The Bread And Batter Of A Genre

Sydney Morning Herald

Saturday February 21, 2004

Reviewed by Gerry Turcotte, Gerry Turcotte is an author and teaches crime fiction at the University of Wollongong.

Earthly Delights

By Kerry Greenwood

Allen & Unwin, 277 pp, $19.95

Blindside

By J. R. Carroll

Allen & Unwin, 413 pp, $21.95

If there are as many styles of crime fiction as there are crimes, then Earthly Delights and Blindside constitute bookends of the genre. Written by two veteran crime writers, the novels create very different incarnations of Melbourne and surrounds.

Kerry Greenwood's novel appears to be the first in another character franchise to rival her Phryne Fisher series. We are introduced to the overweight baker Corinna Chapman , ex-accountant, divorcee and now successful small-business woman. All Corinna wants from life is to bake perfect breads, muffins and other earthly delights (the name of her bakery) and indulge her three cats. All that changes when she discovers a junkie overdosed outside her shop, and slogans such as ``The Wages of Sin is Death" are mailed to or spray-painted on her apartment building.

This novel isn't meant to quicken the pulse. It is character-driven, avoids hard-core realism and mixes popular culture references to Buffy, Interview with a Vampire and Charmed with a Murder She Wrote-style of humour. I suspect most readers will guess the various culprits in the parallel mysteries, but probably won't mind getting caught up, instead, in the quirkiness of the characters. These include Corinna's two anorexic shop assistants: Jason the recovering heroin addict and brilliant muffin maker, and Daniel the good-looking mystery lover who sweeps her off her feet declaring his love of large women. The references to women's romances are a nod to the reader that this is what we're really reading.

We are led into the depths of a Goth Club where all is revealed (so to speak), though in a far-fetched finale that sees our intrepid baker compromising herself in the most unlikely way. Somehow, despite Corinna's closing pledge never to be involved in such dastardly doings, we know murder and mayhem will seek her out again.

In contrast to the meditations of Earthly Delights, within one chapter in the hard-hitting Blindside we have witnessed a man beaten senseless, his fingers smashed one at a time. By chapter two we have moved forward 11 years, the requisite love interest has been introduced, and the first of many graphic sex scenes (a Carroll trademark) has played out. From there the story never slows. Carroll is a terrific storyteller, with an outstanding sense of pace and grit.

Here, Shaun Randall Patrick, a detective gone bad, spends more than 10 years in jail for his role in a home invasion. On his release, he retrieves the $2.8 million from that heist, thinking his luck has changed. It hasn't. Word is out that he knows where the money is, and some vicious characters are quickly in pursuit. Shaun, hardened by prison, is equally determined to survive.

Good crime fiction is less concerned with original scenarios than with tweaking the formula in surprising or clever ways. Carroll certainly does that. The only weak points are three monologues where the past sting is spelt out in excruciating detail. That the speakers wouldn't really incriminate themselves for quids, and that one of the monologues is retold twice, takes the shine off an otherwise slick story of corrupt cops and the low-lifes they feed on.

Both novels provide terrific characters and comfortably, though not monotonously, familiar plots proven recipes for good crime writing.