For Detective Dusty Buchanon, a female cop in the very male world of the Northern Territory Police Force, it always pays to expect the unexpected. During the stifling pre-monsoon season known as The Build Up, a body is found in a billabong near a Vietnam veterans' camp site. To Dusty it's the chance she's been looking for: a spectacular case to revive her flagging career. ( )

Enjoyable, light crime drama set in Northern Territory. Interesting location, likeable characters. ( )

Dusty Buchanan is a Detective with the Northern Territory Police in Darwin. As the book opens a phone conversation with her over-bearing mother causes her to miss being there when a body is found in the long-running McVeigh case and so she is removed from the case. Instead she focuses on a tip-off she received from one of the blokes at the local camp for Vietnam veterans. He says his fishing line got caught on the body of a woman in the billabong. When Dusty is further isolated from her colleagues she’s forced to look to some unlikely people for help.

Reading The Build Up reminded me how much fun it is to read a book with language, cultural references and the odd ‘in’ joke that only locals will understand. It’s a bit like watching one of those kids’ movies that has a few strategically placed lines especially for adults and, in me anyway, provoked the same kind of knowing smile. I love a story that provides a sense of its location and this one stamps Australia in general and Darwin in particular lovingly on every page. I share a fellow blogger’s curiousity about whether or not the book will generate interest (or understanding) outside Australia (what would they make of Up There Cazaly for example) but I am delighted that Gwynne doesn’t seem to have written with one eye (and his bank balance) on the international publishing scene. In real life and in this book crude language and political incorrectness exist alongside spectacular places and down-to-earth people you can rely on in a crisis. You have to take the good with the bad or you get neither.

The build up of the title refers to the in-between period between Darwin’s two seasons: the dry and the wet. It’s a period known for provoking odd behaviour in people: suicides rates go up, other crime rates go down. Everyone is affected in some way. There’s also a build up in the way the book says what it has to say about its characters and the world they inhabit. The solving of either case, while being what drives Dusty, is almost incidental to the creation of a quite detailed picture of the place and the people who live in it. It’s an almost linear narrative but not always and the sequence in which what happens is revealed makes for deceptively powerful story telling. Just like the weather, the book teased me into thinking it was a fairly laid-back sort of a tale which left me completely unprepared for the-sucker punch of an ending.

Gwynne has created some truly memorable characters here. Dusty is the only human who is fully fleshed out (the other character that receives the full treatment is the Northern Territory itself) and she is terrific. She’s imperfect but not cripplingly so and is smart, funny and the sort of copper I hope there are plenty of. The rest of the people are generally quite brilliantly depicted via fairly brief but very descriptive scenes. No amount of extra words could have created a better image of a bloke called Trigger than a scene in which he can’t perform with a prostitute unless she’s wearing the football jumper of the player he believed responsible for his sidelining from the game he adored.

As often happens when I read the best ‘crime’ fiction I again thought about how genre labels ruin reading. They set silly expectations and make people worry about unimportant things when what really, really matters is for a book to capture a reader’s heart and imagination. If a book spirits you away for a while or makes you think about things in a different way, if only for a moment, then does it matter how many of the genre tick-boxes it gets right? This book should be required reading for Aussies and while I’m not sure it’ll make complete sense to the rest of you I’d recommend you try (and I’ll happily provide translations and explanations if required). ( )

Phillip Gwynne has previously earned acclaim for his YA/childrens books such as [b:Deadly, Unna?|1770187|Deadly, Unna?|Phillip Gwynne|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1208912758s/1770187.jpg|1768332] and his most recent [b:Swerve|8085127|Swerve|Phillip Gwynne|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1272083047s/8085127.jpg|12816914]. The Build Up is his debut adult crime fiction novel. In Darwin, Australia's Top End, the discover of a body in a billabong might finally allow Detective 'Dusty' Buchanan to close her biggest case and put their main suspect behind bars. As the weather builds, another body is found, and then lost, Dusty is feeling the pressure from all sides. Which will break first?Gwynne has created a complex protagonist, as a detective in the Northern Territory police force Dusty must be both tough and resourceful. She is absolutely no nonsense, rebellious and dark humoured yet there is a suprising fragility about her, her husband has walked out, her mother is critical and she seems lonely. These contradictions have created an intriguing character who you admire and empathise with. It is really only Dusty that we really get to know but the supporting characters are drawn with spare elegance and you get a real sense of who they are, by what they mean to Dusty and how she considers them.The plot is probably not as strong as it could have been, but it has a satisfying conclusion. The tension Gwynne creates and sustains plays a big part in the appeal of the story.What is truly commendable in this novel is Gwynne's ability to evoke the mystique, the brutality, the vibrancy and isolation of the Top End. You can feel the atmospheric pressure of the Build Up (the period just before the tropical monsoon weather hits)as well as the pressure that Dusty is rebelling against. There are some wonderful descriptions and the writing style is both spare and yet evocotive. The tone is distinctly Australian with references and slang that might be hard to translate for readers from elsewhere. It's rare to find that genuine Australian flavour, too often novels particularly in this genre set in Australia don't exploit the uniqueness of our country in favour of generic commercial appeal. Gwynne hasn't compromised and it gives The Build Up an impressive background.The Build Up is a compelling novel, a followup is a possibility that I'd love to read and apparently a TV series is being made from the novel (by SBS). Click here http://www.boomerangbooks.com.au/GoogleBookPreview.cfm?isbn=9781405038492 to go to Google Book Preview where you can read 3/4 of the book as it seems to not be widely available. Search for the title/author or IBSN combination to find somewhere to purchase it near you or check your local library (that’s where I found it) ( )

Set in Darwin, The Build Up is a crime novel with a distinctly Aussie feel. Penned by successful Australian author Phillip Gwynne, The Build Up has been so successful that it's being made into a 13 part TV series scheduled to air on SBS in Australia later in 2011.

Detective Dusty Buchanon is a tough no-nonsense woman helping to police the Top End when a body is discovered following a wild party at a Vietnam Veteran's camp site. Dusty has just been pulled off a high profile case she's been working on for 2 years and busted back to uniform, so she decides to focus her attention on this case instead.

I really enjoyed the author's authentic recreation of the setting, the weather during the 'build up', the culture of the town and the people in it - locals and tourists alike. His ability to effectively capture realistic and distinctly Australian dialogue was impressive, and the characters were occasionally very funny.

A washed out AFL player named Trigger was one of my favourite characters in the book; the author nailed his character development so well, he was just so, well, Australian!

I was pleasantly surprised at just how much I enjoyed this Australian made crime novel, and will be recommending it to everyone who enjoys the genre. Phillip Gwynne has written six other books, received numerous awards and I'll be looking out for the TV series later in the year. ( )