Tropic of Death

by Robert Sims

When a little girl finds a severed head buried in sand on a beach in Whitley, the locals are sent into a tailspin. Little do they know it's only the first of series of grisly murders that will sully their normally idyllic resort town. After the body of local greens activist Rachel Macarthur is discovered minus her head and hands, the local police call on Melbourne profiler, Detective Rita Van Hassel, to help track down the killer. What Rita finds on arriving in Whitley are not the tranquil tropical waters and magical hinterland rainforest of the tourist ads for northern Queensland, but a seething hotbed of intrigue and malignant passion, where nothing is as it seems and no one can be trusted. As the murders continue, the pressure on Rita reaches boiling point, and she must muster all her profiling knowledge and ingenuity to help catch the killer before he strikes again.

Genres: Crime

384 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

Reviews

[Karen]

TROPIC OF DEATH is the second book by Australian journalist, author Robert Sims, featuring Detective Rita Van Hassel, Criminal Profiler.

Criminal Profiling isn't overly common in Australian Police Forces, and Rita is one of the first in Melbourne in TROPIC OF DEATH. Begrudgingly, finally allowed to set up her own speciality support "department", she is called to Whitley in Queensland to assist when the grisly body count starts rising. Whitley is one of those sleepy Queensland idyllic towns from the tourist brochures - beach and rainforest. What Rita finds is all the brochures offer, as well as a US defence base, green activists and - as the book blurb puts it - a hotbed of malignant passion.

TROPIC OF DEATH is an interesting combination of a police procedural and a great big conspiracy thriller. Rita is a very good, interesting, police character and she and the local police form a classic police investigation team trying to solve a series of particularly gruesome killings - albeit that criminal profiling is a new activity for Australian crime fiction as well. Behind the killings there is a conspiracy thriller. Big government, anonymous men in darkened cars going thump in the night, magicked away problems, computer hackers, sinister computer systems and so on. There are touches of Rita's personal life as well, and some of those relationships intertwine within the main storyline of the book, giving context for some introductions and connections which help make sense of how a girl from Melbourne can get inside a Queensland story with some ease.

The police investigation component of this book - and Rita and her offsider Steve Jarratt work really well together. For this reader, the big conspiracy, government's doing shady doings, hackers in virtual reality helmets, big brother computer systems didn't. Whilst those sorts of thriller plots do sometimes work, this one didn't - possibly because it was all just a bit too much over the top for me - disappointing, as I particularly liked other aspects of the book. I found the use of the Australian context for a criminal profiler interesting and I'm looking forward to see where Rita goes in future books. Personal quibbles aside, if you're a fan of the big conspiracy, and you'd like to see it done with a great female central character, then you really should read TROPIC OF DEATH.

[Craig Sisterson]

Local author Sims’ solid 2007 debut The Shadow Maker introduced readers to criminal profiler Detective Rita Van Hassel, a Melbourne police version of the FBI ‘mind-hunters’ popularised in books such as Silence of the Lambs and hit TV show Criminal Minds.

In this second instalment, Van Hassel finds herself heading to the serene waters and lush rainforest of Whitley, a resort town in tropical north Queensland - but not on holiday. Instead she’s helping local police track down a grisly killer after a severed head found on a beach is followed by the mutilation-murder of a local greens activist. The investigation is complicated by misinformation and interference from an overly-militaristic regime at the nearby US defence base, and ghosts from Van Hassel’s past.

Overall, Sims’ second effort is disappointing. A potentially intriguing setting and storyline – which includes issues such as covert military ops, hackers and surveillance, theology and science, environmental issues, and artificial intelligence – is undone early on by cringe-worthy ‘on the nose’ and expositional dialogue, haphazard plotting and pacing, and cardboard characters that just didn’t grab me.

Perhaps Sims’ hoped readers were already hooked on Van Hassel from his debut – because she really wasn’t set up well as a hero worth following in the early part of this book. The final third improves greatly, but unfortunately many readers may have given up by then.

[Fiona]

Action packed to the point of being over the top. A good book to read on holiday or at the airport.