Review Archive for author's that start with ... O
Review Archive for author's that start with ... O
Letters from Mitcham (Pamela Oborn),Shell Game (Carol O'Connell), Crime School (Carol O'Connell), The Jury Must Die (Carol O'Connell), Shark Music (Carol O'Connell), Grassdogs (Mark O'Flynn), Unfit To Practice( Perri O'Shaugnessy), The Little Book of Forensics (David Owen),
LETTERS FROM MITCHAM
by Pamela Oborn
ISBN 1086459-082-3
326 pages
Anglican Parish of Mitcham
South Australia
$55.00
2002
Available from St. Michael's Church
Mitcham
Mostly Books, Mitcham
Arts & Crafts Centre, Mitcham
note: available for overseas postal delivery
reviewed by Denise Wels
And now, as the Pythons were so fond of saying, for something completely different.
In 2002, St Michael's Anglican Church, Mitcham - which has, fortunately, defied a trend seen in our one-time City of Churches to transmogrify into a place of dining and entertainment - is celebrating its one hundred and fiftieth birthday. Local historian Pamela Oborn, who has co-authored Mitcham Village Sketchbook,(with Christine Chinner) and The Torrens Park Estate: A Social and Architectural History (with Ken Preiss), following these with her solo venture The Arts and Crafts in Historic Mitcham Village: The First 21 Years of Mitcham Village Arts & Craft Assn Inc. 1974-1995. Pamela's husband Ben, a retired consulting engineer, has devoted many hours to helping her with this latest magnificent volume, taking responsibility for layout, design and the preparation of illustrations - not to mention solving those crises that, obedient to Murphy's Law, invariably imperil any labour of love.
A labour of love this book most certainly must be since, so modestly priced, it is unlikely to return to the author any great financial reward. Mrs. Oborn has spent five years in the research and writing of the history. Mind, she is accustomed to apportioning long periods of time to her writing - the book about the Torrens Park Estate occupied ten years of her life. In the event, the result is a great credit to her.
The book is in coffee table format - a large, well illustrated hardcover. The content is in two sections. The first is based on the chronological events developed from the Parish Minute Books. This takes the form of letters from a parishioner in Mitcham, South Australia to her equally fictitious cousin who lives in Mitcham, Surrey - the village after which ours is named. It is with this that I have my only quibble. Given the length of time depicted I would have preferred, perhaps, letters between the descendants of the original ladies in addition to theirs. But, as I said, a mere quibble in the face of the excellence of the whole. Part 2 deals with the more mundane details of the parish history - details of parish administration, for example, including the interesting fact that three trustees credited to the parish had been dead for years! There is also recorded the birth of the daughter church, St Wilfrid's, Torrens Park, which stands proudly on Belair Rd.
Pamela Oborn has secured valuable cooperation from members of the parish
(not the least being Mollie Bowen, daughter of Archdeacon Albert W. Clampett
who served from 1893 until the astonishingly late date of 1939) who have
graciously shared pieces of family history as well as family photographs.
All in all, Letters From Mitcham is a beautiful book and one
that can be read and reread for years to come in order to appreciate the
history of the Anglican Church of St Michael.
SHELL GAME
by Carol O'Connell
Arrow
ISBN 0-09-929740-X
$27.50
4th December 2000
reviewed by Denise Wels
I had not previously read any of Carol O'Connell's books (Malloru's Oracle, The Man Who Lied To Women, Killing Critics, Flight of the Stone Angel, Judas Child)but had only heard good things about the author. It was with a delightful sense of anticipation, then, that I opened Shell Game.
The novel begins well enough, with a touching depiction of a man who, while realising he is losing his memory, refuses to ask for help. Malakhai begins to orientate himself by looking in the mirror, then goes on to build the current reality from there.Carol O'Connell establishes a portion of what will be reality for the reader at that point, too. Malakhai watches the preview of the upcoming Holiday of Magic in Manhattan on his television. From here the reader can see that Malakhai must suffer from a degree of insanity, since he speaks to his dead wife, Louisa,as if she were alive and sitting with him. We discover, too, that the narrative concerns a group of magicians. - elderly magicians. Then comes the first of the deaths that are to be investigated by Kathy Mallory: the horrific death of Oliver Tree as he is gorily killed in front of a crowd of thousands, including many children. Mallory (who prefers the single name and refusesto be known as 'Kathy' save to a very few who knew her as a child) is convinced the death is a murder and sets out to prove this.
The character of Mallory, surrounded as she is by her hand-me-down friends from her dead foster father, is a strange one. She appears to be totally without a sense of humour and likes to be thought of also as devoid of emotion. She is known to her fellow police officers, with whom she is extremely unpopular, as 'Mallory the Machine'. She lives obviously beyond the means of a simple detective but earns the resources for her taste for luxury from her partnership with Charles Butler. She uses her computer skills, which are tremendous, in investigating the background of people whose psychological gifts he wishes to explore, for Charles. Charles is tied into the world of the magicians by being the young cousin of the legendary magician, Max Candle.
The people of this tale are a varied and intriguing lot. The story had great possibilities, but somehow the book oversteps the boundaries of what is enjoyable and credible, even within the extended borders of the normal suspension of disbelief required when one peruses fiction. Certainly there is a great deal too much grue for my personal taste... rather more, one would think, than is necessary to portray a reality - but the complexities of the story make the plot far too tortuous to be enjoyable.
The murders had their genesis during the war with Louisa's death, when all the magicians were youths, coming out of their apprenticeship to the great Faustine, who surrounded herself with only beautiful boys. Mallory must unearth old fears, jealousies and envies from that time. She seeks to unravel the tricks and sleight of hand (and the shell game) employed by the magicians to discover the truth, yet the author introduces more than a single note of the uncanny into her solution. My own feeling is that she overdid it.
Mallory is a curious heroine. She is, at once, unlikable yet strangely appealing, as are some others of the folk of the book. Charles Butler and magician Franny Futura are,perhaps, the most attractive of O'Connell's creations. I did feel that the author stretched credibility more than a little in her narration of the almost love story between Mallory and the person she found extremely fascinating.
The action of the book is rapid the events are not simple, the writing
is good, if unnecessarily bloody, but for me it was not an engrossing read.
The characters were not believable - Malakhai in particular. I don't
imagine O'Connell spenta great deal of time with anyone who was in the
process of dementing for her research of this protagonist.The whole thing
was too contrived and tortuous.
CRIME SCHOOL
by Carol O'Connell
ISBN 0-09-179458-7
397 pages
Hutchinson
London
September 2002
$29.95
reviewed by Denise Wels
If the paintings of former artist, Carol O'Connell, are as good as her novels, it is a wonder she ever deserted Art in favour of full time writing. Mallory's Oracle was O'Connell's first published novel, although she admits to having created her unique character, Kathy Mallory, in an earlier, unpublished story. The first published work met with well deserved success and was followed by The Man Who Lied to Women , Killing Critics, Flight of the Stone Angel, Shell Game and the stand alone Judas Child .
Each of the Mallory novels doles out gobbets of information on the enigmatic, hard and almost unsympathetic protagonist yet O'Connell always finds more information with which to tantalise her readers. Mallory - to only a few is she known as Kathy - is watched over, admired, despaired of and loved by an odd assortment of characters as she goes about solving crimes. As she pursues miscreants she is put into many dangerous situations and the perils of her childhood are revealed in the process.
Crime School opens with the theft of a paperback Western by a prostitute, Sparrow. Sparrow is stalked then apparently murdered. She is strung up by the unknown stalker, but she is not completely dead. She is resuscitated by young policeman Deluthe but remains in a coma for most of the duration of the book. Mallory and her partner, aging alcoholic but more than competent Riker, see a parallel between the hanging of Sparrow and the murder of another woman some twenty years previously. All the other mainstay characters of the earlier Mallory books are brought into play : Coffey, the wonderful Charles Butler, Slope and others. Lou Markowitz, Mallory's dead foster father is, as usual, an integral part of the plot.
Sparrow had loved and cared for the child Kathy as much as she had been able. For reasons that are revealed toward the conclusion of the book, Mallory became her implacable enemy, yet Sparrow continued to love her. Riker, who had been a good friend to Sparrow, his sometime informant, genuinely suffers as a result of the damage done to the woman and Mallory's attitude toward her. Despite Lieutenant Coffey's insistence that there is no justification in treating the decades old case - which sees the introduction of retired detective Geldorf - and the brutal attack on Sparrow as one case, Mallory and Riker, assigned to the old investigation, manage still to pursue the contemporary crime as well as the one which they feel provided the genesis of the more recent killings.
O'Connell writes evocatively and sympatrhetically of the traumas that transformed the young child into the sociopathic detective of the modern day. Her descriptions of the stalking of the various women are harrowing. She is not one, alas, to shy away from sickening destails yet the rewards for ploughing through those descriptions to read the entire tale are great. Many of O'Connell's characters are psychologically damaged almost beyond belief yet the story exerts an hypnotic effect on the reader.
There is a jerky feel to the prose and an insistence on unspoken communication that is worthy of Frank Herbert's characters in his Dune series. Nothing is simple and the connection between the old case and the perpetrator of the new crime is extremely moving. Mallory's understanding of the modern day criminal belies her much vaunted lack of emotion. One scene involving the prostitutes who knew Mallory as a child is at once funny and very poignant.
For anyone who enjoyed the earlier Mallory books yet found Shell Game
to be disappointing, don't give up on the series. While the plot is as
circuitous as ever and some scenes approach perilously close to melodrama,
this adventure is not one to be missed.
THE JURY MUST DIE
by Carol O'Connell
ISBN 0091800129
325 pages
Hutchinson
London
November 1 2003
$32.95
reviewed by Denise Wels Pickles
November 3 2003
Carol O'Connell came late to writing fiction. An artist, she had relied on that profession as well as copy editing and proofreading to earn a living until she made her amazing debut into crime fiction with Mallory's Oracle almost a decade ago. Since then the author has departed from the Mallory series in only one book, Judas Child.ÝHer complete (so far!) bibliography comprises :Shell Game, Judas Child, Flight of the Stone Angel ,Killing Critics, Mallory's Oracle, Man Who Lied to Women and Crime School. It is reasonable to say that O'Connell's career has not looked back since Kathy Mallory's birth.
Although some readers immediately took to Mallory, to me she was something of an acquired taste - streetwise, consorting with prostitutes and criminals, a witness to horrific scenes on the street, a complete sociopath yet intelligent and an accomplished detective (as well as an accomplished liar). When the author permits, Mallory rouses the protective instinct in the reader. Who could be completely immune to a waif with such a sad history? In adulthood, however, Mallory spurns any softer feelings, refusing to answer to her given name of Kathy. She insists on being addressed as Mallory or Detective Mallory by all and sundry, even her friends from childhood.
The Jury Must Die is a cruel book, even for Carol O'Connell. A 'shock jock', a most unpleasant Englishman, Ian Zachary, has a most unpleasant radio show. A murderer has achieved an acquittal from a jury and now a mystery man known as The Reaper is busily seeking to punish the misguided jurors by killing them. Various of them have been placed in an FBI Witness Protection scheme but even an FBI agent has been murdered by the Reaper. Zachary has taken it upon himself to increase the popularity of his radio program by inviting New Yorkers to dob in any jurors they see in their vicinity, offering prizes in his macabre 'game'. Johanna Apollo, a hunchback who has taken up employment as a crime scene cleaner, working for Detective Sergeant Riker. Riker, is on sick leave from his police work after having been grievously wounded, both psychologically and physically when shot four times in the chest, is looking after his brother's cleaning business whilst his brother is overseas. Johanna has hidden her real identity from Riker who is in further acute danger - this time of falling in love.
Mallory takes it upon herself to protect Riker as well as the surviving jurors from the ominous Reaper. Zachary hires a private security firm, so he believes, to take care of his interests while he pursues his own private games of driving his sound engineer out of her mind as well as discovering the identity of his unseen producer, the mysterious Needleman. A truly lovable character, this radio personality.
Johanna Apollo has a pet, a psychotic cat named Mugs. He plays a vital role in this plot. It would be too much to hope that the author would create a more conventional, likable minor personality, but even Mugs can draw tears of pity, much as does Mallory herself, from the reading audience. The cast includes a seedy FBI agent as well as the usual police of the New York department to leaven the whole mix.
Once again, O'Connell's imagination has conjured up a tale brim full of danger and fast paced action. To my mind, however, her writing is flawed. At times she seems to cut corners and expect her readers to overlook a certain clumsiness - or should one simply dub it unorthodoxy? - in her writing. Why, for example, does she constantly refer to Mallory as 'the police' instead of 'policewoman' or even 'police officer'? At times the clumsy writing, for me at least, interrupts the flow of the action and made me concentrate on the writing rather than what occurs in the plot - a blunder, tin my opinion. I toyed with the idea that perhaps it was a definite intention of the author to bolster Mallory's characteristics, but discarded that idea. I feel that more care in her writing would improve the quality of O'Connell's books.
No doubt Mallory will resume her sociopathic career in future books
and no doubt O'Connell's fans will welcome those books as much as they
doubtless will welcome this outing of the green eyed detective.
SHARK MUSIC
by Carol O'Connell
352 pages
ISBN 9780091795542
HUTCHINSON
February 1 2007
$32.95
reviewed by Denise Pickles
March 12 2007
Carol O'Connell has produced and developed a most remarkable protagonist in Mallory (although some people are aware that her given name is 'Kathy', the detective refuses, with rare exceptions to answer to it.) SHARK MUSIC adds much to the history of the Mallory and gives readers a great deal of food for thought in this further chronicle of the damaged detective.
Readers who have followed the series since its inception will know that Kathy, as a pre-teen child, lived on the streets until she was captured by Detective Lou Markowitz of the NYPD and fostered by him and his wife Helen. The prologue casts light on one of Kathy's pastimes-- she had been told by a derelict that everybody in the whole world eventually passed through Grand Central Station. Kathy seized on this as gospel truth and often stationed herself there, knowing that her face combined her father's green eyes with her mother's lovely features so that she would immediately be recognised by him as he passed by. Needless to say, she never encountered him.
Detective Sergeant Riker, an alcoholic, is Mallory's partner. When he is dispatched to Mallory's apartment as a result of the body of a woman being found there, he fears the worst. Savannah Sirus, the medical examiner (with the help of a little misdirection from Riker) proclaims, committed suicide. The fact that she held the weapon that killed her at arms' length merely illustrates her fear of firearms.
Mallory has not been showing up for her shifts at the NYPD. Riker has been covering for her but now he decides he must go in search of his partner, whom he is more than half convinced is responsible for the demise of Miss Sirus.
Mallory, in the meantime, is following the path taken by her father as he traversed Route 66 many years in the past. Peyton Hale had loved the highway but so, too, apparently had a murderer, a killer who concentrated almost exclusively on small children. The killings have not yet ceased although now the occasional adult meets his or her demise.
A sad caravan of people who have lost children is wending its way along Route 66. Various law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, with Special Agent Dale Berman in charge, are taking an interest in the case. The killer, too, appears very interested in the parade, especially in one small girl.......
This is an outstanding work. Carol O'Connell has well and truly outdone herself with it. Favourite characters from previous novels (Charles Butler is always in close pursuit of Mallory) make welcome appearances as Mallory attempts to place various pieces in the jigsaw of her past.
Carol O'Connell demonstrates a wonderful talent at characterisation in this work. I defy the hardest hearted reader to be unmoved by the unfolding history of the one time homeless child. The drama and heartbreak of the bereaved parents, some of whom will never know what happened to their child, is also expertly portrayed.
The book is, as O'Connell's always are, full of incident and the mystery,
which could be described as 'compound' is very well plotted.
GRASSDOGS
by Mark O'Flynn
ISBN 0732283345
261 pages
FOURTH ESTATE
June 2006
$27.95
reviewed by Denise Pickles
May 22 2006
Playwright and poet, Mark O'Flynn has proceeded from short story writing to his first novel, GRASSDOGS. This debut has been recognised, auspiciously enough, by winning the Varuna Awards for Manuscript Development.
Tony Tindale, a young lawyer, is the narrator of the harrowing tale although he puts in few appearances. He introduces himself and his mother to the reader in a prologue, or Preliminary Submission, as it is titled. In it, Tony mentions that he was born with a cleft palate, a congenital fault that also afflicted his uncle, Edgar Hamilton. Tony's affliction is satisfactorily corrected but Edgar's was more or less botched and that, together with a degree of mental retardation, plays a significant role in Edgar's inability to be accepted in society.
Although forced to go, briefly, to school, Edgar is illiterate. He is the butt of the cruelty of the other children but is impressed by the kindness of two of the girls, Sophie and Ivy.
After Edgar escapes from school, police come to the Hamilton farm to question him. Sophie has disappeared and Edgar is suspected of abducting her. Sophie is never found and the matter fizzles out.
After the death of his parents, Edgar takes on the care of his mother's dog, a silky but attracts a menagerie of dogs, a collection from which he is separated only when, nearly halfway through the book, he is sent to gaol . Edgar takes his responsibility for the welfare of the dogs very seriously and O'Flynn paints very funny scenes as Edgar unintentionally terrorises supermarket managers into providing food for both himself and his dogs.
A chance encounter with a vagrant, Meacham, changes Edgar's life. His dogs find the corpse of the man and Edgar is arrested for the murder.
Edgar is not really aware of relationships but meets his runaway sister at his father's funeral. His sister, Lynne, has a young son, Tony. Eventually Tony passes through law school and is persuaded to take up the case of Edgar Hamilton.
Edgar spends time in prison, a place where he learns to defend himself adequately and where he acquires a reputation after making not a few enemies. Eventually he is placed into Protection where he is forced to share a cell with a paedophile priest, Fletcher, who, not realising Edgar is able to understand some of what he says, relates his history of criminality.
A remarkable tale, beautifully told, GRASSDOGS evokes the countryside surrounding Wagga Wagga in New South Wales, together with the heartrending history of a failing farm. The depiction of life inside a prison is horrifying, as is a cynical look at a justice system that seeks a quick and easy way of solving cases by arresting a possible perpetrator incapable of understanding what is going on. No doubt O'Flynn's experience of teaching within a maximum security gaol stood him in good stead in writing that segment of the book.
I found a disparity between the narrative and Edgar's actual speech, when he finds his voice in the story. Somehow, his voice did not impart the same innocence implied by the narration. Regardless, the portrait painted by the author of the innocent, is very convincing, as is the guilt which motivates Edgar's sister, Lynne, in having her brother freed. The horrors depicted of prison life must surely make readers query the validity of a system that permits such abuses.
This is an excellent beginning in long fiction for a very talented writer.
UNFIT TO PRACTICE
by Perri O'Shaugnessy
ISBN 0749933488
420 pages
Piatkus
January 2003
$29.95
Reviewed by Denise Wels
August 2003
Sisters Pamela and Mary O'Shaugnessy, who comprise the author Perri O'Shaugnessy, would appear to have an unbeatable combination so far as writing legal thrillers goes. Pamela is a law graduate while Mary obtained a degree in English Literature. Their bibliography so far includes Motion to Suppress, Invasion of Privacy, Obstruction of Justice, Breach of Promise, Acts of Malice, Move to Strike, Writ of Execution, Unfit to Practice and the forthcomingPresumption of Death. It is rather unfortunate - for me, at least - that despite a search I was unable to find any interviews with the creative duo since I would very much like to know just how they write and the sort of occurrences that have inspired the individual titles. Still, it was nice to find the web page, maintained by their children, which supplied the sparse information I duly gathered.
The authors' protagonst is Nina Reilly, a sole lawyer in private practice in South Lake Tahoe. Nina is a very earnest, decent young woman, a single mum intent on doing the best for her clients as well as for her teenage son Bob. Nina, who has had several men in her past, is currently involved with her investigator, Paul van Wagoner, to whom she is able to turn for help on many levels with her cases.
Nina is involved in a nasty custody case -- but how frequently are custody cases not nasty? She feels badly about it because, although she is acting for the father, she can see that the mother is just as caring as her client. She is also acting for a Hmong family , the Vangs, whose store had been razed by an arsonist or arsonists unknown to the police but possibly known to the victims. A third case is that of sisters who, when camping, feel they saw a murderer on the camp site where they were staying, someone other than the man identified as the killer. Nina is in the habit of making confidential, detailed notes of her cases and on one night takes all three sets of case notes home with her to be worked on there. The weather is bad and while she runs inside after locking her truck, she neglects to take the case notes with her. Feeling too tired to retrieve the notes later, Nina sleeps until morning when she attempts to remove the notes from her truck. To her horror, the truck has been stolen - and the case notes with it.
Suddenly, everything goes wrong with Nina's professional life: she loses the custody case although had her case notes not been stolen she would probably have won it, the Vang family case finds her liable for fraud and the two sisters who witnessed an escaping murderer are in danger and blame Nina for their peril. Nina finds herself in court, accused of being unfit to practise law and having to battle to preserve her reputation. In her personal life she is trying to balance her own needs against those of her somewhat rebellious son who is intent on trying for his independence.
There are several people Nina sees as her possible enemy responsible for the theft of her truck and using her notes against her: her policeman client who has lost custody of his children, possibly in collaboration with his former wife and her sleazy lawyer and a woman police officer who retrieved her truck - minus the case notes - who obviously hates the woman lawyer. To add to Nina's woes. she discovers the attorney Paul engages to act for her is her own former husband Jack.
This is not a bad tale. It contains a fair bit of action as well as considerable danger. It provides insights into lawyers' minds as well as the minds of the police. It shows the 'other' side of professional people - for example, a judge whose judgment might be affected when he has to sit during what would normally be a rest hour. There is a good deal of posturing from the two adult males as each seeks to ingratiate himself into Nina's heart and bed while her capable Native American assistant, Sandy, together with her son Wish, provide staunch and loyal support.
If there is a fault to be found with the book it is, in my opinion, the
method of winding up the story. We know it is a series, with more to come,
yet the composite author finishes it all too tidily. I feel it would
have had more power were some things left deliberately dangling for the
next narrative.
THE LITTLE BOOK OF FORENSICS
by David Owen
ISBN 9781741752830
143 pages
ALLEN & UNWIN
February 1 2008
$19.95
reviewed by Denise Pickles
January 21 2008
This is a slim, useful little volume that the generous folk at ALLEN & UNWIN have kindly sent me. For those crime fiction readers who are only just entering this absorbing world and, hence, are unaware of the intricacies and history of this essential tool, it provides a very helpful companion to keep beside one when entering the murky world of murder and mayhem.
The book provides a list of fifty cases solved by the use of the evolving science of forensics, even casting retrospective light on some cases that had, in their time, baffled law enforcement officers.
The various sections of the book deal with mysterious causes of death, fire and explosions, fingerprinting and ballistics (both of which used to be great favourites with fiction) time of death, means of tracing miscreants by the imprints left by their teeth etc. and, most importantly in current fiction, trace evidence and DNA.
The cases examined are taken from around the world. Even South Australia gets a Guernsey, the Snowtown bodies in the barrels being a particularly gruesome example of mass murder and mass murderers.
I was surprised that neither the notorious Truro murders nor the particularly horrible Family murders (Adelaide being involved, occasionally referred to as ìthe murder capital of the worldî) were mentioned, but then, perhaps forensic science was not used in their solution.
It is, indeed, an interesting little book. Perhaps some aspiring novelist will be able to use it as inspiration for a future fascinating novel and think up some combination that will temporarily baffle both his hero and reader alike.
Fortunately for crime fiction aficionados, forensics is an evolving
science and developments in the art are likely to keep readers fascinated
for years to come.