Highway 13
by Fiona McFarlane
From a window in a house in the Australian suburbs, a woman called Eva watches from her wheelchair the demolition of a house on her street. It is known as the Biga House. A journalist arrives. She had interviewed Eva five years ago, for a book she wrote on the Australian serial killer Paul Biga, who had lived in that house. She had turned up to talk to Eva just after the arrest. Eva reminds her: “You did come rather swiftly.”
Kate, the journalist, says, “It had to be the first book out – payment was doubled if I was first.” It was “a lot”, she says. “Down payment on a house.”
“Good,” Eva said. “And it was good – to turn a murderer into a house. What a clever thing.” The demolition goes on. There are rubberneckers. One steals the letterbox. “Souvenir,” says Gerald, Eva’s husband. “Sickos.” He might just go outside and take some photos. How does Eva feel about the demolition? asks the journalist. “I feel completely indifferent,” says Eva.
It is a weird thing, this destruction of houses where murders have happened. The Bain house in Dunedin was burnt. It’s as though you can somehow destroy evil that way. It is a primitive instinct, possibly.
Highway 13 is a series of short stories of people linked, peripherally, to a serial killer. It is obviously, and also peripherally, based on Ivan Milat, the Australian serial killer known as the Backpacker Murderer. The people who inhabit these stories are sometimes damaged, sometimes triumphant. They are just ordinary folk. Biga is barely mentioned. He barely exists. He is reduced. Demolished. What a clever thing.
Highway 13 by Fiona McFarlane (Allen & Unwin, $36.99) is out now.
A Talent for Murder
by Peter Swanson
Martha, a mild-mannered librarian who has given up on romance and believes she is under a “love curse” placed upon her by a childhood friend, meets mild-mannered travelling salesman, Alan. His patch is educational conferences, where he flogs “novelty clothing items, such as T-shirts with witty slogans on them: ‘Math teachers aren’t mean. They’re above average’.”
He hangs out in the bars where the conferences are held and tries his luck there, too, with the lady educators. There are a series of murders of women in the places these conferences are held. He returns from one such conference with a blood stain on his shirt. Martha thinks he might be the killer. She asks her old school mate, the decidedly eccentric Lily, to help investigate. A Talent for Murder is gritty and grubby and grotty. It is also satisfyingly twisty.
A Talent for Murder by Peter Swanson (Faber & Faber, $36.99) is out now.
The Bookshop Detectives: Dead Girl Gone
by Gareth and Louise Ward
The Bookshop Detectives is written by Gareth and Louise Ward, a married couple who are ex-UK coppers who moved to NZ, opened a couple of bookshops, one in Havelock North called Wardini Books, and adopted a rescue dog, a cute but cowardly dog called Stevie.
The Bookshop Detectives is written, in alternating chapters, by Garth and Eloise, a married couple who used to be UK coppers, and features a cute but cowardly rescue mutt called Stevie. Garth and Eloise run a bookshop in Havelock North, that cosy enclave of posh ladies and boutique shops. It’s called Sherlock Tomes, because it specialises in crime and weird graphic novels.
This is a cute idea. Maybe a tad too cute. It depends on your tolerance for what is known as “cosy crime”.
It’s not bad. The dialogue is a bit clumsy. The writing is a bit clunky. But the plot is compelling – there is a long-missing local girl, and a psycho killer supposed to be locked up in the UK but who seems to be looming locally. And Stevie is cute.
The Bookshop Detectives: Dead Girl Gone by Gareth and Louise Ward (Penguin, $38) is out now.
