Review: To Catch A Spy by Tim Tate

Synopsis: The Spycatcher affair remains one of the most intriguing moments in the history of British intelligence and a pivotal point in the public's relationship with the murky world of espionage and security. It lifted the lid on alleged Soviet infiltration of British services and revealed a culture of law-breaking, bugging and burgling. But how much do we know about the story behind the scandal?

In To Catch a Spy, Tim Tate reveals the astonishing true story of the British government's attempts to silence whistleblower Peter Wright and hide the truth about Britain's intelligence services and political elites. It's a story of state-sanctioned cover-up plots; of the government lying to Parliament and courts around the world; and of stories leaked with the intention to mislead and deceive.

This is a tale of high treason and low farce. Drawing on thousands of pages of previously unpublished court transcripts, the contents of secret British government files, and original interviews with many of the key players in the Spycatcher trials, it draws back the curtain on a hidden world. A world where spies, politicians and Britain's most senior civil servants conspired to ride roughshod over the law, prevented the public from hearing about their actions and mounted a cynical conspiracy to deceive the world. It is the story of Peter Wright's ruthless and often lawless obsession to uncover Russian spies, both real and imagined, his belated determination to reveal the truth and the lengths to which the British government would go to silence him.

~ ~ ~

This is definitely a valuable companion piece to Wright's "Spycatcher".

I got my copy of "Spycatcher" as soon as I could when it hit the shelves here Australia - it is well worn and much read. So to say that I was eager to get my hands on Tate's book with its updated (and newly released) documentation pertaining to the court case to prevent the publication of "Spycatcher" would be an understatement.

It is a meticulously researched and documented account of the "Spycatcher" court case, of its author, Peter Wright, and of the UK governments attempts to keep the long hidden secrets of the British secret service, long hidden still. As mentioned, recently released archived documents have supplemented this work, meaning that much written directly after the original case, has been fleshed out and given context, and in some instances, superseded (and not to the detriment of the original authors).

Tate compared the UK government's attempts to silence Wright to Lewis Carroll's "Hunting of the Snark" - a pointless and uniquely British farce! And this sums things up quite well.

This book, in addition to refreshing my memory of the case (causing me more than once to glance at my copy of "Spycatcher" on my bookshelves) and also reminded me that the counsel for the defence (ie: Malcolm Turnbull) later wrote a book on the trial, titled "The Spycatcher Trial", and rose to become Australia's 29th Prime Minister.

This is definitely one for those interested in the history of the British secret service and of the "Spycatcher" case. One I will be adding to my own library.

Review: Dogboy V Catfish by Luke Gracias

Synopsis: On the day of her second wedding, Katherine Fisher, aka 'Catfish' set the date for her divorce. In precisely 18 months, she would be entitled to half of their combined assets and receive maintenance payments until her five- year-old daughter, Emma, turns 18. Just as Catfish was about to take her husband, Lindsay 'Dogboy' Kramer (a successful businessman and dog whisperer) to the cleaners, he goes missing.

The police investigation into Dogboy's disappearance leads them into the dark world of counterfeit designer goods, money laundering, and drug smuggling. With Dogboy's assets frozen and the mob protecting their interests, the missing persons case escalates to homicide. Catfish is in a race against time to get hold of Dogboy's assets before the police get hold of her.

One question remains - is Dogboy dead or alive?

~ ~ ~

This is my "read" of the year!

Gracias' excellent narrative provides for an engaging and thrilling "whodunnit" when a former beauty queen marries a loner for his money and begins divorce proceedings before the ink has even dried on the marriage certificate. Unfortunately, said bride soon finds that everything she thought she was getting, quickly turns to dust and slips through her fingers as her sordid past comes back to bite her in the arse.

This is a departure from Gracias' other two books - but it is a strong stand-alone. I read this in one sitting - driven by the compulsion to keep reading and wanting to know the fate Dogboy. For someone to win, someone must lose - would it be Dogboy or Catfish?.

Review: Catch Us The Foxes by Nicola West

Synopsis: Some secrets you try to hide. Others you don’t dare let out … Twin Peaks meets The Dry in a deliciously dark and twisted tale that unravels a small town.

Ambitious young journalist Marlowe ‘Lo’ Robertson would do anything to escape the suffocating confines of her small home town. While begrudgingly covering the annual show for the local paper, Lo is horrified to discover the mutilated corpse of Lily Williams, the reigning showgirl and Lo’s best friend. Seven strange symbols have been ruthlessly carved into Lily’s back. But when Lo reports her grisly find to the town’s police chief, he makes her promise not to tell anyone about the symbols. Lo obliges, though it’s not like she has much of a choice – after all, he is also her father.

When Lily’s murder makes headlines around the country and the town is invaded by the media, Lo seizes the opportunity to track down the killer and make a name for herself by breaking the biggest story of her life.

What Lo uncovers is that her sleepy home town has been harbouring a deadly secret, one so shocking that it will captivate the entire nation. Lo’s story will change the course of her life forever, but in a way she could never have dreamed of.

I don't tend to wax lyrical about a book but in this case I will make a rare exception.

I am going to put this forward as one of my must read psychological thrillers for the year - right up there with two of my past favourites - Killing The Girl and The Creak on the Stairs.

I - and probably much to the angst of the publisher - recommend having a physical copy of this book as you will often find yourself moving backwards and forwards, thinking you have missed some little clue, as the author dangles much before you, only to snatch it away at the last moment.

This book is - to use a colloquialism - an onion. There are so many layers that the reader really does need to pay attention. The synopsis really does give the reader a slight inkling as to what to expect - but you are being deceived. And don't think that by skipping to the end you have the whole story - you don't! You will find yourself sucker punched a number of times before the ending is revealed.

In the words of our protagonist: " ...... I know better than anyone just how alluring a conspiracy theory could be ..... I had fallen for it's allure ... it was a better story than the truth ..." - but what is truth, what is conspiracy and what is delusion ....... well, I for one won't be revealing that!

All I will add, is someone had better snap up the film rights to this one rather quickly!

Kiama Visitor Guide 

Rescuing Australia’s lost literary treasures

From Pursuit by The University of Melbourne:

Have you ever gone looking for a particular book and discovered it can’t be found for love nor money?

If so, that’s no surprise. Most Australian books written are now out-of-print and unavailable to readers.

When books go out of print, authors usually have the right to reclaim their copyrights. But what then? Digitising books is expensive, and authors who make that investment and start selling them online (via Amazon, for example) often find that they sink without a trace.

And they can’t make them available in libraries, because those licensing arrangements are all built to go through publishers.

In a new collaboration between authors, libraries and researchers, we’re setting out to change all that.

Untapped: the Australian Literary Heritage Project is creating the infrastructure necessary to rescue Australia’s lost literary treasures and bring them properly back to life.

Working with a national team of library collections experts, we’re building a list of culturally-important lost books, then working with authors to digitise them, license them into libraries, and make them available for sale.

read more here @ Pursuit by The University of Melbourne

Books: Irish - Australian History

Some titles from The History Press focusing on the transportation of the Irish to Australia in the 18th & 19th Centuries.

Mutiny or Murder?: The Bloodsoaked Voyage of the Chapman Convict Ship by Conor Reidy

On 15 March 1817 the convict ship the Chapman departed from Cork with 200 male prisoners on board. When it dropped anchor off Sydney Cove four months later, its prison doors opened to reveal 160 gaunt and brutalised men. Twelve were dead and twenty-eight lay wounded in the hospital below deck.

As officials pieced together the horrors of the voyage many questions arose. Why did Michael Collins claim that his fellow convicts conspired to take the ship? Why was Captain Drake unable to rein in the violent and sadistic Third Mate Baxter? Was there really an attempted mutiny on the Chapman? Or was this cold-blooded murder?

Using daily journals from the crew, detailed testimony from several convicts and official colonial government correspondence, this book unravels what happened during those four months at sea. Tarnished by intrigue, suspicion and mutual hatred, this is the story of one of the darkest episodes in the history of penal transportation between Ireland and Australia.

Van Diemen's Women: A History Of Transportation To Tasmania by Joan Kavanagh & Dianne Snowden 

On 2 September 1845, the convict ship Tasmania left Kingstown Harbour for Van Diemen’s Land with 138 female convicts and their 35 children. On 3 December, the ship arrived into Hobart Town. While this book looks at the lives of all the women aboard, it focuses on two women in particular: Eliza Davis, who was transported from Wicklow Gaol for life for infanticide, having had her sentence commuted from death, and Margaret Butler, sentenced to seven years’ transportation for stealing potatoes in Carlow.

Using original records, this study reveals the reality of transportation, together with the legacy left by these women in Tasmania and beyond, and shows that perhaps, for some, this Draconian punishment was, in fact, a life-saving measure.

Undaunted by John Wright

Undaunted is a collection of true stories about Irish men and women who travelled to Australia in search of a better life and battled against the odds in a remote and harsh world. From 1788 when the first convict ships landed to the mid-20th century, these true stories about settlers, convicts and their descendants highlight the best and worst of human behaviour in the kinds of dilemma that faced newcomers. This book tells the story of the Irish contribution to this struggle.

The Shocking Secrets of The Suitcase Baby

From Hachette Australia - Tanya Bretherton on her book The Suitcase Baby:

SYDNEY, 1923: a suitcase washed up on a harbourside beach reveals its grisly contents - and from there, an extraordinary story unfolds.

During the process of researching The Suitcase Baby I began to realise that although the term ‘true crime’ may not have existed in the 1920s, public delight in criminality and the macabre has existed for a very long time. Stories which provide an overly detailed account of very gruesome criminal events filled the pages of 1920s newspapers, but also news reports going back into the nineteenth century as well. Newspaper editors have always devoted a huge amount of copy to the reporting of criminal events and the moral and legal implications arising from them. Murder and mayhem certainly sells newspapers today, but the same could also be said two hundred years ago. 

The research I undertook for The Suitcase Baby was fascinating because it became about so much more than just one woman’s story. Sarah took risks and she challenged social norms surrounding marriage and family but she paid a huge price for it, and so did her children. Unfortunately, many women at the time also found themselves in similarly terrible, and ultimately tragic predicaments.

read more @ Hachette Australia

Passing of Sydney author Peter Corris

From Business Insider:

Being mostly published in London for the curiosity of the English, Australian crime fiction had followed European models, with some major success like Fergus Hume’s best-selling "The Mystery of a Hansom Cab" (1886), and the fine series of mysteries by post-second world war women writers June Wright, “Margot Neville”, Pat Flower and Pat Carlon. But local crime fiction was little publicised and had little impact – the books mostly came into libraries from London.

English business interests and Australian outlooks changed as time passed. Then, in 1980, Peter Corris’s The Dying Trade appeared, a crime story which was American in its influence, fully Australian in its spirit, and both published and strongly publicised at home. The novel was the first adventure of a tough, but at times sensitive, Sydney private eye with the wonderfully Australian name, offering both geography and morality, Cliff Hardy.

But what Corris will be most remembered for, and what he kept flowing in novels — and also in a number of short stories – were the adventures of Cliff Hardy. Cliff was drinking and chasing women a lot back in 1980. He calmed down in both departments, but kept at his investigations of corruption and malpractice, both business-oriented and personal.

Through his hero, with his physical and moral echt-Australian name Cliff Hardy, and through his lucid, calm plotting, Corris has matched Raymond Chandler in the modern world’s dominant crime form.

read more here @ Business Insider

Review - Sydney Noir edited by John Dale

Sydney Noir is truly reflective of our Aussie culture - its is multicultural, humourous, sardonic, intuitive, and at times, like all good noir, truly dark. The theme of water is prevalent as areas around the iconic Sydney Harbour provide the perfect window onto the dimly suburban streets.

Heartline by Brendan David Carson

A little bit of gratuitous book plugging for a facebook friend, Brendan David Carson:

One doctor's first few years - in the emergency department, in psychiatry, in the prisons and on the public methadone programme. Unexpected births, sicknesses, deaths - and two or maybe three resurrections. What board games they play in the hereafter, the health department protocol for vampire hunting, when not to call the psychiatrist and why not to buy a used car from an Emergency doctor. Chemotherapy and radiotherapy for psychiatric illness, the death of Supergirl - and what it feels like to be responsible for somebody's death. 

This is my record of a few years in which my life changed a lot, working as a wide-eyed junior doctor in emergency departments, in psychiatric wards, and on the state's largest methadone programme. Names and dates and identifying characteristics have been changed, but everything I've written here is true. 

Visit Amazon to check out Brendan's book in paperback and kindle formats.