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SALT AND BLOOD
by Peter Corris
Bantam Books, August 2002
244 pages
$Au17.95
ISBN: 1863253742


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Recipient of the Ned Kelly Lifetime Achievement Award, Peter Corris has disported himself in the venerated Halls of Academe as well as playing a part in the rather less respected profession of journalism. His first Cliff Hardy novel, The Dying Trade, published in 1980, was written two years before Corris took up full time writing. More than twenty years later, Cliff Hardy features in his twenty-fifth novel with, one trusts, many more to come. Others of Corris' Hardy series include White Meat ,The Marvellous Boy, The Empty Beach , Matrimonial Causes, Casino The Washington Club and Lugarno. Other series penned by Corris feature Luke Dunlop, an agent for the Witness Protection Agency and Ray Crawley, Federal Security Agency director, Interestingly enough, Corris does not confine his

writing to thrillers, nor even to fiction. He is the co-author of Fred Hollows: An Autobiography amongst several other non-fiction titles of which I found one of the most fascinating to be Sweet and Sour - A Diabetic Life

A Type One (insulin dependent) diabetic himself, Peter Corris inflicted the disease on his hapless protagonist, to great effect. In later Hardy outings the PI seems to have discarded the disease, a happy outcome which no doubt the author envies. Salt and Blood contains only one brief reference to the disorder and that in reference to Hardy's mother. The novel does not discard all illness, however. Rodney Harkness, for whom Cliff is hired to be a minder, suffers from a mental affliction which has, in part, been responsible for his confinement in the redoubtable Rutherford House. For that matter, two of Hardy's fellow characters, Harkness himself and Cliff's sometime lover and now employer Glen Withers, are recovering alcoholics.

To recapitulate the plot very briefly, Hardy is approached by Glen to babysit Rodney Harkness. Rodney has been incarcerated in the clinic for seven years. He became psychotic after his wife and child went missing. Now civil liberties lawyers have achieved Rodney's release. Rodney's mother and brother, as cold and calculating a pair totally devoid of maternal or fraternal affections as one could meet, have hired Glen and requested she, in turn, hire a minder for Rodney to ensure he does not resume drinking nor relapse into his psychotic ways. They also wish Glen to locate Rodney's missing wife and child.

Of course the case is nowhere near as simple as it initially appears. Rodney possesses an overwhelming physical attractiveness to woman, to which the psychiatrist who ensured his release had fallen prey as now does Glen

Withers. Before Hardy can deliver Rodney to his Bondi flat someone attempts to shoot Rodney. Then there is a further complication when both recovering alcoholics, Rodney and Glen, disappear.

This is a typically well written Hardy opus. It is an enlightening romp through Sydney and environs with an adequate quota of violence. Fortunately Corris is not one of the coterie of authors delighting in the gratuitous fine details of guts and gore attendant on assassinations and near assassinations. The dialogue is Australian without being ocker, the plot is well constructed and the characterisations convincing. The whole is a par-boiled caper bound to delight Corris' (and Hardy's) many fans despite its pessimistic overtones. In small paperback format the book is very good value indeed.

Editor's Note: This book doesn't appear in the list of either Amazon US or UK. Your favorite independent bookseller can order this for you.

Reviewed by Denise Wels, August 2002

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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