Sandi Wallace

The fourth book in the Georgie Harvey and John Franklin series, this series is set, in the main, around Daylesford and the goldfields area, with BLACK CLOUD mostly in Korweinguboora, one of my all time favourite place names (and locales). When I was a kid my grandfather loved heading out to there to collect spa water from a roadside spring. His garage was always filled with bottles coated with dark red mineralisation, and the daily glass of lemon cordial and spa water cold from the fridge must have done something - he lived until he was 99 after all. It's a great part of the world, and the ultimate local test of where you're from was always if you could pronounce Korweinguboora or not.

This series is based around Harvey's journalistic and Franklin's police careers; and their personal partnership which is pretty well always a bit on the rocks, especially from Harvey's point of view as Franklin struggles with the pressures and pitfalls of policing in small towns where the personal and professional often overlap. In BLACK CLOUD the overlap is awful, when in the opening of the novel, a family home explodes into flames, whilst police colleagues and a community nurse are on scene, doing a health and welfare check on the family. When the smoke settles, and the flames are bought under control the death toll includes the entire family of 4 and one of Franklin's police colleagues, whilst the other policewoman and a community nurse have been critically injured.

The story revolves around the questions you'd expect to have asked of an incident like this - murder, murder-suicide or tragic accident? As is always the case in small towns though, there's pressure of different sorts here. The tension between the big city specialist cops called into investigate, and the grief and commitment that Franklin has to his team, his colleagues and his community. His grief is palpable in his determination to get to the bottom of this mystery, sidelined or not, and in the process he exhausts himself, whilst turning away from Harvey and his daughter, creating tensions at home and at work, driven and desperate to understand what happened. Meanwhile Harvey is conducting her own investigations as part of a story to be written, discovering bits of information and connections with other strange goings on, dealing all the while with her hurt as Franklin withdraws further. Sadly, this disconnection has a direct impact on the way the case unfolds, and the path to the truth that eventually comes to light.

An elegant combination of rural crime fiction and police procedural with a romance element incorporated, this series has developed really strongly. The relationship - personal and professional - at the heart of these works. Franklin and Harvey feel like a real couple, with tensions and imperfections, and a way of muddling through. The sense of place is pretty strong, and the subject matter being tackled here very current and very believable.

You never know, by the end of BLACK CLOUD, you may even be pronouncing Korweinguboora like a local :)

https://www.austcrimefiction.org/review/black-cloud-sandi-wallace… (mer)

Black Cloud is the fourth book in Sandi Wallace’s crime fiction series featuring journalist Georgie Harvey and police officer John Franklin.

Wallace has been on my radar for quite some time, so I welcomed the invitation to read and review Black Cloud. Had I the time, I would have read the previous novels in the series as I think familiarity with the characters would have enhanced my reading experience, nevertheless the plot of this fourth book works as a standalone.

Set around Daylesford in rural Victoria, Black Cloud begins with a bang, literally, as a family home explodes. Among the first responders is John Franklin who is horrified to discover two of his colleagues, and friends, were caught in the blast while carrying out a routine welfare check. One is dead, and the other badly injured, so too is a community nurse and when the blaze if finally brought under control, the bodies of all four members of the Murray family are discovered inside the home.

From its dramatic opening scenes, Black Cloud unfolds at a fast pace as the investigation into the explosion begins in earnest. Franklin exhausts himself, physically and emotionally, as he interviews the family, neighbours, and friends of the deceased, searching for evidence that may explain the tragedy.

Georgie is equally distressed by the disaster, and though distracted somewhat by her ongoing investigation related to the accidental drowning of a local farmer she considers suspicious, she makes some inquiries of her own. Unexpectedly she uncovers a link between both incidents, but she needs Franklin’s help to determine if it’s simply more than a coincidence.

Franklin and Georgie are romantic partners, but this incident places strain on their relationship with Franklin avoiding Georgie as a way of avoiding his own emotions. Wallace’s portrayal of Franklin’s grief is nuanced and authentic, as is Georgie’s concern for his well-being, and hurt feelings from being shut out. The lack of communication also affects how the case plays out, as it’s only by exchanging information that the tragedy can be solved.

With its intriguing storyline and appealing characters, Black Cloud is a great read.
I’m determined to get my hands on Sandi Wallace’s backlist, and I’d recommend those who enjoy rural Australian crime fiction do the same.… (mer)

A collection of eight different short stories, many of them past prize winners, all of them featuring crime and women from differing viewpoints.

Journalists, police officers and private investigators are some of the occupations of the different central characters. Perpetrators, investigators, good Samaritans and writers amongst the viewpoints. Those switching perspectives are one of the collection's major highlights, allowing for different impacts, different reactions and varied causes. There's also a range of different involvements - personal and professional, insider and outsider, always with an impetus to resolve and explain.

It's an interesting way to view crime, particularly as the women in this collection are not just "victims" or the off-camera incidentals, they also aren't always the good, the bad, or the damaged.

A wide combination of types of crimes, in a well executed range of Australian settings, normally with a short story collection you expect some to appeal more than others. It does, however, also feel like there was more being telegraphed here, particularly when considered against the timeframe of the stories original development.

The structure of this collection seems designed to explore the potential of female characters to be more than the stereotypical expectations in crime fiction and it's well done without being preachy or overtly instructional. MURDER IN THE MIDST is also a perfect way to taste test this author's work.

https://www.austcrimefiction.org/review/murder-midst-sandi-wallace… (mer)

Anybody who has spent any time in the Dandenong Ranges will know all about the pea-souper fogs that often accompany rain storms of almost biblical proportions. Add to that the dense, heavy canopy and undergrowth of the Mountain Ash rainforest up there and you're hard pressed to see your own feet on occasions, let alone find 3 missing kids who have disappeared from a police-run camp high up in the Hills.

INTO THE FOG is the third Georgie Harvey, John Franklin mystery from Dandenong-ranges based Sandi Wallace, and she's used her local knowledge of the place to great effect, when a young girl and her two younger brothers vanish from a magnificent old house that's being used as a temporary camp for kids from Daylesford that need a break. The little group has been hand picked by the Daylesford police - either because of family trauma or deprivation to enjoy some time away from families and responsibilities. Which quickly goes wrong as a huge storm batters the hills on the night that the 3 disappear.

At the time Franklin is in Ballarat, hopefully on a career advancement trajectory, which goes very pear-shaped as soon as he hears that the kids he feels responsible for have vanished. There's no clear indications either of whether they got lost or whether they have been abducted, and there's no shortage of possible villains lurking in the near vicinity from the creepy house owner who left the house but not suspicions behind, his housekeeper and her increasingly odd husband, or the terrain itself. The storm doesn't help search parties, and it makes the likelihood of sightings complicated as well - very few Dandenong ranges residents are out meandering about in a storm that will bring down huge trees, drench everything to the skin in seconds, take out electricity, block roads and generally make life complicated for everyone.

Despite the search parties, despite the local knowledge from local cops, and despite Franklin's frantic run from Ballarat to the Hills, things are looking very bad for these kids, when they haven't been found after days of searching, even before Wallace gives you a peak into the current circumstances of the young girl - whose fate is looking pretty bleak, and whose brothers seems to have completely disappeared.

There's a good sense of the place, the climate, the local residents and the terrain in INTO THE FOG. It's a real strength of this novel - this is a place that Wallace obviously knows well and the idea that kids could simply vanish up there makes sense, and is well supported by the god awful weather that's being experienced. Harvey's investigative skills are also put to good use as she determinedly hunts for hints and clues about people who surround the kids, and about what they have been up to themselves - there's a social media trail here that's sketchy but followable. The inclusion of Franklin's Daylesford colleagues, and his own daughter Kat in the cast, makes sense in terms of the kids camp setting, and it gives Wallace a chance to ramp up the personal woven into these stories - they have an element of romance in them for readers who like that sort of thing. There's also that feeling of a closed room - it's a big area, made small and enclosed by the house in which the characters are all staying, and the forest that encloses them.

On the crimeance side of the genre spectrum, INTO THE FOG has a good sense of confusion and complexity, with plenty of red herrings, some pleasing twists in the tail, and a bit of side-road meandering in the personal for those looking for some romantic as well as case based tension. Readers might feel some sinking sense of inevitability early on, but don't believe everything you're reading, the resolution here isn't as straight-forward as you might think.

https://www.austcrimefiction.org/review/fog-sandi-wallace… (mer)