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The Seven

21/11/2023

This is another title in the current popular trend of “Outback Noir”, i.e. stories with a dark underbelly set in regional and remote Australia.

Those who have read the author’s previous novels will be familiar with Detective Sergeant Ivan Lucic who, with his trusty sidekick, DC Nell Buchanan, is called to the town of Yuwonderie to investigate the grisly death of a local accountant, Athol Hasluck.

In an area of Australia with erratic rainfall, the town has become the fiefdom of seven families who initiated a major irrigation scheme in the early 20th Century to channel the water of the Murrumbidgee River. This continues to ensure that their farms and business ventures remain prosperous even in times of severe drought.

But it seems there is much that is sinister hidden beneath the Seven's façade as Ivan is progressively drawn into the dubious dealings of these families. Narrated in tandem with the present-day investigation is the 1990s research project by Davis Heartwood, historian son of one of the Seven, and letters written during World War I by Bessie Walker, an indigenous woman.

While the plot does have a few of the usual exciting hallmarks of the author's earlier novels, it loses impetus as it becomes bogged down in its cast of shady/stereotypical characters overlorded by a group of entitled individuals hard to distinguish from one another who all seem to wear RMs (slang for a well-known brand of boots favoured by Australia's country "gentry"). The convoluted information on financial records, corporate structures, land dealings, water control, and contributions to political parties starts to feel like a lecture in finance or economics rather than a fast-paced thriller.

The past narrative featuring Davis works the best in establishing the background, but the letters written by Bessie border on cringeworthy. Even if one accepts that she was an unusual indigenous woman for her time and fortunate to have received an excellent education in grammar and semantics, the letters feel contrived and more of a nod to modern reformist attitudes on indigenous issues than in conveying the honest expressions of an intelligent young woman writing to her loved ones during this era.

Apart from a final unexpected twist, the conclusion holds no surprises and involves another unnecessary layer as it hauls in the author's other well-known character, the journalist Martin Scarsden, who has past history with Ivan.

Disappointing, two-and-a-half stars.

Note: This book is also called "Cover the Bones"

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Maiden Voyages

12/11/2023

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This book tells the stories of women who sailed in ocean liners in the days before the cheap and easy availability of air travel. It focusses primarily on the “Atlantic Run” between Europe and North America during the first half of the 20th Century.

It includes many female celebrities who are still well-known today such as Wallis Simpson, Marlene Dietrich, Josephine Baker. Others may have faded from memory, like the author E.M. Delafield, Olympic swimmer Hilda Davies or society “fixer” Elsa Maxwell.

Other women made their mark at sea in different ways. Violet Jessup was a stewardess who famously survived the sinkings of both Titanic and Britannic, but undeterred, kept working on liners for many years afterwards. There’s even an appearance by domestic servant, Mary Anne MacLeod, who left her Scottish island home and arrived in New York with just $50 to her name. She found herself a wealthy husband and one of her four children has the name of Donald J. Trump.

The research is expansive and effusive (and at times awkwardly repetitive). We are given great swathes of information on the building and history of the ships and their owners, plus the politics, social and cultural mores of the era and what the characters got up to before and after their voyages. If you want to know about Lady Nancy Astor or Diana Cooper or Hedy Lemarr or any of the other famous first-class passengers, there is already a wealth of historical information to be found elsewhere, and all this just diverts focus and makes the narrative top-heavy.

Also, there’s major emphasis on the Cunard and White Star Line ships, with brief coverage of French, German, Italian or American vessels, and virtually nothing on other companies who plied the same route, such as Canadian Pacific Steamships (on which members of my own family crossed the North Atlantic several times).

Thus, it is discovering the experiences of the working women on board these ships that is the best part of this book. In particular, the few extracts from the memoirs of the redoubtable Edith Sowerbutts. She brings to life what it was like to be a woman at sea, the conditions endured and how her career was always precarious and susceptible to changing fortunes and world events. According to the bibliography, Edith’s memoirs are held by the Imperial War Museum but remain unpublished. This is surprising, as she was a remarkable woman who, as an early “conductress”, looked after countless women and children emigrating from England and Europe to better lives elsewhere. She lived long enough (died 1992) to have witnessed the progression of women into prominent roles at sea and wrote:-

“Nobody had visualised that female staff, other than the very necessary stewardesses, would ever be carried on ocean liners … We, of my generation, comprised the thin edge of the wedge. Women would eventually be signed on for seagoing positions once considered to be male preserves.”

Three stars.

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