NRB Editors nominate their favourite books of 2015
Over 2015 Jean’s penchant for dark and complex crime has once again been to the fore, while Linda has found a lot to like among the year’s debut fiction from Australian authors. As usual, the editors have failed to see eye to eye on anything …
Jean’s picks:
Blockbuster! Fergus Hume and The Mystery of a Hansom Cab, Lucy Sussex
The Mystery of a Hansom Cab was published in 1886 (predating the first Sherlock Holmes story by a year) and has never been out of print. Hume himself died in poverty although the book sold millions.
Blockbuster explores the mystery of Fergus Hume and uncovers fascinating details of his life – for example, that he was born at a county pauper and lunatic asylum. Well-researched and scholarly, this is also a charmingly witty book by an author who is a literary detective herself (Sussex ‘discovered’ the first Australian mystery writer, Mary Fortune). You don’t have to have read Hansom Cab to enjoy Blockbuster – though you may find yourself driven to buy it afterwards.
(You can buy Blockbuster from Abbey’s here, or from Booktopia here.)
The Last Policeman Trilogy, Ben H Winters
I read the first two of these novels (The Last Policeman and Countdown City) last year and the final book (World of Trouble) in 2015.
The series follows the activities of Henry (Hank) Palace, an American policeman living in the last six months or so of the Earth’s existence, before the asteroid known as Maia collides with the planet. Hank is a surprising hero – neither exceptional or gung-ho, his heroism lies in his determination to keep going, to do his job as well as he can, whether the world is ending or not.
The novels are a successful combination of police-procedural and apocalyptic fiction, with Hank continuing to investigate crime while civilisation crumbles around him.
The trilogy is notable for its posing of eternal questions, like what it means to be human and whether morality is circumstantial or absolute. It’s an example of the best SFF – indeed the best fiction – available now. (You can read my review here.)
(You can buy these books from Abbey’s by clicking their titles above, or from Booktopia here.)
The Defenceless, Kati Hiekkapelto
I’m a sucker for Nordic crime and I’ve read lots again this year, many of which have been great reads so it’s hard to pick the stand-outs. But Finnish Kati Hiekkapelto is definitely one of the more interesting new Scandinavian writers. Her first crime novel, The Hummingbird, was published in English in 2014 and introduced police rookie Anna Feketa, a refugee from Serbia. In The Defenceless Anna’s more experienced and her relationship with her older colleague, the loner Esko, develops further into friendship.
As with The Hummingbird, the plotting is intricate and compelling, involving refugees, a drug gang trying to move into Finland and a possible murder. It’s beautifully written; the landscape fascinates; the characters are well-drawn and their development is something to watch through what I hope will be a long series.
(You can buy The Defenceless from Abbey’s here, or from Booktopia here.)
The Silent Dead, Claire McGowan
This is the third book (after The Lost and The Dead Ground) in a series featuring Paula Maguire, a forensic psychologist reluctantly back home in Northern Ireland and working for a missing persons unit.
Five years after a bomb attack the suspects, found not guilty at the time, disappear – then the bodies begin to turn up.
It’s hard for the police to put aside the feeling that the victims aren’t worth much time or effort, and this moral dilemma infuses the story – what is the difference between justice and revenge? As well, the memory of the Troubles hovers over these books like a dark cloud that just will not go away, adding historical complexity and the dramatic tension of sectarian feuds and old grievances still simmering. It’s this sense of an insoluble problem at the heart of things, as well as the clean, engaging writing, that provide depth and texture, lifting these books well above most police procedurals.
(You can buy The Silent Dead from Abbey’s here, or from Booktopia here.)
On Beulah Height, Reginald Hill
I’d read most of the Dalziel and Pascoe series before, but I had a bit of a binge this year with a couple I hadn’t read leading me back to re-read some favourites.
On Beulah Height is the 17th in the 24-book series (some of which are short-story collections) that began with A Clubbable Woman in 1970, and while I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s the best – they are all good – it’s the work of a writer at his peak.
Fifteen years ago three young girls vanished after their remote Yorkshire town was flooded to create a reservoir. Now Dalziel’s never-solved case rises to the surface again with another child missing and the return of local-girl-made-good, opera singer Elizabeth Wulfstan, to present her idiomatic translation of Mahler’s Songs on the Death of Children.
Police-procedural, history and a ghost story, combined with Pascoe coping with a major family problem, this multi-layered novel shows Hill’s elegant writing to perfection. Fat Andy Dalziel (pronounced ‘Dee-el’) and Peter Pascoe are familiar characters from the TV series, but if you haven’t read the books, you’ve got 24 treats in store.
(You can buy On Beulah Height from Abbey’s here, or from Booktopia here.)
Linda’s picks:
Angel Puss, Colleen McCullough
The year began on a sad note with the passing of the mighty Colleen, a true national treasure. (You can read my account of working with her here.) While she will be best remembered for The Thorn Birds, to me her voice rings most clearly in her 2004 novel Angel Puss, set in 1960 in a boarding house in Sydney’s Kings Cross run by the eccentric clairvoyant Mrs Delvecchio Schwartz. Its protagonist, Harriet, is a young radiographer at major hospital and given to lines like ‘My life is getting a weeny bit complicated, between nymphomania and soothsaying’ and railing against Old Maid Syndrome, which she sees in any number of her female colleagues over the age of 30. Bawdy, funny and a love letter to the Cross of another era, it is a novel full of Colleen’s zest for life.
(You can buy Angel Puss from Booktopia here.)
The Anchoress, Robyn Cadwallader
This novel haunted me for quite some time. The idea that a woman would voluntarily have herself confined to a tiny cell, its door nailed shut, to pursue a life of prayer and contemplation, is hard to fathom, but in this debut Robyn Cadwallader brings her 13th-century English anchoress (as such women were called) to life. This is an assured conjuring of a time and a place remote from our own, and in my review I called it ‘a novel of visions, demons, and ghostly presences, balanced against the world of the flesh and its temptations’.
(You can buy The Anchoress from Abbey’s here or from Booktopia here.)
Heat and Light, Ellen van Neerven
This is an exciting debut spanning Indigenous experience, family secrets, questions of identity and longing, through stories that range over the past, the present and the future. From the history of a family outcast (the sensual, vulnerable, dangerous Pearl) to a dystopian future Australia where developers scheme to cover up environmental vandalism, Ellen van Neerven’s stories cover a tremendous range, yet pulse with humanity. In my review I called her ‘a writer of imagination and intelligence, not afraid to mix fantastic visions with the heat of desire or the need to belong’.
(You can buy Heat and Light from Abbey’s here or from Booktopia here.)
The Strays, Emily Bitto
In her review of The Strays Donna Lu wrote: ‘a deftly plotted, carefully crafted narrative about art, trauma and female friendship, wouldn’t be badly placed to take home the top gong’. And lo, so it did.
Oh the seductive bohemian life, where art is all that matters and passions are to be followed … It’s impossible to read Emily Bitto’s Stella Prize-winning debut and not think about John and Sunday Reed et al and the goings-on at Heide. Bitto has chosen to view the artistic menage from a child’s point of view, powerfully counterpointing freedom and neglect, art and lies.
(You can buy The Strays from Abbey’s here or from Booktopia here.)
Copyfight, Phillipa McMcGuinness (ed)
Paying the writers – and musicians and artists and filmmakers, all of those creative spirits now known as ‘content creators’ – has become an increasingly vexed question in the world of digital downloads and easy piracy. But what are the rules about copyright? For users – readers, viewers, listeners – too often they can feel restrictive, blocking access to content rather than enabling it. But for the artists, copyright is all they have to sell, and piracy and streaming services have devastated their incomes. Editor Phillipa McGuinness likens the effect of the digital revolution on creativity to the impact of the Industrial Revolution on capitalism – but we don’t yet know what the ultimate future of copyright will look like.
This collection of essays from writers, musicians, artists and others who deal with copyright is an important contribution to the debate. If you believe that with the death of CD sales musicians can still make a living from touring, Justin Heazlewood’s ‘Bouncing Reality Check’ will set you straight on the economics of the music industry. If you’ve ever been tempted to pirate a TV series or use a filesharing service for free music or use someone else’s work in your own without getting clearance, read this first.
(You can buy Copyfight from Abbey’s here.)
