In an ordinary everyday world, there are very few people who would say murder is a reassuringly cosy thing.
It’s dark, it’s violent and terrible and not the sort of thing you usually want to curl on the couch and read about; though, of course, those who listen to true crime podcasts and read the books about it might heartily beg to disagree.
But one of the biggest genres in literature at the moment is the cosy murder mystery, so-named not because the killing itself is a warm hug to the weary soul because clearly murder is never that – and these books don’t pretend that it is; it remains harsh, awful and something best avoided – but because in these stories where jealousy, anger, fury and red herrings reign, justice is not only served but seen to be served and everyone by-and-large ends up with everything sorted and the world a better place than it was at the start of the book.
One of the best writers in his ever-crowded genre is Pamela Hart, a Sydney-based author who first made a cosy murder mystery name for herself with Digging Up Dirt, described by this reviewer last year as “the very best of a genre [which] also manages to be its own marvellously unique creation”, and who has followed this “very modern and rewarding twist on the much-loved and highly-read mystery novel” with a superb second mystery, An A-List For Death.
Now, sitting in Emergency, I heartily wished I’d stayed until she failed to arrive—if I’d found Daisy even an hour earlier, it might have made a difference.
The young cop nodded understandably. ‘You can’t blame yourself,’ he said, as though he’d said it many times before. ‘You did well to get her help when you did.’
But an hour later there was still no news from the Emergency doctors, and I was very much afraid that I’d found Daisy too late. (P. 17)
Set, as was the first novel in Sydney, primarily in the trendy inner western suburbs and northern suburbs beyond the famous Sydney Harbour Bridge, An A-List For Death is a bright, breezy and fun read that’s populated with some great moments of agony for the soul, fear and skullduggery that evokes a slight Murder, She Wrote vibe while possessing a raw and gritty emotional resonance when it needs to.
It is, in many ways, the perfect cosy murder mystery that comes with a winningly Australian flavour that lends a distinctive edge to the novel over so many, admittedly very fine, British and US imports, and which neatly delivers on the craving for beguiling, if confronting, mystery and justice we all have with some lightly rom-com moments and, importantly, a weighty sense that something wicked this way comes.
Or perhaps, it is already here.
Certainly that seems to be the case when TV researcher Poppy McGowan who found herself a reluctant but highly-effective sleuth in Digging Up Dirt, is sent by her ailing but plucky Aunt Mary next door at the retirement complex in which she lives to see if her friend Daisy, a glam girl from the Sixties who still very much has “It”, is all right.
Naturally, she isn’t, and Poppy finds her bleeding and unconscious in the bathroom, a discovery which sets in train a cascading series of events where everyone is a suspect (hurrah!), the police take the word of rank amateurs seriously (though not with some grumbling) and the killer is unknown until right near the end of the novel.
It’s a perfectly wonderful blend of everything you want in a cosy murder mystery and it comes with a hearty dose of emotional muscularity into the mix.
Now, you may think that’s not a feature of many a good but whimsical mystery read but the very best writers, and Hart is definitely up there with them, deftly give us light and bright fun romance and sleuthing with some insightful observations about people and society, meaning that we can have our mysteries solved and feel warmly reassured while still feeling like something of substance has also happened.
It’s a marvellous mix and it’s evident throughout An A-List For Death which also manages to gives us a deepening romance between Poppy and hunky archeologist Tol, who is an equal to his new girlfriend and not her saviour establishing Poppy as the sort of feminist sleuth our modern age demands, and some grounded humanity, the kind that makes it all feel like this sort of mystery could happen to anyone.
It couldn’t, of course, because the coincidences and bodies and deadly secrets and heartless manoeuvring are too plentiful to be anything but resident in Midsomer Murders territory, but that’s a great deal of the delight of novels like this – they are over the top in the very best of ways but held fast to earth by some neat touches of raw humanity, the kind that makes characters like Poppy and Tol, her Aunt Mary and the attacked but feisty Daisy feels deliciously and rewardingly relatable.
‘He’s a snake, and snakes will strike you when you least expect it.’
Okay. She knew him better than I did, after all. I just wished we had some hard evidence that he was up to no good. (P. 219)
You want to spend time with these people who, despite all the murders and chaos and upsetting of the status quo, not to mention corruption and murderous near misses, somehow manage to keep their lives burbling along.
Not without some disruption though and half the fun of An A-List For Death is reading about Poppy trying to do her job and fall in love with Tol and see her parents and all the gorgeously banal stuff that makes the everyday such a good place to be, while doing her best to figure who is bashing and killing people, rifling through apartments and seeking to do dark and nefarious things.
With circumstances placing Tol firmly in the suspect firing line, Poppy has a lot on her hands, and while, like many murder mysteries, things are gleefully larger than life, Poppy and her family and friends are not – well, except for new bestie, rocker Nathan Castle, who gives our plucky but beleaguered protagonist, an unwanted but neatly handled 15 minutes of fame situation – making An A-List For Death the perfect read which takes us out of the everyday while simultaneously reassuring us that it can be more exciting than anyone bargains for.
An A-List For Death is a cosy murder mystery gem that has a gripping, twisty-turny plot, vibrantly involving characters, zingy dialogue, red herring and real murders and mayhem, and a very real sense that, while observing many of the tropes and cliches of the genre with its own distinctive, Aussie style, it is very much its own rich, witty and cleverly human creation, a novel which takes us on a journey through the worst and best of humanity and deposits at the end reassured that, unlike much of real life, happy endings full of justice are not just possible but quite probable and perhaps the good actually do finish first sometimes, with a witty smile on their faces.