Southern Cross Crime by Craig Sisterson

Author:Craig Sisterson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oldcastle Books
Published: 2020-04-07T10:30:58+00:00

Back in Time – Historical Crime

The conservative attitudes and still-relevant prejudices of post-war New Zealand are explored in JEN SHIEFF’s historical mysteries, which bring marginalised characters to the fore. The first of these takes readers back to 1950s Auckland with a gritty tale that exposes the seedy underbelly of a country that was often considered a land of milk and honey. The Gentleman’s Club centres on a Hungarian bridge builder, a hairdresser who is a brothel owner by night, and a troubled teenager coming to the big city for an abortion; their lives all collide as they try to survive life on the backstreets. Weaving together exceptional historical detail and social issues, Shieff has been compared to the likes of Sarah Waters. She pierces the veneer of polite post-war society, lifting the skirts on class prejudice and other social ills. The standalone sequel, The Vanishing Act, is set a decade later and is another glorious romp that sees the return of some characters in a tale involving the death of a disgraced gynaecologist and set against the underground subcultures of lesbians and sex workers.

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While New Zealand is usually seen as a peaceful nation with a benign government at the bottom of the world, there have been riotous events and violent clashes over the decades, such as those during the Springbok Tour in 1981. JONOTHAN CULLINANE explored another turbulent time in his debut Red Herring, set in 1951. Power grabs and backroom battles between the establishment and blue collar unions led to a long-running waterfront dispute lasting several months where more than 20,000 workers were on strike. With scars of the Second World War still raw, and the shadow of Communism spreading through Asia, the government called in the military. Soldier-turned-private-eye Johnny Molloy is dropped into this murky world. Hired to track a supposedly dead man, he crosses paths with an ambitious reporter looking to make her mark, and the pair end up waist-deep in the muck, sloshing around among political groups and real-life figures, searching for truth, or survival. Cullinane assuredly delivered a sparkling noir full of pace and cracking dialogue, well textured by real history and realpolitik. Some characters are scheduled to return in Yellow Peril.

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First-time crime writers come in a variety of guises, but ones like DAME FIONA KIDMAN are rarer than even the most endangered of New Zealand’s remarkable native birds. Before she turned to crime, over the past 60 years Kidman has become a literary doyenne thanks to a diverse array of tales as an award-winning author, poet, short story writer and scriptwriter. In This Mortal Boy she turned her sharp eye and flowing pen to a novelisation of a real-life crime from her own childhood, and the deaths of two young men that later played a role in New Zealand abolishing the death penalty. This brilliant novel eloquently brings mid 1950s New Zealand to vivid life; a nation grappling with the scars of war and a growing youth culture. Paddy Black from Belfast escaped sectarian violence only to face a different kind of discrimination.

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