In The Morning is a lurid, over the top police procedural set in 1980s Northern Ireland. Our hero, Sean Duffy, has been busted down to sergeant and has been posted to the South Armagh border due to past indiscretions Sean is not happy, despite the helicopter rides.
In a roundabout way - and without giving too much away - Sean Duffy finds himself given one last chance to prove himself. He is put on a mission to find a missing man. This gets him out of Armagh and back knocking on doors of Derry Housing Executive flats and making furtive trips across to Donegal. So far so good. But then Duffy gets involved in investigating a coid case murder of young woman who had been minding a bar… Read more
Much is made in the publishers blurb of the fact that literature has shunned Greater Western Sydney. That may be true, but An Elegant Young Man is hardly a mainstream attempt to remedy that deficit.
Luke Carman calls himself an anti-folk monologist working in epigrammatical short fiction. Talk about pseudo. Anyway, it basically means Carman writes short stories that don't have much plot. It's a bit stream of consciousness, and it is about setting a scene, painting a picture rather than telling a story. He is quite successful in this - he does convey the racial tensions, chaotic lifestyles and constant feeling of insecurity of the western suburbs. He depicts a bright and… Read more
Tom Button is bored. He lives with his parents in Dunley, a fictional small town in remote Regional Victoria. His schoolfriends� plans for escape and adventure have withered and he is bored. So, when his favourite aunt passes away and he has the opportunity to move into her apartment in the Cairo building, just a stone�s throw from the University of Melbourne, he jumps at the chance. The contrast between Melbourne and Dunley is extreme. Cairo oozes art deco style; the city is vibrant and large; its people are exotic and mysterious.
So it�s unsurprising that Tom, with all his 18 years of experience, is entranced by a couple of bohemian neighbours, Max… Read more
