Dorothy Johnston

The third in a series known as "Sea-Change Mysteries", GERARD HARDY'S MISFORTUNE takes place in Victorian coastal town of Queenscliff, with the pairing of local cops, Chris Blackie and Anthea Merritt back for another outing. In this case, the historic Royal Hotel, site of the local mental asylum and morgue in the early days of white settlement, becomes the scene of a very bizarre murder, when the body of academic Gerard Hardy is discovered in the cellar of the partially renovated hotel.

If you're new to this series, Chris Blackie is the head cop, son of a fisherman father who drowned at sea, local boy, living in the house he grew up in, a seemingly repressed character full of personal angst and carefully constructed complications. His sidekick, city girl Anthea Merritt, seemed like more of a driven cop, learning the ropes still in many ways, she's more of a go-getter in the two earlier novels in this series.

As has been the way with this series, the central hook of the plot tends towards the quirky side - and this time around the victim is obsessed with the story of the town's famous literary resident, Henry Handel Richardson, and with the spiritualism that he seems to be using to get in touch with his subject. The tarot reading spiritualist in town has a shady background of her own, and there's something very odd about the people who run the hotel, to say nothing of why guests are staying in a partially renovated old building, but there's also the question of the prickly chef and the friend that came to Queenscliff with the victim in the first place.

I will admit that a big part of the attraction of this series has been that quirkiness of setting and character, and the way that the combination of local and blow in cop, one obsessed with gardening and the simple life (even though it doesn't seem to make him happy) and the incomer, the high-flyer who isn't with the ragged personal life and the professional ambitions. Blackie and Merritt are a good team together, even, as with this case, when the plot heads out on quirky and takes a sharp right at odd.

Add to that the influence of the "big city coppers" from Geelong's CIU and lordy was DI Masterson a prat... and there were points that this outing didn't work quite as well as earlier books in this series. Maybe it's because the balance between personal and professional was a bit off, maybe it was because there seemed to be a lot of wandering about waiting for something to happen, and a hefty reliance on everybody's personal "demons", or it could simply have come down to Blackie coming across as less complicated and more morose and Merritt less ambitious and more predictable. Having said that, I do rather like this odd little series. It's a nice change from the run of a mill good cop / bad cop combination and there is a lovely sense of seaside town to it, albeit this from somebody who spends very little time anywhere near the sea.

https://www.austcrimefiction.org/review/gerard-hardys-misfortune… (més)

It’s a police procedural set in a small coastal community in Victoria. The police station is run by a local, Constable Chris Blackie, who returned to the town when his mother was unwell and stayed on after she died. The novel starts, though, with Anthea, a young, recently graduated constable who has been sent to be Chris’ assistant. Her country-town placement has precipitated a break with her architect lover, and she’s pining. Actually, the novel doesn’t quite start with her, either – she’s just the first police officer we meet. The novel starts with one of the town’s “characters”, the recently mute Camilla Renfrew, watching a young woman, Julie, train a young camel. As Camilla walks away, she remembers that on a previous visit she’d heard a woman’s scream. And so there we have it, we think, the crime – and yes, one of the book’s two crimes is a murdered woman, but it’s not, in fact, the first crime we are confronted with. That honour goes to the aforementioned camel, Riza. He goes missing.

For my full review, please see my blog: https://whisperinggums.com/2016/06/24/dorothy-johnston-through-a-camels-eye-revi...… (més)

The second in Dorothy Johnston's Sea-Change series, THE SWAN ISLAND CONNECTION sees local senior constable Chris Blackie and his deputy Anthea Merritt developing their working relationship into something with more understanding, trust and respect for each other. Which is partly why they end up so blind-sided when a young boy is found dead at the beach, his body seemingly facing the military base on Swan Island. He was known to spend time in the company of the man that Merritt's been cautiously developing a personal relationship with, and between that, and the shadowy military base and their DI's odd behaviour, neither Merritt or Blackie quite know what to believe, or who they can trust.

Set in a small seaside town there's a feeling of a place that's growing rapidly. A combination of long-term residents, newcomers and visitors, alongside houses, apartments and shacks gives a small town feel with some perfectly believable unknowns in the mix. Add to that interference from the "big-smoke" of Geelong in the investigation and you have a nice combination of the known, unknown, annoyances and day to day. Especially when it comes to Chris Blackie and his rose growing!

There's an excellent balance here between character, setting and plot. The death of a young boy from a difficult background has a lot of implications for the town, and the impact that the death seems to include the secret military base, although the local police find it very difficult to discover much about the goings on on the island just off the coast. As Blackie and Merritt are pushed further away from the central investigation, their local connections are stretched very thin because they won't let it go - no matter the personal risks. It's understandable - no local cop, part of the community, would ever be willing to let the death of a young, vulnerable boy go unexplained.

There are now two books that make up the Sea-Change series, and whilst it's always better to start at the beginning it would be possible to pick up THE SWAN ISLAND CONNECTION as a starting point without missing too much of the background. It would be much better if you knew how Anthea Merritt ended up in a country posting, and why her love life seems so tentative and fragile. It would also be better if you knew Chris Blackie's family background attaching him to the same town, and particularly the reasons why the sea is not his favourite place. Although this novel introduces a range of new characters from around the town, it would also help to know something of the personality of the past, and how the town and the locals are reacting to all the changes that are happening.

https://www.austcrimefiction.org/review/review-swan-island-connection-dorothy-jo...… (més)