Greg Fleming
THE MAN WHO CAME UPTOWN
by George Pelecanos
(Orion, $38)
This is the great Washington D.C. author’s first novel since 2013’s The Double and while he has been phenomenally successful in televisionland (The Wire, Treme and most recently The Deuce),
it’s great to see him back on the page. It’s not so much a return to form — his work since the mid-00s has been wonderfully lean and heartfelt — but a perfect summation of George Pelecanos’ talents. Like 2009’s The Way Home,
this is a story of uncertain redemption that has a strong personal connection to the author’s own (young) life. Redemption here lies in the power of books dispensed by a prison librarian but the action soon moves to the mean (and increasingly gentrifying) streets of D.C. Pelecanos edges away from easy thriller conventions and moves closer to Steinbeck territory (who’s quoted here). The result is a moving look at the small triumphs and moral struggles of a changing America and one of the best books of the year.
SOME DIE NAMELESS
by Wallace Stroby
(Hachette, $30)
Wallace Stroby is one of those writers mentioned in Pelecanos’s novel; this fast-paced stand-alone will hopefully push him to a wider audience (do search out his excellent Crissa Stone series). There’s much to celebrate here: great characters — a ragged ex-mercenary whose retirement is soon curtailed when an old partner visits; a tough, enterprising Philadelphia journalist who starts digging deep into a row house homicide — a compelling story with contemporary political overtones and action sequences that feel authentic. It adds up to an old school thriller with both smarts and heart.
HEAVEN SENT
by Alan Carter
(Fremantle Press, $30)
Alan Carter’s last novel, Marlborough Man, was a stand-alone based in the Marlborough Sounds, but here he returns to his Fremantlebased Cato-Kwang series. Carter, who made documentaries for much of his life, only started writing after his wife volunteered to “bring home the bacon”. The new career blossomed and has won him numerous awards including this year’s Ngaio Marsh Best Crime Novel for Marlborough Man. Cato’s fourth outing finds him with a new wife and daughter — but soon a series of murders of Fremantle’s homeless begin a case that hits close to home. Carter’s wry style will appeal to fans of Mark Billingham and Ian Rankin.
SUNDAY GIRL
by Pip Drysdale
(Simon & Schuster, $30)
The press release evoked immediate suspicion: “The Girl on the Train meets Before I Go to Sleep with a dash of Bridget Jones”. New talents signed on the strength of a “like this” laundry list rarely live up to the hype. Neither, in the end, does this but Perth-based Pip Drysdale’s a talent worth watching and Sunday Girl, a hip, London-based novel of relationship revenge with a bit of help from Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, will find plenty of admirers. These sorts of novels depend on the author creating reader empathy with the lead character, something I didn’t manage. Taylor Bishop’s been trapped in an abusive relationship with forty-something bad boy Angus. When he leaves, instead of celebrating, she comes “face to face with the other parts of my psyche . . . The fragile petty, venomous parts.”