Reviewed by Rod McLary
In mid-1942, Sydney was attacked by Japanese submarines and it was the first time that the city had been attacked by enemy forces. While some damage and deaths occurred, the psychological impact of the people of Sydney was far greater. It was a city under siege and full of American servicemen bringing about cultural changes and an increase in crime especially in nightclubs and the sly-grog trade.
The author has placed her novel squarely in the heart of a city at war – but as well as the war with the Japanese forces, there is a war between the police and those involved in the sly-grog trade and those whose opportunities for sexual contact are found only in the city’s public toilets. Entrapment – where undercover police officers entice gay men to initiate sexual activity – was rife and tallies were kept of how many men were entrapped on any given night. The Trap focuses on two of these police officers – Constable Neville Grigg and Constable First Class Thomas Carney of the Sydney Police. An extract from Carney’s report of October 1942 to Inspector Norman James says it all: … confronted almost every day with the sorry evidence that the perversion of homosexuality at its most flagrant and debased is on the rise [66]. And their actions towards those they entrap: You flaming pervert, he [Carney] sneered, then landed a kick into Ray’s groin. The sounds they made when you hit target. Like babies, animals. [61].
The author does not shy away from the describing the harsh life experienced by many on the streets of Sydney during 1942. As she states clearly in her Note on Language: My intention always is to present this world as it was experienced by the people who lived in it. To erase, euphemise, or obfuscate the language would constitute an erasure of the people themselves. Consequently, we hear the conversations, arguments as they would have been imbued with authenticity.
Running in tandem with the story of police officers Carney and Grigg is the story of Ray and Henry – two brothers involved in the sly grog trade. But Ray is also gay and he later becomes a victim of entrapment initiated by Grigg and Carney. So the two narratives intersect and take us on a journey through the mean streets of Sydney – a journey which captures the harsh reality of life in those streets. From neighbouring houses came the hectoring of mothers, the bellowing of fathers, the screeching of children, rubbish clanking into bins, dogs barking, the heat the heat turning up tempers all around [222].
But then Grigg and Carney entrap Clarence McNulty – a senior journalist with Frank Packer’s Consolidated Press – bringing about the involvement of big-end politics and business. And the narrative shifts to exposing police corruption and the level of influence exerted by Packer at the highest levels of the police and the government.
In the Afterword, the author sets out the subsequent events – that Grigg and Carney were dismissed from the Police Force after a departmental enquiry. But both men appealed the dismissals and their appeals were later upheld by the Manpower Board. They subsequently commenced action against Consolidated Press, the Police Commissioner and Daily Telegraph editor Cyril Pearl alleging libel. Grigg’s action was dismissed by the Supreme Court but there is no record of how the Carney case was resolved. As the author points out None of the people involved in the episode … emerged as a winner [358].
Fiona Kelly McGregor has crafted a brilliant historical fiction capturing the dynamics of a city in the midst of a war both outside its boundaries but within them too. While drawing on actual events, the novel is nevertheless a work of imagination which brings alive the history of a specific time and place and explores universal human experiences. The narrative draws the reader – as it is intended to – into Sydney 1942 with all its flaws.
The author has published a number of both fiction and non-fiction books. Her most recent novel Iris was nominated for eight awards including the Miles Franklin Award, NSW Premiers Award and the Stella Prize.
The Trap
[2026]
by Fiona Kelly McGregor
Picador Australia
ISBN: 978 1 7607 8769 1
$34.99; 352pp