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Summary
Summary
"A first-rate piece of crime writing."- The Washington Post Book World
"A straightforward police story with a terrific plot, nuanced characters and solid procedures, served up on refreshing new turf."-Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review
"A police procedural of a very different kind. . . . A 'down under' atmosphere that most American readers will find unique."- The Plain Dealer
"Colorful. . . . Disher has literary talent and imagination." - Chicago Tribune
"Disher makes his characters as interesting as his plot." - Portsmouth Herald
"The American debut for Australian crime writer extraordinaire Disher is as complex and dark as anything by Ian Rankin or Michael Connelly."- Las Vegas Mercury
A serial killer is on the loose in a small coastal town near Melbourne. Detective Inspector Hal Challis and his team must apprehend him before he strikes again. But first, Challis has to contend with the editor of a local newspaper who undermines his investigation at every turn, and with his wife, who attempts to resurrect their marriage through long-distance phone calls from a sanitarium, where she has been imprisoned for the past eight years for attempted murder- his .
Garry Disher is the author of over 40 books for adults and children. His crime fiction includes numerous anthologized stories and the Wyatt novels, including Kickback , winner of the 2000 German Critics Prize for Crime Fiction. The first in his Detective Inspector Challis murder mystery series, The Dragon Man won the German Critics Prize for Crime Fiction in 2001.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Australian author Disher delivers an intelligent, atmospheric police procedural, the first of a new series. A serial killer targeting young women along the isolated Old Peninsula Highway has baffled Detective Inspector Hal Challis and his staff. Himself a resident of the Peninsula, as the locals call the sleepy "comma of land hooking into the sea south-east of Melbourne," Challis leads a solitary life. We soon learn that his wife Angela has spent the last seven years in prison for conspiring with her lover to murder him. Nicknamed "the dragon man," Challis in his spare time obsessively restores a vintage airplane, a Dragon Rapide. Indeed, as we meet the other police officers, it becomes clear that they're as interesting, not to mention as complex and morally ambiguous, as any of the criminals they seek. Pam Murphy, for instance, is an idealistic young constable recovering from a car crash and a nervous breakdown, and Sergeant Kees van Alphen raids the evidence locker for cocaine, which he trades for sex. Fans of such gritty yet cerebral crime novelists as Ian Rankin and Jack Harvey should be well pleased. (Aug. 15) Forecast: Disher's literary standing (his novel The Sunken Road was nominated for the Booker Prize), Soho's reputation for quality (a Soho title won the Edgar for Best First Novel this year) and increasing U.S. interest in foreign crime writers all bode well for sales. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
A serial killer targeting young women is on the loose on the Old Peninsula Highway, located on a comma-shaped peninsula jutting into the sea, southeast of Melbourne. Detective Inspector Hal Challis is in charge of the investigation, along with a rash of burglaries and arson cases. Two women have been murdered, and a third has disappeared, leading the locals to worry that negative publicity will keep tourists from enjoying the peninsula as their holiday spot. Although the plot centers on the serial killer, other officers work other crimes, including the case of a mysterious woman, part of a witness-protection program, who is terrified when her mailbox is set alight. The beautifully described setting lets the reader feel the oppressive heat of a December summer in Australia, and the characters are well drawn and distinct. Challis himself is a likable, honorable police officer fighting his own demons along with corrupt colleagues and inept superiors. A solid new series from genre vet Disher. --Sue O'Brien Copyright 2004 Booklist
Bookseller Publisher Review
The problem with reading lots of crime fiction is that, after a while, plots are easy to anticipate, murderers can be identified early in the text and protagonists often conform to the same character profile. This makes for frustrating reading, even if the avid reader has an enjoyable time setting `personal best' targets for how early in the text he or she guesses whodunit. Gary Disher's latest offering is one of these titles. This is unfortunate, as Disher is a classy writer whose prose deserves a better plot and whose main character deserves fleshing out. Set on Melbourne's Mornington Peninsula, The Dragon Man covers the investigation of a series of murder-rapes. The bodies of two young female victims have already been found and Detective Inspector Hal Challis and Sergeant Ellen Destry are out to find the person responsible before he strikes again. With a number of subplots, including the ubiquitous marriage on the rocks and a threat to one of the copper's loved ones, The Dragon Man keeps, rather than grips, the reader's attention. The first in a new series from the author of the Wyatt thrillers, let's hope that the Dragon Man's next case holds at least a few surprises. Virginia Maxwell is a Melbourne-based reviewer. C. 1999 Thorpe-Bowker and contributors
Kirkus Review
A harried police force in southern Australia tries to apprehend a serial killer while coping with diverse minor infractions and major personal problems. The murder of young Jane Gideon casts a pall over the imminent Christmas holidays on The Peninsula, a "coastal comma" southeast of Melbourne, and prompts talk of a serial killer, since another local woman was killed in a similar manner one week earlier. When Detective Inspector Hal Challis, who recently survived an attempt on his life by his wife and her lover, both now in prison, arrives from out of town to supervise the probe, he's promptly taken into custody by one of his new junior officers, overeager Constable John Tankard. Challis's ex still manages to ring him up occasionally from prison. Tankard's woebegone partner Pam Murphy, officious detective Ellen Destry, and the other Peninsula constables have comparably messy personal lives, rivaling those of the petty criminals with whom they're locked in constant combat. Challis's adjustment to his new assignment and locale is smoothed by a relationship with tabloid editor Tessa Kane fraught with professional ethics issues. The hunt for the serial killer proceeds with methodical slowness, but there's no dearth of other minor cases, involving arson, burglary, and drug abuse. This series debut from the prolific Disher (The Sunken Road, 1996, etc.) doesn't read like one, thanks to fully formed characters and wall-to-wall mysteries. The offbeat setting's a bonus for US readers. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
In small-town, southeastern Australia, Detective Inspector Challis and cohorts investigate a serial murderer preying on single women. Before the most recent victim is found, a local reporter receives a letter alluding to her death and to an expected next killing. The usual departmental complications ensue: public resentment of a hard-nosed constable, a problematic investigator who steals drugs for a new-found lover, a resident sex offender, and youngish vandals/burglars. Disher's solid prose connects the fascinating subplots, all centered on the fair-minded, airplane-restoring protagonist. A new award-winning Australian series for all collections. [Previewed in Mystery Prepub Alert, LJ 4/1/04.] (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
Chapter One Detective Inspector Hal Challis showered with a bucket at his feet. He kept it economical, but still the bucket overflowed. He toweled himself dry, dressed, and, while the espresso pot was heating on the bench-top burner in his kitchen, poured the bucket into the washing machine. Couple more showers and he'd have enough water for a load of washing. Only 19 December but already his rainwater tanks were low and a long, dry summer had been forecast. He didn't want to buy water again, not like last summer. The coffee was ready. As he poured he glanced at an old calendar pinned to the corkboard above his bench. He'd bought the calendar by mail order three years ago, and kept it opened at March. The vintage airplane for that month was a prototype of the de Havilland DH84 Dragon. Then the toaster pinged and Challis hunted for the butter and the jam and finally took his toast and coffee on to the deck at the rear of his house. The early sun reached him through the wisteria with the promise of a hot day ahead. He felt bone-tired. A suspected abduction on the Old Peninsula Highway two nights ago--the investigation ultimately dumped into his lap. Frankston uniforms had taken the call, then referred it to the area Superintendent, who'd rung at 1 a.m. and said, "Maybe your boy's struck a second time, Hal." Challis had spent the next four hours at the scene, directing a preliminary search. When he'd got home again at 5 a.m. yesterday there hadn't seemed much point in going back to bed, and he'd spent the rest of the day in the car or on the phone. A little four-stroke engine was chugging away on the bank of his neighbor's dam. Cows once drank there. Now the cows were gone and the hillside stretched back in orderly rows of vines. Challis couldn't spot his neighbor among the vines, but the man was there somewhere. He usually was, weeding, pruning, spraying, picking. Challis thought of the insecticide spray, of the wind carrying it to his roof, where the rain would wash it into his underground tank, and he tossed out his coffee. He stepped down from the verandah and made a circuit of his boundary fence. Half a hectare, on a dirt lane west of the Old Peninsula Highway, tucked in among orchards, vineyards and a horse stud, and Challis made this walk every morning and evening as a kind of check on his feelings. Five years now, and still the place was his port in a storm. As he collected the Age from his mailbox on the dirt lane at the front of his property, a voice called from the next driveway, "Hal, have you got a minute?" The man from the vineyard was walking toward him. Small, squint-eyed from the angling sun, about sixty. Challis waited, gazing calmly, as he did with suspects, and sure enough the man grew edgy. Challis stopped himself. The fellow didn't deserve his CIB tricks. "What can I do for you?" "Look, I realize it's nothing, but you know the ornamental lake I've got, over near the house?" "Yes." "Someone's been fishing in it," the neighbor said. "After the trout. The thing is, they're scaring the birds away." Ibis, herons, a black swan, moorhens. Challis had watched them for half an hour one day, from a little hide the man had constructed in the reeds. "Do you know who?" "Probably kids. I found a couple of tangled lines and fishhooks, half a dozen empty Coke cans." Challis nodded. "Have you informed the local station?" I thought, you being an inspector--" "Inform the local station," Challis said. "They'll send a car around now and then, make their presence felt." "Can't you . . ." "I'm very sorry, but it would look better if you lodged the complaint." Challis left soon after that. He locked the house, backed his Triumph out of the garage and turned right at his gate, taking the lane in bottom gear. In winter he negotiated potholes, mud and minor flooding; in summer, corrugations and treacherous soft edges. He drove east, listening to the eight o'clock news. At five minutes past eight he turned on to the Old Peninsula Highway, meeting it quite near the abduction scene, and headed south, toward the town of Waterloo, hearing the screams the dying leave behind them. He could have been more helpful to the neighbor. He wondered what the man thought of him, a detective inspector and "New Peninsula." The Peninsula. People talked about it as if it were cohesive and indivisible. You only did that if you didn't know it, Challis thought. You only did that if you thought its distinctive shape--a comma of land hooking into the sea southeast of Melbourne--gave it a separate identity, or if you'd driven through it once and seen only beaches, farmland and quiet coastal towns. Not that it covered a large area--less than an hour by road from top to bottom, and about twenty minutes across at its widest point--but to a policeman like Challis there were several Peninsulas. The old Peninsula of small farms and orchards, secluded country estates, some light industry and fishing, and sedate coastal towns populated by retirees and holidaying families, was giving way to boutique wineries, weekender farms, and back roads populated with bed-and-breakfast cottages, potteries, naturopathy clinics, reception centers, tearooms and galleries. Tourism was one of the biggest industries, and people with professions--like Challis himself--were flocking to buy rural hideaways. Some local firms made a good living from erecting American-style barns and installing pot-belly stoves, and costly four-wheel drives choked the local townships. But although there was more money about, it wasn't necessarily going to more people. A community center counsellor friend of Challis's had told him of the growing number of homeless, addicted kids she dealt with. Industries and businesses were closing, even as families were moving into the cheap housing developments that were spreading at the fringes of the main towns, Waterloo and Mornington. The shire council, once one of the biggest employers, was cutting expenses to the bone, using managers whose sense of humanity had been cut to the bone. The adjustments were never forewarned or carried out face to face. Challis's counsellor friend now sold home-made pickles and jams at fairs and markets. There had been a letter, telling her she was redundant, her whole unit closed down. "Just three days' notice, Hal." It was happening everywhere, and the police were usually the ones to pick up the pieces. Which didn't mean that the Peninsula wasn't a pleasant place to live in. Challis felt as if he'd come home, finally. And the job suited him. In the old days of murder or abduction investigations he'd been sent all over the state, city and bush, with a squad of specialists, but the Commissioner had introduced a new system, intended to give local CIB officers experience in the investigation of serious crimes alongside their small-time burglaries, assaults and thefts. Now senior homicide investigators like Challis worked a specific beat. Challis's was the Peninsula. Although he had an office in regional headquarters, he spent most of his time in the various Peninsula police stations, conducting investigations with the help of the local CIB, calling in the specialists only if he got derailed or bogged down. It was a job that entailed tact, and giving as much responsibility to the local CIB as possible, or the fallout was resentment and a foot-dragging investigation. He didn't expect that from the Waterloo CIB. He'd worked with them before. Challis drove south for twenty kilometers. The highway ran down the eastern side of the Peninsula, giving him occasional glimpses of the bay. Then the Waterloo refinery came into view across the mangrove flats, bright oily flames on the chimneys, and glaring white tanks. There was a large tanker at anchor. The highway became a lesser road, bisecting a new housing estate, the high plank fences on either side hiding rooftops that varied greatly but were never more than a meter apart. He crossed the railway line and turned right, skirting the town, then left on to a main road that took him past timber merchants, boat yards, Peninsula Cabs, crash repairers, an aerobics center, the Fiddlers Creek pub and a corner lot crammed with ride-on mowers and small hobby tractors. The police station and the adjacent courthouse were on a roundabout at the end of High Street, opposite a Pizza Hut. Challis glanced down High Street as he turned. The water glittered at the far end; frosted Santas, reindeer, sleighs, candles, mangers and bells swung from lampposts and trees. He parked in the side street opposite the main entrance to the police station, got out, and walked into trouble. "That windscreen's not roadworthy." A uniformed constable, who had been about to get into a divisional van that idled outside the station with a young woman constable at the wheel, had changed his mind and was approaching Challis, flipping open his infringement book and fishing in his top pocket for a pen. He's going to book me, Challis thought. "I've ordered a new windscreen." "Not good enough." The Triumph was low-slung. On the back roads of the Peninsula, it was always copping stones and pebbles, and one had cracked the windscreen on the passenger side. "This your car?" "It is." A snapping of fingers: "License." Challis complied. The constable was large--tall and bigboned, but also carrying too much weight. He was young, the skin untested by time and the elements, and his hair was cut so short that his scalp showed through. Challis had an impression of acres of pink flesh. "Quickly, quickly." A classic bully, Challis thought. Then the constable saw the name on Challis's license, but, to his credit, did not flinch. "Challis. Inspector Challis?" "Yes." "Sir, that windscreen's not roadworthy. It's also dangerous." "I realize that. I've ordered a new one." The constable watched him for a long moment, then nodded. He put his book away. "Fair enough." Challis hadn't wanted to be booked, and telling the constable to follow the rules and book him would have been an embarrassment and an irritation for both of them, so he said nothing. The constable turned and made for the van. Challis watched it leave. "A real prick, that one," a voice said. There was a work-dented Jeep parked outside the courthouse. The rear doors were open and a man wearing overalls was unloading air-conditioning vents. Challis glanced at the side of the Jeep: Rhys Hartnett Air-Conditioning. "The bastard did me over yesterday. Hadn't been here five minutes and he booked me for a cracked tail-light. Shouted in my face, spit flying, like I was some kind of criminal." Challis steered the conversation away from that. "Are you working in the police station?" The man shook his head. "The courthouse." He snapped a business card at Challis. He did it in a way that seemed automatic, and Challis had a vision of hundreds of people walking around with unwanted cards in their pockets. He glanced at it. Rhys Hartnett, Air-Conditioning Specialist. "Well, I wish you were doing the police station." Hartnett seemed to straighten. "You a copper?" "Yes." "Just my luck. I was wasting my breath complaining to you about police tactics." "Not necessarily," Challis said, turning away and crossing the road. Excerpted from The Dragon Man by Garry Disher All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.