Sue Williams (9)Anmeldelser

Fun, local Murder mystery with a humorous twist. Would love to visit Rusty Bore!

Cass Tuplin is back, muddling her way through another mystery in Rusty Bore, a small drought stricken town out on the middle of the Mallee.

"Dead men don’t order flake. But that’s exactly what Leo Stone asked for the April afternoon he strolled in, his gladiator shoulders filling up my shop doorway. A blast of cold wind whirled in behind him, slapping the fly strips against the wall."

Cass's old flame has walked back inter her life, her takeaway shop to be precise, after twenty years presumed to be dead.

"I stood there in gobsmacked silence. Twenty-odd years ago we had a top-notch memorial service for Leo. Every one of Rusty Bore’s hundred and forty-seven residents made it. The church was full of the sound of stifled sobs by the time Ernie got up to do the eulogy'

Full of mixed feelings, confused, angry that he hadn't attempted to contact her over those twenty years, wary over a potential partner Serena, Cass is unsure what to do so she charges him $9.50 for his fish and chips and tries to get some perspective.

All this is put on hold when she is asked by a grieving father to look into the death of his daughter, local reporter, in a single car accident involving a tree on the notorious Jensen Corner.

"I sat still a moment. Natalie Kellett. That’s why I knew the name: Natalie Kellett died in that car crash on Jensen Corner. It’s a renowned black spot; my own mother died there when I was a kid. Named after the first person that crashed and died there: Alistair Jensen, back in 1950-something, decades before my mum. Nice for the bloke to be remembered for something, I suppose. It doesn’t seem to matter how many accidents happen there, apparently there’s no money to fix that bit of road."

This simple request puts Cass into a mix of corruption, climate change coal versus solar investments, Government inquiries, fracking, more suspicious deaths, battles with her disbelieving son Senior Constable Dean and troubles with her environmentalists son Brad.

This novel is set some sixteen months after her first novel "Murder With The Lot". Williams again fills her mystery with an assortment of the odd characters found in any dead and dying country town. The wealthy town of Muddy Soak lording it over poor Rusty Bore.

It's a tongue in check take of the amateur meddling 'lady detective' transplanted into the most unlikely of small towns, Rusty Bore.
It's a delight.

p.s. Flake is a term used in Australia to indicate the flesh of any of several species of small shark, particularly the gummy shark. The term probably arose in the late 1920s when the large-scale commercial shark fishery off the coast of Victoria was established. Until that time, shark was generally an incidental catch rather than a targeted species. Its is the standard fish you receive when you order fish & chips.

Quirky crime novel set in a drought affected small town called Rusty Bore in Victoria's Mallee. Rusty Bore is down to two shops, Cass Tuplin's takeaway and Vern's General Store.
Even the pub has gone.

Into Cass's takeaway, ordering a hamburger with the lot and chips, in a hurry, which immediately offended Cass's sensibilities, her hamburgers and chips are not to be rushed, came Clarence.
Gripping his briefcase with white knuckled desperation, Clarence further offended Cass by amending the order.
‘Oh, no onions,’ he said. ‘Or beetroot or egg. And I hate pineapple.’

His suit sleeve was torn and he was bleeding on her pristine floor and kept glancing out the door as if he was being followed.
Clarence refused offers of medical attention and asked if there was somewhere quite in the area he could rent to write his book.

Cass remembered Ernie's old shack up by Perry Lake, run down but serviceable. Paying Cass $5,000 in cash Clarence rushed off, asking that she keep his whereabouts quiet.

Then the body turned up, or did it. Cass is forced to solve this mystery on her own when he local Senior Sergent, her son Dean, refused to believe her, on account of the body not being there.

Williams cleverly captures small town people and the everyone knows everything atmosphere. Plot twists and misadventure abounds as more people go missing and Cass's credibility threatens to prevent anyone believing her. It doesn't help that Cass frequently jumps to the wrong conclusions, doesn't listen, and is fearlessly stubborn.

There are times in life when you just need something frivolous, fun and slightly tongue in cheek. Australian readers are lucky to have the Cass Tuplin series from Sue Williams to fulfil that need.

The tongue in cheek bit is the important thing to remember when it comes to Cass Tuplin books - from the titles: MURDER WITH THE LOT / DEAD MEN DON'T ORDER FLAKE and now LIVE AND LET FRY you can kind of gather there's a good old-style fish and chip shop somewhere in the mix here. In this case in the fictional Victorian Mallee town of Rusty Bore, just down the road from Hustle, not far from Sheep Dip, and a few hours straight road travelling through Ouyen to Mildura. Some of us have probably taken an educated guess at the likely inspiration and one or two of us may have actually ordered a minimum chips in such a locale. Cass Tuplin is most definitely not a licensed investigator, she's a good neighbour, an inveterate sticky-nose with a sideline in caring about people, mother of two sons (one uptight cop / one laid back environmentalist) and she's most definitely not cut from the same cloth as a well-known ex-proprietor of a similar establishment from Queensland.

You expect with a Cass Tuplin book that you're going to get a hefty dose of daft fun and it's served up neatly wrapped in butchers paper in LIVE AND LET FRY. It would help a lot if you've read the two earlier books as the cast of eccentric locals is important, and their back stories interwined to the point of knotted. You might want to take a seat for a minute as this is going to get complicated but Vern (who runs the convenience store in Rusy Bore, is Cass's closest neighbour, once was suitor, now besotted with the new woman in Sheep Dip, who has opened a bookshop in an old church (why nobody can quite fathom)), wants Cass to help get to the bottom of odd phone calls and dumped mutilated rats on his Joanne's doorstep. Which leads Cass via Sheep Dip and a tattooed hitman, to a private detective named Mel, a dead bloke in a house fire, a dead woman in a river, a property developer and his chauffeur/helicopter pilot, a missing pump leading to lost love, Mildura based environmental consultants, a casino and harbour development, some odd photographs, a residence attached to a fish and chip shop filled with ferrets (not good for Health and Safety), her policeman son's marriage collapsing, his complicit boss, a long-distance love affair in trouble, a hefty belt over the head in a toilet block in Ouyen, a bus crash in Bolivia and a paddle steamer. And some solid connections between them all. I kid you not, and all in pretty rapid succession so you'd better be paying attention.

Needless to say madcap, fast paced, silly and fun. All delivered in Cass's own personal style which is a sort of combination caring, blithely unaware, manipulative, helpful, blundering, clever, self-deprecating, self-aware and blissfully unself-aware. Simultaneously.

This is one of those series that has developed into something delightfully entertaining, Cass's tone and style have matured into just the right level of personal daft, and the eccentricities are nicely balanced against a plot that's actually quite believable. Definitely one for fans of something that will make them laugh, and for those of us who live around the same locale, one that will make you wonder whether or not this author has been doing some ear-wigging around the local fish and chip shop.

https://www.austcrimefiction.org/review/live-and-let-fry-sue-williams

In crime fiction, particularly at the lighter, cosier end of the genre spectrum one of the issues that authors have to deal with is what I’ll call the Cabot Cove Effect. That being that in reality small towns and communities simply do not experience the number and variety of murders worthy of dramatic re-telling that even one book, let alone a series of them, demands. So there has to be something else about the books that makes it possible for readers to suspend disbelief. In my experience a lot of authors completely fail to achieve this which is the main reason I follow so few lighter series (many are started, few are finished). Having now published the second of what I hope will become a longer series of books set in the fictional Victorian town of Rusty Bore, population 147, Sue Williams could give lessons on how to get it right.

DEAD MEN DON’T ORDER FLAKE follows on from MURDER WITH THE LOT but you don’t have to have read the first book in order to enjoy this one. That fact is worth stating explicitly as it’s often difficult to dive into a series at anything other than the beginning so I am impressed when a book stands on its own merits. Furthermore, you could easily go back and read the first book after this one which is even less common. Full marks.

The next element Williams gets right is the tone of the story. It can’t be too serious (because of the aforementioned Cabot Cove Effect) but it can’t be so silly or gimmick-laden that it induces eye rolling in the average reader. Aside from the fact that there’s a higher than credible murder count for a small town, everything else about the story has a ring of truth so it is easy to ignore that one issue and go for the ride. The dead man of this book’s title is Leo Stone, an old flame of series heroine Cass Tuplin. Everyone in town thought Leo was dead. So dead they even held a remembrance ceremony and gave him a headstone. But he’s turned up now very much alive and with gun and/or diamond smuggling skills to his name. Or so the rumour mill goes. Meanwhile Cass is asked by the father of a local reporter to investigate her death. Police – in the form of Cass’ oldest son Dean – say Natalie Kellett was speeding and crashed her car at a notorious black spot. But her father is convinced this isn’t true. Could she have been working on a story important enough to have gotten her killed? Finding out proves to be very entertaining with lots of humour offsetting the dramatic moments.

The characters here are the sorts of people you work with or are related to or are neighbours with. OK maybe you don’t know anyone who owns multiple ferrets and don’t have a potential in-law who makes you buy g-string underwear while it’s on sale but I bet most of the characters display traits you are familiar with. The result is that it’s almost like being told a story about people you know. Sometimes they are annoying – I find Cass a mite too wrapped up in her adult children’s lives for example – but that’s what makes them realistic. And collectively Williams has created a group of people who are interesting and fun.

Based on the number of unfinished ones littering my ‘books to donate’ pile I suspect it sounds a lot easier than it actually is to wrte this kind of book well. Sue Williams has the balance of humour and drama just about perfect and without going over the top on ‘ocker traits’ provides an authentic Australian sensibility for this story. With a dash of nefarious local politics, a mysterious romantic element and terrific minor characters spanning twenty-somethings to the elderly there is something – or someone – for every reader.

Cass Tuplin has returned in second book DEAD MEN DON'T ORDER FLAKE. Proprietor of the recently rebuilt Rusty Bore Takeway, she's a fish, chip and dim sim dispenser extraordinaire with a sideline in private enquiries. Which means she's one of those slightly nosy women who can find out stuff, despite objections from her eldest son, and local Senior Constable, Dean. Her propensity to dig until dirt moves out of the way is part of the reason why a local father, Gary Kellett, asks her to look further into the death of his only daughter. Natalie was a journalist in the "big town up the road" Muddy Soak, and her death in a car accident at a notorious traffic blackspot was put down to poor driving, until Cass starts looking around, and Dean starts getting a bit huffy about the question marks over police conclusions.

Now you'd expect that an investigation like that would ruffle a few local feathers - not just Dean's - but Cass has the state of her own plumage to worry about as well. The return of presumed-dead, teenage heart-throb, and previous romantic interest is causing mild interest in lots of places. When Leo Stone casually wanders into the Rusty Bore Takeaway, acting like his twenty year disappearing act, and the headstone in the cemetery (incidentally organised by Cass) are just a blip in the timeline of their shared attraction, the questions over where he's actually been and what he's been up to fight for prominence with the questions about that car accident. To say nothing of what happened to a watch that went missing many years before.

Needless to say, if you hadn't worked it out from the blurb, this is a humorous, on the eccentric / cosy side, Australian rural series, set somewhere fictional in the Wimmera / Mallee of Victoria (in other words just up the road), populated by a mildly dotty crowd of locals with a track record (after two books) of death and destruction that is starting to feel like it could give Midsomer Murders a run for their money.

Told from Cass's viewpoint, the first book in the series, MURDER WITH THE LOT, did for self-deprecating humour what over-salting takeaway chips can do, but the balance in the second book is much better. There's still plenty of one-liners and a lot of wry observations, but they don't hold up advancement of plot, and Cass doesn't come across as quite the flake (pun only slightly intended) that she might have in the earlier novel. As with the earlier book, the investigation is only part of life - it goes up against the ongoing business workload, the problems with maintaining good relationships with two sons and their love interests, offers of more than friendship from the other shop-owner in town, and the need to be there for the older members of the community. And the long-lost love interest, now unencumbered by fiancé's, husbands, potential mothers-in-law, and the daftness of youth.

The plot here is good - with interwoven elements between the present and the past nicely held together with a combination of believability and local involvement to support that. There's also some good old fashioned motivations behind a lot of actions - money, power, prestige - human nature being what it is regardless of size of location. Lovers of dogs might also want to be aware that all's not well in that department, although a supporting cast of ferrets fare considerably better.

DEAD MEN DON'T ORDER FLAKE obviously comes from the entertaining side of crime fiction. It's central character is one of those women of a certain age, unencumbered by the constraints of expectation and "rules of behaviour" that age, experience and a certain level of "who gives a..." provides, eventually, to us all. The only downside to DEAD MEN DON'T ORDER FLAKE is personal as there are fish and chip shops in small Mallee towns that I have a lot of trouble going into without a bit of a giggle. Luckily last time I was in one, the bloke behind the counter didn't have red hair, and didn't have the slightest idea what I was laughing about.

https://www.austcrimefiction.org/review/review-dead-men-dont-order-flake-sue-wil...

Vern's general store and my place constitute the CBD of Rusty Bore, along with a row of three galvanised-steel silos. It's a town endowed with a royal flush of used-to-haves since the school, the pub and even the op shop closed down.

Sue Williams' writing displays a quirky sardonic tone that she manages to sustain throughout the novel. It shows in the town names - Rusty Bore, Hustle, and Muddy Soak - and in the characters who populate her novel, particularly in her central character Cass Tuplin.

Leading Senior Constable Dean Tuplin is the sole policeman of Hustle and he is convinced that his mother is on the verge of dementia. She has a history of reporting deaths, well she's raised a false alarm once before, and so when she reports a body that then disappears he is not particularly surprised. He blames his brother Brad who lives with his mother for not keeping her under better control. After that Dean doesn't take anything that Cass says seriously, even when her car is stolen, and her takeaway fish and chippery is burnt down. But something very serious is happening in the background and Cass can see that no-one is going to help her get to the bottom of it.

MURDER WITH THE LOT is a farcical romp around the edges of living in Australia's Mallee country, with a murder or two thrown in, and a hefty dose of corruption among those who should know better.

In style the book reminds me of Lisa Lutz and Kathy Lette, so if they are on the list of authors you like you might like to give this Aussie author a try.

In the fictional town of Rusty Bore, Victoria, (population 147) Cass Tuplin runs one of two remaining retail outlets, namely the fish and chip shop. When a dodgy looking young man comes looking for a place to stay, where he can write his book, Cass somewhat reluctantly hands over the keys to her friend Ernie’s shack (Ernie having been placed in a nursing home just recently). But, based on a mixture of her own wild imaginings and the town rumour mill, Cass soon has second thoughts about having possibly let the shack to the wrong sort of person. But before she can evict the new tenant she discovers the body of a woman which goes missing before her policeman son has a chance to see it. With her nearest and dearest thinking she’s losing her marbles and Cass being the ultimate in interfering busy bodies mayhem quickly ensues.

With tongue firmly planted in-cheek Sue Williams has delivered a very Australian novel with loads of chuckles amidst the aforementioned mayhem. Although Cass’ home town and its nearest neighbours are fictional they’re recognisable as not too far from the truth, even to someone who only visits such places occasionally (though all my childhood summer holidays were spent in a town with eery similarities). Cass’ first-person narration with its spot-on observations about the area and its locals and some first-rate dialogue provide an authentically Australian sensibility and are the highlight of the book.

Cass is very funny at times. She is also very annoying at times. Alongside the nicely dry humour and gung-ho attitude she is over-involved in the lives of her two adult sons to a point that would have had me contemplating murder if she were my mother.but I know this doesn’t make her unrealistic. It did make my teeth grate on occasion though which is probably a reflection of my own fierce independence and an entirely different kind of relationship with my own mother. That aspect of her personality aside I did like Cass with her laconic, self deprecating voice and the ensemble cast of characters who surround her are, collectively, a treat (with my personal favourite being her youngest son’s on/off girlfriend Miranda who has a penchant for ferrets and blunt relationship advice).

MURDER WITH THE LOT is the kind of light, fun crime fiction that we don’t seem to produce a lot of in Australia and it’s a fine example of the sub-genre. Of course it veers into far-fetched territory a time or three but that’s part of the fun with this kind of book, and there are some nicely poignant moments which ground the book a little and provide a nice contrast. It’s a nicely paced, gently humoured romp of a tale. Most enjoyable.

MURDER WITH THE LOT is set in the fictional Mallee town of Rusty Bore, featuring Cass Tuplin, fish and chip shop owner, mother, and self-appointed private investigator. The story is told all from Cass's viewpoint, a viewpoint which is somewhat skewed towards a ... how should we put this ... less than realistic outlook. Not only is the Mallee still deep in the middle of the drought that just about broke everyone's spirit, but Rusty Bore is a town that's been hit particularly hard. Loss of people to the "Big Smoke" just down the road, loss of passing traffic, loss of money and even interest from the locals, means that Rusty Bore is quietly rusting to a close. Which doesn't stop Cass from opening the fish and chip shop daily, dolling out the dim sims and a hefty dose of nosiness to the few people she comes across. All the while barracking for her son the cop from the nearest town, and under-estimating her other son, the less successful activist, who comes and goes from the family home. Not that Cass hasn't had her fair share of disappointment, what with the sudden death of her beloved husband, and a passing recognition that there may not be a future in her current life.

Needless to say the storyline of MURDER WITH THE LOT is set up for humour. There are wise cracks and in jokes coming at the reader from all sides. There's the expected red-headed chip shop owner references, the mad mother stuff, the long-suffering son stuff, and the potential merger with the one-armed bloke that runs the General Store... stuff. There's also a lot of slapstick with accidental shootings, much rushing about, car's with non-working door's and love interests who might be a bit dodgy. And there's that good old chestnut - the disappearing body - to be toyed with for quite a long time.

Part of the problem with that sort of first-person viewpoint of everything is that the reader is really going to have to identify with Cass, and she is a very funny character. For a while. Until the point where the humour did seem to become somewhat heavy-handed and repetitive. Which was a pity, as there were ever such tiny glimpses of pathos and self-awareness that just occasionally managed to get their heads above the tide of jokes and thick skin of our Cass.

All of which probably sounds like I didn't really like this book, which isn't strictly true. The central plot was an interesting idea, and I'd be barracking for anything set out here in the bush which doesn't immediately make out that the whole place has mad, toothless locals lurking behind every saltbush just waiting for a city person to terrorise.... I think my real problem with MURDER WITH THE LOT is that I wasn't convinced that Cass needed to play the daft card quite as often as she did. Perhaps it's another book for fans of light-hearted crazy, with a crime at the centre that's less confrontational than you'd think what with shootings, and missing bodies and all. It is, however, probably a book for locals. I suspect overseas readers might be begging for a map, a dictionary of local terminology, a short course in the in-jokes, a compass and probably a tour guide...

http://www.austcrimefiction.org/review/murder-lot-sue-williams