Russell James has been named “the Godfather of Noir” by Ian Rankin. Russell writes crime novels - about criminals and victims, not the cozy procedural or whodunnit. He is the editor of Great British Fictional Detectives.
It’s obvious but no one else has thought of it (practically no one).
Zane Lovitt’s detective, John Dorn, doesn’t handle the kind of high octane cases that widen the eyes and strain the credulity of other authors’ readers; he takes the humdrum everyday cases that make up a real detective’s caseload: adultery, missing persons, delivering summonses.
The twist is that every story has its own twist. There are ten stories in this book – ten cases – and each starts out straightforwardly but twists away off of the map. Usually we start at the end and go back to find how we got there. Sometimes we watch Dorn blunder forward. This, we feel, is how a real detective may work.
The one thing linking John Dorn to other fictional detectives is his love of alcohol. He is a weary, alcoholic loner – a shame really, because everything else about this Australian collection is pretty damn near original.
Give it a try.
