Reviewed by Ian Lipke
This is a crime and mystery novel. Its centre is the small country town of Warrawolong, a make-believe area not far from Eden. The story is simple of construction.
In 1915, two days before his departure for the Front, Jack O’Rourke rescues an elderly man from drowning. This is Samuel Lomond, the eccentric grazing property owner from the Southern Highlands. Four years later Jack returns to discover that Lomond has died under suspicious circumstances and left his property, Booroomba, to Jack. When he arrives to take up his inheritance, Jack is met with hostility and suspicion. A prominent practitioner of hatred is the local policeman.
A neighbour coveting Jack’s water, a newspaper proprietor who’ll do anything for a story, a labourer seeking vengeance, a secret affair and two Russin emigres lead to the solution of the crime.
The author is successful in evoking the atmosphere of the time. The year, 1919, is key and events and character attitudes are appropriate for a backwards thinking small town just emerging from war. However, while the characters are addressed in suitable style the same cannot be said for the writing. It is bland – as though the author had thrown a wet blanket across the finished work. Time and again I searched in hope for the end of individual chapters. It was like a stew that was missing the curry, a dessert of bananas and custard that needed some fiery plant to make it interesting.
The policeman, Constable Flood, is unique in country fiction, or would be if his role had been expanded. If we accept him in his present form, he becomes most unlikely. Are we to assume that no senior police visit his station? Does it seem likely that he could treat the public in the cursory way he practises in the novel? Engaging, as one critic described him? I think not.
The chief figure of the novel is drawn as a hero returned from war. He is supposed to lead the fight against crime and injustice. His actions, a reader might expect, would be crisp and well thought through. They are not. Who but an ingenue in the world of men would pass all the information he has painstakingly gathered to a local policeman whose interests are questionable at best? That the policeman is suspected of being more intelligent than he is reputed to be is a quibble. No evidence is presented to support this view.
While the novel explores themes of trauma, secrets, and the impact of war on individuals and communities, it does not succeed at its task very well. Its success is hampered by an approach to writing that is timid and insecure.
Death at Booroomba
(2025)
by A.L. Booth
Ventura Press
ISBN: 978-1-763832-0-8
$32.99; 284 pp