Reviewed by Craig Sisterson
Tito
Ihaka is an unpinned grenade of a man. Throw him into just about any situation,
and it’s not long before things explode. Ihaka rampages through life – a rhino
in a china shop – regularly rubbing people the wrong way: people who love him,
loathe him, or have just met him.
He also happens to be a rather fine
detective; a far-from-thin member of the thin blue line who has a knack for
catching hard-to-catch criminals. Amidst pissing off his peers and bosses with
Swiss clockwork regularity. The hulking
Maori copper has pissed off readers too. One of the most fascinating ‘heroes’
in the history of New Zealand fiction completely disappeared from the page for
fifteen years after stealing the show in three thrillers penned by the man
described as the ‘Godfather of Kiwi crime writing’, Paul Thomas, in the mid
1990s.
Fortunately, Ihaka made a triumphant
return (from exile to rural Wairarapa) in Death on Demand, which earned Thomas
the 2013 Ngaio Marsh Award and was named ‘Crime Novel of the Year’ by British
magazine Shots! And now the
hulking Maori copper is back again, fighting the good fight.
And the bad fight. Any fight, actually.
Having been demoted to Sergeant for
insubordination and pigheadedness, Ihaka is charged by his long-suffering
mentor, Superintendent Finbar McGrail, with turning a scrap of new information
about the almost-forgotten murder of a teenager at a ritzy 1987 election night
party into a finally solved file. McGrail has been haunted by the cold case
since his earliest days as an immigrant copper.
Meanwhile, a freelance journalist
uncovers information suggesting that Ihaka’s trade unionist father Jimmy may
not have died of natural causes, and disgraced former detective Johan van Roon,
Ihaka’s former best mate, is hired by a PR rep for a shady millionaire to
investigate the recent sighting of a notorious political powerbroker who
vanished back in 1987. Intrigue swirls as past collides with present on several
fronts.
Back in the day, critics described
Thomas’s prose as “Elmore Leonard on acid”, and Fallout showcases his talent for mixing wit, action, and brevity.
There’s an energy crackling through the prose. Nary a wasted word.
There’s plenty of darkness in violence
in Fallout as Ihaka barrels through
town, piecing together misdeeds old and new, but there’s a real sense of fun
too. Like our hero, the story itself almost has a cavalier smirk; we’re riding
shotgun with a modern-day cowboy, and it’s a heck of an enjoyable ride to go
on.
Thomas nicely evokes a sense of both
modern-day and 1980s New Zealand life, diverse and non-homogenised. We see
Ihaka playing pseudo-coach to a rugby-loving son of a woman he’s dating on and
off, juggling the intricacies of intimacy and friendship, and coming to terms
with the shades of grey in others as well as himself.
Good thrillers need a pacy, exciting
plot. Great thrillers have much more. Fallout is superb.
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Read more about Paul Thomas here:
FALLOUT will be published in North America and Europe by Bitter Lemon Press in April 2015.
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