Review: SWIMMING WITH BIG FISH

SWIMMING WITH BIG FISH by Julie Ryan (Orakei Press, 2024)

Reviewed by BJ Chippindale

Dennis Bogdanovich buys a glass-bottomed boat in Russia to start a tourist business in New Zealand. His Russian cousin, Sergey, offers to transport it to Amsterdam in his friend Zaheed's truck. Bad idea, as already on board the truck are the essential parts for a bomb designed to paralyse London. The rocket with its lethal payload is fired at London from the Netherland dunes, and Zaheed's truck is discovered to have been the launch vehicle. Dennis's boat is at once promoted to 'getaway vehicle', and Dennis becomes an internationally hunted man. 

“Swimming with Big Fish” is a book that ultimately proved well worth reading. My background in the Navy, as an Engineer, and as a tourist in Russia left me initially confused and even baffled by the main character's rapid sequence of “questionable” decisions, and the initial character development might have been more thorough, but it was good enough, and the rapid plot development and complexity kept me reading.

There is a saying in writing that “bad decisions make good stories,” and in Dennis Bogdanovich, Julie Ryan has given us someone with an improbable capacity for bad decisions coupled with the good luck to survive them. As a result, this book is pretty good. 

As noted, the initial pages left me with only a sketchy understanding of Dennis and his reasoning. I was uncertain of the source of the bad decisions, but the writing was good, and the plot quickly thickened.

The catastrophic destruction in London draws together the multiple stories and characters woven into this book, but the destruction itself is not central to the writing. The many supporting characters provide the strength and depth that make that part of the book a rewarding read. In both this and the beginning of the book, I desired more detail and a longer exposition. It was well but sparingly described, and I wanted more. 

Dennis and his stubborn resistance to every form of authority provide a connecting thread for other characters and stories throughout the book. As he does this, he grows into his own story and comes into focus. It is, as I said, a good book. It differs somewhat from the faux “heroics” of my usual light reading, but I found it interesting and well done.

There are two more books in the series, and I will be reading them. That is my recommendation for this book. It is worth the read. 

Editorial Note: this book was first published under the same title but with author name Julie Haines in 2014, and republished recently by Orakei Press with a new cover and under a different pen name Julie Ryan, before the publication of its sequel and a third in the series in 2024 and 2025. 

This review was first published in FlaxFlower reviews, which focuses on in-depth reviews of New Zealand books of all kinds, and is reprinted here with the kind permission of Flaxflower founder and editor Bronwyn Elsmore.