The fourth book in Robert Gott’s ‘Murders’ series frees its cast from the constraints of the newly formed Homicide Squad and plunges them straight into a baffling case that threatens many of their number.

Readers who are new to this series might be fine starting out with The Orchard Murders. This series is plot- and character-driven crime fiction, but there’s enough here to give you some background, and some grasp of events from earlier novels. Having said that, readers new to the series might find all of these novels very worthwhile reading.

There’s a quick recap of the earlier books as the lead-in, explaining how the first in the series, The Holiday Murders, introduced the establishment of the Victorian Police Homicide Squad in 1943. The squad is led by DI Titus Lambert, who remains in that position for the entire series, supported early on by a young, relatively inexperienced detective, Joe Sable, and a policewoman, Constable Helen Lord – a very rare appointment in those days. The plot in the first novel revolved around murders linked to an organisation known as ‘Australia First’ –- a pro-Hitler, pro-Japan, anti-Semitic bunch of very nasty individuals led by the fanatical Ptolemy Jones, with one particular follower, George Starling, proving to be extremely dangerous, and tenacious.

Number two in the series, The Port Fairy Murders, sees Sable returning to work while still recovering from the severe injuries inflicted on him in the first book, and deep in an investigation that continues to have its roots in the violent world of Starling, Jones and their appalling followers. The murders they are investigating occur in Port Fairy, but have a much wider reach.

Which leads straight to the third book, The Autumn Murders, in which George Starling’s attempts to kill Joe Sable are complicated by the mess that the Homicide Squad is becoming, with turmoil and corruption rife within it. Helen Lord has already left the police force at this stage, and others in the ensemble cast start to establish their roles in the future lives of both Sable and Lord.

Before we get into the fourth novel, it’s worth noting that this is very much a series of its time (1940s Melbourne). The ensemble cast is wide and may appear slightly confusing to anybody coming straight to The Orchard Murders. Initially much of the action revolved around DI Titus Lambert and his wife, confidante and best friend, Maude. In subsequent novels Joe Sable and Helen Lord become increasingly central, and are joined by Maude’s brother Tom (also a colleague of Sable’s in Military Intelligence). Meanwhile Helen Lord and her mother Ros live in a large house in Kew, owned by Peter Lillie, Ros’s brother, which, after his death, turns into a sort of boarding house/safe house for the group when Sable’s flat is burned to the ground, and for an old friend, Guy Kirkham, who returns from the war wounded and very unwell.

Add Lord’s closest friend Dr Clara Dawson, and what you end up with is a sort of adult gang of friends, family and colleagues, most of whom find themselves working for, or helping out, when Helen Lord eventually sets up her own private investigation agency. The agency’s first case – the one at the core of The Orchard Murders – is assigned to them by DI Lambert, who is sure there is more to the matter than the suspect in hand. The scene is summed up by Lambert, who explains:

‘The young man is Emilio Barbero. He’s 17 years old. Italian. The woman is Deborah Fisher, 25 years old, the wife of the gelignite victim. He’s Peter Fisher, 35 years old. He owns this place. The baby is their son, Sean, two months old. The survivor is an orchard grower named Zachary Wilson. His orchard is across the paddock. We need him to pull through, because at the moment it’s like someone threw a jigsaw puzzle into the teeth of a gale. The pieces are all over the place, and the key pieces could be anywhere.’

This all sounds complicated, but Gott has a way of elegantly drawing out a plot by involving the reader in the characters’ actions, thoughts and observations. The style of these novels is slightly laid back, almost mannered, but that doesn’t detract from the extreme violence and the sheer nastiness of many of his ‘villains’.

However, The Orchard Murders does take a step away from political fanaticism, concentrating instead on the same sort of manipulation and opportunism in a religious cult. Gott also doesn’t ever shy away from a touch of humour where appropriate. If you’re already wondering why a police inspector would be contacting a private investigation agency about an ongoing murder investigation, Dr Clara’s observations about the fledgling agency’s personnel won’t help:

‘When you line them up like that, Helen, it’s like roll call at a casualty station. They’re each recovering from injuries, physical and mental. Guy Kirkham has narcolepsy, for fuck’s sake. Joe has an irregular heartbeat, and he’s carrying the scars from torture. And Tom, my god, I’m surprised he’s not a complete cot case after what happened to him. Maybe you should change the name to Helen Lord and Outpatients.’

Just to complicate matters there’s also the question of some very odd behaviour by a male patient of Clara’s, who she suspects is behind the murder of an extremely unpleasant doctor colleague. Which is even more muddied when the doctor’s wife reaches out to Clara in a very weird manner. Then there’s Tom’s assignment from Military Intelligence to befriend a man suspected of pro-Japanese sympathies, which turns out a lot less satisfactorily than Tom had hoped. Sitting in the middle of all of this swirling activity is, as always, Maude, quiet confidante of her husband and brother. In this role she is joined by Ros Lord, friend to the downtrodden, and considerably braver and more resourceful than you’d think. As an aside, Gott writes really good, strong female characters. It’s Meredith Wilson, wife of chief suspect Zachary, who sums up a lot about this novel:

Fisher had a young wife. Meredith had spoken to her once or twice, but what did she have in common with a 25-year-old? Mrs Fisher had had a baby, and maybe they could have found common ground there. But there was that nonsense that her husband Peter preached, and which her own husband had been seduced by. They’d had rows about that, ugly rows. Meredith thought she’d married an intelligent man, not a gullible one. He’d discovered that he’d been a fool, but Meredith had seen the weakness in him, and it diminished him so that now, as he sat alone on remand, she felt neither grief nor dread.

Dotted throughout this series are little details of life in wartime: the lack of transport options, or easy communication channels; the number of damaged and scarred people in the community, and the slight loosening of some social norms when the world has gone slightly mad in a much bigger way.

At their absolute core, however, all the novels in this series seem to be about obsession, and whether or not insanity is the result of that or a prerequisite. The casualty count – dead, wounded and profoundly damaged – is high, and it seems no matter how many of the dangerously obsessed and manipulative fall, there’s always somebody ready to step into the empty place. In the case of The Orchard Murders the person who steps up is not utterly unexpected, and even more chilling because of that, and will leave the reader wondering what, where or how the next obsession in the series will play out.

Robert Gott The Orchard Murders Scribe Publications 2021 304pp $29.99

Karen Chisholm blogs from austcrimefiction.org, where she posts book reviews as well as author biographies.

You can buy The Orchard Murders from Abbey’s at a 10% discount by quoting the promotion code NEWTOWNREVIEW here or you can buy it from Booktopia here.

To see if it is available from Newtown Library, click here.

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Tags: Australian authors, Australian crime fiction, crime fiction, historical crime fiction, historical fiction, Robert | Gott, The Holiday Murders, Victorian Homicide Squad, World War II


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