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Blackwattle Creek – a rereading of the Ned Kelly award winner 2013 Blackwattle Creek – a rereading of the Ned Kelly award winner 2013
(8 days later)
Buried beneath the hysteria of last Saturday's federal election was another vote, the 2013 Ned Kelly awards for Australian crime writing. It was a night of firsts: the first year e-books were eligible, the first time the Neddies have taken place in Brisbane, and the first under the umbrella of the recently formed Australian Crime Writers Association.

But for Geoffrey McGeachin, the recipient of the top award, Best Fiction, it was very much a matter of second time around. His winning book Blackwattle Creek focuses on Detective Sergeant Charlie Berlin, a policeman in fifties Melbourne. The first in the Berlin series, The Diggers Rest Hotel, took home the Neddie for best first crime fiction in 2011.

Blackwattle Creek takes place two days before the 1957 VFL Grand. Menzies is prime minister and the country is happily ensconced in a period of peace and prosperity. Berlin has a week's leave – but any plans to take it easy are derailed when his wife asks him to inquire into the fate of a dead serviceman, the husband of her friend, who died and turned up to the funeral mysteriously missing a leg.

The trail leads to a suspect funeral parlour and on to Blackwattle Creek, a former asylum for the criminally insane. In very quick succession, unknown assailants beat Berlin's partner half to death, and our hero finds himself the target of unwelcome attention by a pair of thuggish Special Branch plod. He also comes into contact with a mysterious Hungarian émigré who drives the funeral parlour's hearse.

Berlin is determined to get to the bottom of what's going on at Blackwattle Creek, even if that means jeopardising his career.

If this year's awards were anything to go by, historical crime fiction is a popular sub-genre. Robert Gott's The Holiday Murders, a thriller set in forties Melbourne, was also shortlisted for Best Book and Andrew Grime's The Richmond Conspiracy, a police procedural set in the thirties, was shortlisted in the category Best First Fiction.

I have to admit that around the halfway mark of Blackwattle Creek, my attention started wander. Berlin seems like just another likable Aussie larrikin out to do right, and the period detail, particularly in relation to the domestic life of his nuclear family, feels layered on too heavily.

But just as the reader starts to lose interest, the story radically changes and becomes a much darker, more unsettling yarn. Themes such as our Cold War paranoia about communism and shameful subservience to Britain, all come to the fore. Berlin's wartime experience as a pilot flying Lancaster bombers over Germany and the resulting trauma, explored in a series of flashbacks, add another layer of menace.

All of which marks the book as a superior crime thriller – I'm genuinely interested to know where McGeachin is going to take Berlin next.

Zane Lovett's The Midnight Promise won the Neddie for Best First Fiction and Robin de Crespigny's The People Smuggler took the gong for Best True Crime. Both were favourites to take their respective categories.

In contrast, Best Fiction was a real contest. Of the books I've read on the shortlist (and this is purely a matter of personal taste), Irish writer and adoptive Australian Adrian McKinty's I Hear the Sirens in the Street, is probably my favourite. Set in Northern Ireland in the eighties, it's as vivid a depiction of civil strife as I can remember reading.

Sydney crime writer Malla Nunn's Silent Valley, another story set in the fifties, this time in South Africa, and her third book to feature Detective Sergeant Emmanuel Cooper, is also excellent.		Buried beneath the hysteria of last Saturday's federal election was another vote, the 2013 Ned Kelly awards for Australian crime writing. It was a night of firsts: the first year e-books were eligible, the first time the Neddies have taken place in Brisbane, and the first under the umbrella of the recently formed Australian Crime Writers Association.

But for Geoffrey McGeachin, the recipient of the top award, Best Fiction, it was very much a matter of second time around. His winning book Blackwattle Creek focuses on Detective Sergeant Charlie Berlin, a policeman in fifties Melbourne. The first in the Berlin series, The Diggers Rest Hotel, took home the Neddie for best first crime fiction in 2011.

Blackwattle Creek takes place two days before the 1957 VFL Grand. Menzies is prime minister and the country is happily ensconced in a period of peace and prosperity. Berlin has a week's leave – but any plans to take it easy are derailed when his wife asks him to inquire into the fate of a dead serviceman, the husband of her friend, who died and turned up to the funeral mysteriously missing a leg.

The trail leads to a suspect funeral parlour and on to Blackwattle Creek, a former asylum for the criminally insane. In very quick succession, unknown assailants beat Berlin's partner half to death, and our hero finds himself the target of unwelcome attention by a pair of thuggish Special Branch plod. He also comes into contact with a mysterious Hungarian émigré who drives the funeral parlour's hearse.

Berlin is determined to get to the bottom of what's going on at Blackwattle Creek, even if that means jeopardising his career.

If this year's awards were anything to go by, historical crime fiction is a popular sub-genre. Robert Gott's The Holiday Murders, a thriller set in forties Melbourne, was also shortlisted for Best Book and Andrew Grime's The Richmond Conspiracy, a police procedural set in the thirties, was shortlisted in the category Best First Fiction.

I have to admit that around the halfway mark of Blackwattle Creek, my attention started wander. Berlin seems like just another likable Aussie larrikin out to do right, and the period detail, particularly in relation to the domestic life of his nuclear family, feels layered on too heavily.

But just as the reader starts to lose interest, the story radically changes and becomes a much darker, more unsettling yarn. Themes such as our Cold War paranoia about communism and shameful subservience to Britain, all come to the fore. Berlin's wartime experience as a pilot flying Lancaster bombers over Germany and the resulting trauma, explored in a series of flashbacks, add another layer of menace.

All of which marks the book as a superior crime thriller – I'm genuinely interested to know where McGeachin is going to take Berlin next.

Zane Lovett's The Midnight Promise won the Neddie for Best First Fiction and Robin de Crespigny's The People Smuggler took the gong for Best True Crime. Both were favourites to take their respective categories.

In contrast, Best Fiction was a real contest. Of the books I've read on the shortlist (and this is purely a matter of personal taste), Irish writer and adoptive Australian Adrian McKinty's I Hear the Sirens in the Street, is probably my favourite. Set in Northern Ireland in the eighties, it's as vivid a depiction of civil strife as I can remember reading.

Sydney crime writer Malla Nunn's Silent Valley, another story set in the fifties, this time in South Africa, and her third book to feature Detective Sergeant Emmanuel Cooper, is also excellent.
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