Mole Creek by James Dunbar

Reviewed by Wendy Lipke

Written in the third person, the story begins in Soul Alley, Saigon in 1969 where a young soldier finds himself in a sticky situation after a night of drinking. The story then swings to 50 years later, still in Saigon, with two Russians conspiring together and the deaths of two seemingly innocent young people, before taking a leap to Tasmania and the small town of Mole Creek. Here a long-retired cop, Pete McAuslan, is in a dilemma as to whether to do anything about a crime committed 50 years ago that he has uncovered while writing his memoir. The door to his cabin opens to reveal someone he believed was dead.

The story then takes another turn to the ex-cop’s grandson in Sydney. He is a journalist and is being threatened about a book he is writing. Upon hearing that his grandfather has committed suicide he heads for Mole Creek. Even though he sees a suicide note, he is wrestling with conflicting thoughts – Pete’s suicide or something else, and if something else, what? Already several things don’t add up for Xander yet the police, who knew his grandfather as one of their own, are satisfied.

The rest of the story swings between Xander trying to resolve his confusion and actions in Vietnam during the war. If this is a suicide, then there seem to be a lot of other people involved – a mystery Asian woman, foreign sounding stalkers who may or may not be Russian, kids on motorbikes. Xander is beaten up, his computer is destroyed, and he feels that he is always under surveillance. The back cover of the book says that Xander ‘must race to identify the connection between the seemingly unremarkable death of an old Australian soldier and the imminent reactivation of the most powerful and potentially destructive ‘sleeper’ in the history of espionage – before the truth catches up to him’.

Is this a story of an old man being killed because of what he can remember about the past or is it about a gung-ho young journalist who, through a series of screwups, draws friends, family and strangers into a criminal conspiracy to erase information that he’s not even aware that he possesses? (205)

The cover with its brooding sky hanging over dark peaks in Northern Tasmania suggests to the reader that the story to come will be more sinister than light-hearted, however I was not prepared for some of the vocabulary I encountered in this story. Graphic descriptions of life in parts of Vietnam in a no-go area with drug-dealers, arms selling, prostitution, people trafficking, deserters, pimps and money-laundering are provided.

The book abounds in descriptions of the countryside in Tasmania and some of the history in that part of the world. I felt at times that there were too many descriptive words which did not really add to the story as well as a play on words or sayings. For me also, some of the characters did not sound believable especially the Asian school girl with her forthright manner as she tries to engage Xander in conversation on the school bus.  There is much mention of characters and sayings from TV shows and books that many Australians may be familiar with, but I doubt non-Australians would understand their significance.

The book is also populated with characters from most subgroups one would find in a society. However, the plot hangs together well. The author, James Dunbar, is a journalist, television script writer, travel writer and university lecturer and Mole Creek is his maiden venture into the serious crime thriller and espionage genre although he has written other crime books and books about the Vietnam War, but not necessarily under the name James Dunbar.

Mole Creek

(2023)

by James Dunbar

Echo Publishing

ISBN:978-1-76068-797-7

$32.99; 352pp

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