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Williams, Darren

Angel Rock

London, HarperCollins, 2002. 311 pp. £ 6.99.

Pop says people see things better - understand things - when they're young.

Of course we all know that small towns hide the biggest secrets. Angel Rock is no exception. Tom Ferry, almost thirteen and still simple-hearted and his brother disappear in the Australian bush. Tom returns and cannot remember what happened. Unravelling Tom's memory of that traumatic event is one of many penetrating sub-plots.

Far away in Sydney, the body of a sixteen-year-old girl is found. Suicide by her own hand. She comes from Angel Rock. Gibson, the detective in the case takes off for Angel Rock? Why? The reason for that suicide also begins to unravel.

Long ago, a woman was found drowned. One of those events that happen and that at the time is considered just a bit of bad luck. But it wasn't just bad luck.

Trees and animals. Rain and sun and clouds. Cranky old kangaroos. Dingoes. Wild pigs. A picture of the darkening country spread out in every direction. And people. The people you are prepared to hate, to love, to look down on, to admire and little by little to understand as their past unravels before you. You begin to understand why they acted, or failed to act when they should have done so. Are all those nightmares described a clue to the past or a prognostication of the future. Where is the body of the missing boy? If you love animals, you will be touched by the companionship between animals and man and horrified by the cruelty between them. The role of religion in the Australian outback.

All told quietly, even gently.

A penetrating and true-to-life account of the Australian outback.

Darren Williams lives near Brisbane, Australia. His previous novel, Swimming in Silk, published in 1995, was the winner of the Australian/Vogel Literary Award.

Wilson, Robert

A Darkening Stain

London, Collins Crime, HarperCollins. 261 pp. £15.99.

Bondougou, Chief of Police of the small township of Cotonou on the Benin-Nigeria border is a name that brings tears of gratitude to the eyes of corrupt businessmen, politicians and civil servants.

His polar opposite is his subordinate, Bagado. Bagado had once been in partnership as a private eye with Bruce Medway but Bondougou had blackmailed him into breaking up the team and joining the police, where Bondougou could keep an eye on him. Bagado and Medway still maintain a connection.

Two mysteries run through the book. Two mafiosi employ Bruce Medway to find a French businessman who has offended the local mafia chief. Medway's sympathies are not exactly with either side, but he has no choice. The author is very good on the pressures that the most honest man faces in such a society.

The second mystery involves the kidnapping of eight schoolgirls. One of them is Bagado's daughter. There are people who believe that deflowering a virgin cures AIDS and AIDS is rampant.

Bruce Medway also has a personal problem. On one occasion, to save his own life, he had to tell a lie about an involvement with a woman. He didn't know that the lie had to be told in front of the woman he loves and she is pregnant. She leaves him.

Relying on the natural greed of malefactors, Bruce Medway sets up a scam. It is interesting that someone as honest and incorruptible as Medway should understand greed and corruption so well. He makes a number of mistakes which may lead not just to his plans being foiled, but being killed by the intended victims. Fortunately for him, his luck comes in squirts just large enough for him to succeed. Bagado saves him. But Bagado will never be police chief.

The picture of life in Benin is horrendous. Corruption. Malaria. Heat. Sweat. Pollution. Why does he live there, asks his lover when they are reconciled. "The people," he says. There were certain people in his life in Benin and without them he would feel impoverished. Amen to that! (But not a book for the squeamish.)

Robert Wilson knows Africa personally. He is married and writes from an isolated farmhouse in Portugal.

Wilson, Robert

A Small Death in Lisbon

London, HarperCollins. 440 pp. £9.99.

From time to time contemporary crime writers have given us the inside story of this or that historical event, using it as a vehicle for a murder mystery (or perhaps vice versa).. This is one of the great ones. The plot involves the account of how the Nazi war machine laid its hands on wolfram from the mines in Portugal (competing with the British). The Germans entrusted to do this were part and parcel of the German state and all its horrendous cruelties. They used the same methods. Murder, blackmail, torture, sexual perversion. Nobody backed away. Who could resist gold, and power over the helpless?

Over half a century later, a young girl is murdered in Lisbon and the picture of modern Lisbon and its cosmopolitan youth is recreated. Inspector Ze Coelho is the sleuth. Like so many sleuths in literature he is an outsider. He'd have to be not to accept the obvious and dig deep.

German cruelty, the history of wolfram smuggling to sustain the German war machine, the Portuguese 1974 revolution and the investigation into what the author ironically calls "a small death" are interwoven. One of many original features is that at all times, the reader knows more than the sleuth. Will the sleuth eventually know as much as the reader? He has to, to solve the murder, as he realizes that the fathers have indeed visited their sins upon their children.

A historical murder mystery of epic proportion.

Robert Wilson lives in an isolated farmhouse in Portugal.