Patricia Wolf

What I liked most about 'Outback' was that it felt firmly grounded in reality.

The North Queensland desert became almost a character in its own right, its unremitting harshness dominating the lives of the people trying to live in it or even just trying to pass through it.

The people in the small town of Caloodie felt real. Patricia Wolf captured their speech patterns and the small details of their behaviour in ways that quickly immersed me in their community.

The police procedural aspects of the investigation were plausible and delivered at a pace that sustained the tension of the story but also matched the rate at which two investigators might reasonably be expected to work.

Seeing DS Walker surrounded by his extended family and dealing with the imminent death from cancer of the grandmother who raised him from a character who was there to solve puzzles to a real person with more on his mind than the case in hand.

Seeing the town, its people and DS Walker through the eyes of a police detective from Berlin, the sister of one of the missing German tourists, allowed some of the odd-but-taken-for-granted-by-the-people-who-live-there aspects of Australian small-town culture to be examined and explained from both an outsider and insider point of view.

All of that made for a very satisfying read.

The plot, which involves the investigation of the disappearance of two German tourists who we know have been abducted, was a strong one. The story was unfurled in a way that allowed the reader to know what was being done to the two tourists but not who was doing it. This meant that, as the investigators assembled information, the reader had the fun of guessing whether or not they were looking at the right suspect. I enjoyed that the investigation was complicated further by plot lines involving police corruption, organised crime and the possible existence of a serial killer.

All of that kept me turning the pages eagerly.

The book concludes with some very intense action scenes that pulled everything together. I was totally immersed in the action, to the point that when one of the investigators did something stupid that put them at risk, I found myself saying "How could you do that? You should know better!"

The only thing that I was a little disappointed in was that Patricia Wolf seemed to me to have been too kind to some of her characters, letting them survive when I'd expected them to die. Still, that was her call to make.

I'll be reading, 'Paradise', the next DI Walker book, later this year. I'll be going with the audiobook version of 'Paradise' as I thought Adam Fitzgerald did a remarkable job with the narration. Click on the SoundCloud link below to hear a sample.

https://soundcloud.com/bonnierbooksuk/sampleaudioclip… (más)

Outback by Patricia Wolf is the first book in her DS Lucas Walker series. This book is set in the Australian outback as Lucas Walker comes home to visit with his dying grandmother. At the same time two young German backpackers pass through town and disappear in the bush. Lucas is asked to act as liaison between the families of the missing and the police. The older sister of one of the backpackers comes to Australia to aid in the search of her sister, and she and Lucas work together to try to solve the mystery.

I found this story quite engrossing and the author certainly made the harsh country of the Outback, with it’s isolation, severe heat, and dust a major part of the story. The writing was descriptive without being too long-winded and the characters felt real. Lucas and Barbara worked well together and as the serial killer angle is slowly revealed the tension rose and the pages turned much faster.

The story unfolds through multiple viewpoints, including that of the villain and this aspect also gave the book a sense of urgency as the reader could feel that time was running out for the victims. I didn’t love the ending however, as a number of threads were left hanging but I would say that it did it’s job as I have already picked up the next book in the series.… (más)

After reading Patricia Wolf's first Lucas Walker mystery, Outback, I looked forward to reading this second installment. For the most part, I was happy with Paradise-- happy to learn a bit about another part of Australia, and happy to tag along with Lucas Walker for a while.

Lucas Walker is a very likable character, and in Paradise, he's grieving over the death of his beloved grandmother, the woman who raised him. He's also recuperating from injuries sustained in Outback-- something that I will be referring to again. This man is intelligent, persistent, compassionate, and empathetic. Now, you see those first two characteristics a lot, but you seldom see the last two used to describe a male police officer, and it's refreshing.

Since Walker is not supposed to be working on the case involving the little girl, Gabby, he has to fly beneath the radar in his attempts to gather crucial information. One of his sources is Barbara, the German police officer in Berlin whom he met in Outback. I liked the interactions between the two even though Walker was risking a lot bringing Barbara into the investigation in any size, shape, or form.

There are two mysteries to solve in Paradise. One involving drugs and people Walker dealt with in the previous book and the investigation concerning the murder of Gabby's mother. Both suffered from an initial glacial pace. I don't always have a good track record concerning drugs, and I have to admit that I was tired of it all and hoped there could be a bit of deus ex machina so these prime examples of pond scum would all just disappear. I know. No such luck. As for the second mystery, I found the killer's identity extremely easy to deduce; all that was left was learning how the person did it.

Although I did have problems with the pacing and the drugs, overall I did like the book and am looking forward to book three. And as for that third book, I'm hoping Walker can have a nice injury-free vacation in Germany. I don't think his body can take much more abuse.

(Review copy courtesy of the publisher and Net Galley)… (más)