Zesty new crime with bite
Black Teeth is Zane Lovitt’s second work of crime fiction, the first being The Midnight Promise for which he won the Ned Kelly award.
Lovitt definitely writes with a fresh perspective – no moustachetwirling detectives here, nor modern-day Robin Hoods looking to right wrongs.
Jason Ginaff is his anti-hero, the antithesis of Jack Reacher.
He is a digital nerd who earns a living by the computer analysis (frequently hacked) of candidates for jobs.
He makes no judgments of course, but merely passes on the data to the prospective employers.
Jason’s life is severely restricted, mainly to his room and fried food.
When he has to venture out, he does so under a series of assumed names.
The false names somehow give him some slight liberation.
Behind this circumscribed existence, he is driven by the desire to track down the man whom he has come to believe was his father.
This man, a retired police officer, is also being sought by a hopeless malcontent bent on revenge for what he believes to have been the murder of his mother.
Turns out the unhappy man’s father was incarcerated (wrongly, he thinks) for his mother’s death, and has since gone mad and died in prison.
This is merely the start of the intertwining complexities that describe the plot of Black Teeth.
It is an exuberant book, written with panache, but clearly the work of a young writer who knows the world as it is becoming, at least in Melbourne.
As Lovitt describes it, it’s a mucky place, where mistakes are made and confusion abounds.
Motives are muddled, people are tricky but the chicanery goes wrong, and it is surprising that there are any outcomes at all.
So if one prefers ‘‘proper heroes’’, it is a little hard to identify with the characters in Black Teeth.
Nevertheless, Lovitt somehow sucks one into the world he has created.
Its very confusion makes it seem all too plausible.
However, part of the suspension of disbelief relies on having at least a dim understanding of some of the language used.
At times, it is a little like trying to read Chaucer – one can almost understand it.
Here are a few examples: norps, skeksi, hugbox, derpy, grawlixed.
They are just about on the fringes of understanding, and if you are of such a bent, they might just give you what the author refers to as ‘‘a nerd-gasm’’.
But there is no excuse for the unforgiveable: ‘‘… Kiwi pucefarting his vowels.’’ How dare he. Zane Lovitt has clearly begun what will become a successful crime-writing career.
In Black Teeth – the form of a tattoo, by the way – the characters beguile, the plot thickens just as a crime plot should, the atmosphere of Melbourne in winter encloses the events, and one romps through to the end.