Tue 30 Nov 2021
Archived Review: ESTELLE THOMPSON – Find a Crooked Sixpence.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[5] Comments
ESTELLE THOMPSON – Find a Crooked Sixpence. Hodder & Stoughton, UK, hardcover, 1970. Walker, US, hardcover, 1977; paperback, 1984.
A flood-swollen river doesn’t quite produce a true “locked room” mystery, but when murder occurs in an isolated farmhouse the umber of possible suspects is thereby strictly limited.
The scene is Australia, and the detective is the new woman doctor in town. She finds herself attracted to the victim’s husband, the chief suspect in the eyes of the rest of the town. Beneath the overhand of fluttering feminine Gothicism is an iron core of real detection.
Rating: B
Bibliographic Update: While she wrote a total of 16 mysteries between 1961 and 2000, Estelle Thompson is surely all but forgotten today. All of her books take place in Australia; none of them include a continuing character.
November 30th, 2021 at 10:35 pm
If no one has, someone should write a book about Australian and New Zealand mystery writers and books set in those locales. Just offhand I can think of a dozen or so well known writers deserving of study aside from obvious choices like Hornung, Marsh, and Upfield.
November 30th, 2021 at 11:48 pm
Ones that come to my mind first are Peter Corris, Peter Temple, Marele Day, Garry Disher, Jon Cleary and Kerry Greenwood, but there must be plenty of others.
December 1st, 2021 at 8:23 am
There are many writing today. There seems to be a real surge in excellent Australian mysteries. Jane Harper, Emma Viskic, Sulari Gentill are just three of many.
December 1st, 2021 at 10:48 am
All new names to me. It looks like most of their combined work are crime fiction or thrillers, not detective stories, which are about all I’m reading these days, but all of their reviews are good:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Harper
https://www.emma-viskic.com/p/resurrection-bay-caleb-zelic-1.html
http://sularigentill.com/books/
December 1st, 2021 at 10:26 pm
Pre Upfield there is Arthur Gask who was both prolific and popular at home and abroad — at least in the UK and Commonwealth.
I do think predominantly the Australian genre tends to thrillers (even the Gask books for all the Great Detective status of his series sleuth are more thriller than fair play) and of course there is a whole sub-genre like Carter Brown and Larry Kent which have American settings.
Jon Cleary, who was also an internationally known bestselling author of books like THE SUNDOWNERS (a Robert Mitchum/Deborah Kerr film), HIGH WIND IN CHINA, and PETER’S PENCE wrote quite a few about Scobie Malone an Australian police officer who I think had his own television series and who was played by Rod Taylor in the film THE HIGH COMMISSIONER with Christopher Plummer.
I think S. H. Coulter who also wrote spy novels as James Mayo was Australian too.
Back in the sixties a number of books from the Australian publisher Horowitz were published here by Signet including the Mark Hood series as by James Dark and the Carter Brown books.
Kerry Greenwood and Phrynne Fisher may be the best-known contemporary series thanks to the television adaptations though the books are very popular too.
Morris L. West is another Australian who went on to be a major bestselling novelist here and began writing adventure thrillers often with native settings before books like DAUGHTERS OF SILENCE and SHOES OF THE FISHERMAN made him a super star. Even after that many of his books like HARLEQUIN, TOWER OF BABEL, and THE SALAMANDER were thrillers.