Silver

Some years ago, I read “Scrublands”, the author’s break-out novel that was also made into a TV mini-series (much of it filmed in my next street and other locations in the town where I live) so I am already familiar with the first adventure of the journalist, Martin Scarsden, and his love interest, Mandalay (Mandy) Blonde. This novel is their second outing.
 
Martin and Mandy are hoping to make a new life for themselves in the coastal town of Port Silver, but things go terribly wrong from the day Martin arrives to join Mandy. He literally stumbles over a dead body in the entrance to Mandy’s rented townhouse and finds her sitting in shock with blood on her hands.
 
From then on, it is almost non-stop action with multiple threads apart from the initial murder. Martin must fight to prove that neither he nor Mandy had anything to do with the death. In the process, he discovers there is considerable rivalry and competition over plans to develop the town; suspicious goings-on in the hippie-style Hummingbird Beach resort run by a former surfing champion and an Indian guru; there are a raft of poorer individuals who live in the run-down part of town and have axes to grind against the wealthier types who live on Nobb Hill overlooking the ocean. All this is further complicated by the fact Port Silver is where Martin grew up and he has difficulty facing numerous demons from the past. Even the supposed good guys are up to something dodgy on the side.
 
Although at times an exhilarating thriller, the pulse of the narrative is slowed by excessive description and flashbacks. The complications and coincidental relationships are overcooked and, at close to 600 pages, the novel could have been tightened up considerably.
 
Still, it is a reasonable way to spend a chilly weekend indoors or summer reading at the beach, although I felt a bit exhausted by the end and the resolution of the initial murder seemed abrupt and an anti-climax compared to the secondary disastrous tragedy of what happens on Hummingbird Beach.
 
This author notably uses unusual names for many of his male characters – Tyson St Clair, Amory Ashton, Doug Thunkelton and others, but I’m also in two minds about his general portrayal of women that feels dated and reminds me why I stopped reading Wilbur Smith’s macho books years ago. Mandalay Blonde and Topaz Throssell both sound like a pastiche that belongs in the early chauvinistic James Bond novels.
 
Three Stars.
 

amazon.com
 
amazon.co.uk
 
Dymocks Australia

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