“This wasn’t the first time I’d encountered a dead body.” That’s the solid brick opening line of BRUNSWICK STREET BLUES, the deadly debut novel by Sally Bothroyd.
It may not be the first dead body she’d encountered, but it’s certainly the first corpse to have conveniently relocated from an apparent crime scene.
It’s 2007 and Brick Brown is a probationary PR officer at Yarra City Council, part time bartender at the Phoenix in Fitzroy, and detective by default. The murder of the mayor and subsequent cover up is her entree into investigative work, pricked by the simultaneous disappearance of her foster father, Baz, and prodded by the journalist, Mitch Mitchell (real name disclosed in the body of the narrative).
The plot of BRUNSWICK STREET BLUES is a fine and dandy read, plot wise as serviceable as a Sydney Road tram, but it’s the characters and sense of place that make this a compulsive read.
Dodgy developers, perfidious politicians, and bullying bureaucrats pepper the plot, and Bothroyd thickens it with salty commentary about the gentrification of her habitat that is hysterically funny. I mean we are talking about the transformation of Pentridge Prison into a Yuppie enclave, the old Bluestone College now a silvertail abode.
Brick Brown pitches like the love child of Cliff Hardy out of Stephanie Plumb, with acerbic social observations and a prickly sexual tension.
Melbourne’s mean streets are well mined for mystery and mayhem and mirth as Brick and Mitch sleuth and slip, stumble and bumble, out hunch henchmen, outsmart king pins, and solve a cauldron of crime that had been boiling since Brick was a baby.
From Brunswick Street basements to car chases in clapped out Kombi vans, BRUNSWICK STREET BLUES will have you shrieking with shocks one minute, shrieking with laughter the next. Probably best not to be read on public transport.
The inaugural winner of the ASA/HQ commercial fiction prize, BRUNSWICK STREET BLUES augers well for Sally Bothroyd as the latest entrant into the impressive ranks of Australian crime fiction.
BRUNSWICK STREET BLUES by Sally Bothroyd is published by HQ through Harper Collins.
Photo of SallyBothroyd By NicholeTaylor