinking and bad choices over ten grim cases. It's good fun to read, but it felt like a bit of a retread of ground that's been well covered even in my fairly limited crime fiction reading. The interesting structure - each chapter is a distinct case linked up so that the book as a whole maintains a reasonably linear narrative - was a neat way to illustrate the unwinding of the main character, but it did mean that none of the cases had much heft. In some ways this is probably realistic for the kind of small time private eye work that the book is about, but it left me a bit unsatisfied.

The lack of any female characters of substance really jumped out at me too - I'm sure Lovitt's not alone in the genre, but it felt particularly lacking to me (possibly because I've spent the last few months churning through the Stella Prize long list). ( )

John Dorn is a small time private inquiry agent who doesn't make much of a living, but is very good at what he does. He's someone with a heart that gradually gets ground down by people and the work he takes on. The stories are set in Melbourne, Australia.
This is a series of ten interlocking stories where we watch Dorn's self-destruction because of the result of one of his investigations.
Zane Lovitt has a very good writing style. He gives the stories a bit of a twist and has a dry sense of humour. Definitely noir. ( )

Short stories all set in Melbourne with the same private enquiry agent. Reminded me of Shane Maloney. Entertaining. Read on e-book ( )

On page 2 of this book I kind of got the feeling that we'd be destined to get on very well....

"He's got more prior convictions than brain cells which means he won't get bail, so he's wallowing in the Metropolitan Remand Centre at Ravenhall, trying to find a lawyer who'll argue that society is to blame."

The sort of dry sense of humour that works for this reader at least.

Subtitled a detective's story in ten cases, this is the tale of the life and times of John Dorn. Private Inquiry Agent because that's what his father called himself, he's not quite the same as his father. Yet. He doesn't drink, lots. Yet. (His father drank himself to death). He doesn't have a wife to leave him (like his mother left his father), but he does have an ex-fiancee that he longs for. Where he does share his father's characteristics 100%, is that his business is heading in roughly the same direction... out the back door in a hurry.

Part of the reason for the lack of business success is undoubtedly that John Dorn's a decent bloke, who takes cases that nobody else would touch, that make very little money in the process, even though his friend, and very successful Defence Barrister throws him some help whenever he can.

Each of these 10 cases, 10 individual stories, follow a similar trail - backwards and forwards from the end to the past, from the current day to what got him here. Each of them is beautifully written, wonderfully evocative, dry and sad and funny all at the same time.

The jaded PI can be horribly clichéd, but in the hands of this author, there's something glorious about him. Possibly it's because Dorn himself, in a lovely twist, is acutely aware that he's a bit of a cliché. Perhaps it's because his jaded is what he's supposed to be (suffering for your art and all that). Of course he's also profoundly flawed, not in a dodgy way, but strangely as a form of self-preservation.

Whatever twists and turns, and leaps and bounds John Dorn takes, however, the book is deliciously readable and extremely well done.

http://www.austcrimefiction.org/review/midnight-promise-zane-lovitt ( )