B.M. Allsopp's Blog, page 7

My fiery New Year in Australia

Since the disastrous bush fires in Australia are headline news around the world, I have been touched by emails from readers concerned about my welfare. Here in Sydney, we have been surrounded by bush fires since November - except to the east, where the Pacific Ocean keeps us cooler than the embattled inland. We Sydneysiders are fortunate to have suffered nothing worse than poor air quality. Whatever the wind direction, we smell burning and breathe smoke haze here. Today the air is the clearest...

Christmas cake and carols

Christmas in Fiji

In the scatter of islands which make up Fiji, the indigenous Fijian majority share a deep Christian faith, so Christmas is a religious festival first and foremost. Nevertheless, there's the familiar flurry of transport madness as town dwellers try to return to ancestral villages for Christmas, bringing practical gifts such as fabric, garments, soap and groceries. Small ferries set off from the main island of Viti Levu, overloaded with smiling passengers, cartons of tinned food,...

Garry Disher: Hell to Pay

Hell to Pay by Garry Disher

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Another excellent crime novel by one of Australia's, and the world's, best writers of this genre. Disher drills into the core of rural small towns to expose not only unspeakable crime and corruption, but the good too. The horror of the protagonist detective, punished by the police hierarchy through transfer to a one-cop town in the South Australian dusty hinterland, is captured perfectly. The hostility shown by all groups in the small community is palpable. Disher's prose is always transparent, a polished lens through which the reader experiences a strange world indeed.
Highly recommended. If you haven't read Garry Disher's work before, this standalone novel is a good one to start with.




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