Robert Gott

If you're in the mood for some daft, light-hearted fun, Robert Gott's Naked Ambition may be just what you need to lift your spirits during this rather grim phase in our nation's psyche.

Briefly, the plot is this. A state politician called Gregory takes it into his head to commission his portrait from an ambitious artist intent on winning the Archibald Prize. The larger-than-lifesize portrait, when it is revealed to his startled family, shows him not in the obligatory suit with a tie in the party colours, and not in hail-fellow-well-met casual gear, but naked. Full frontal. Completely naked.

Even before the state premier Louisa Whitely makes a surprise visit to advise him that he's been elevated to the ministry because of some inopportune scandal about to derail the election campaign — there are objections to the mere existence of this portrait. His wife Phoebe, a PR agent, warns against the (pardon the pun) exposure of the portrait; and Joyce, his MIL, a Bible-bashing fundamentalist, thinks it's an abomination. His own mother Margaret amuses herself by sardonically baiting the religious fanatic, and his sister Sally (the only one who knows anything about the cutting-edge reputation of the artist) isn't impressed by depictions of the naked male because she's gay. (Yes, the comedy does rely on stereotypes. The clodhopper copper is another one, completely unfair to the detective who lives next door to me, she's as sharp as a razor.)

The repartee between this lot is full of witty one-liners, which ramp up when the painting is stolen. Who by? Hardly anybody knows about its existence. What's to stop photos of it going viral if it's got into the wrong hands? And how can the artist be placated when the work she's created to win a valuable prize goes missing?

Amid the chuckles, we might ponder some of the questions raised by this comic novel.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2023/05/25/naked-ambition-2023-by-robert-gott/… (más)

I wasn't entirely sure what to expect from a detective story written by a cartoonist, especially the creator of the rather quaint Naked Man cartoons. I guess I expected something frothy and a bit risqué, like the Phryne Fisher books. I did not expect this; a rather gruesome story set in wartime Melbourne, with a psychopathic Nazi at its core.

Inspector Titus Lambert heads up the newly-formed Homicide division of the Victorian police. On Christmas Eve, Lambert's holiday plans are wrecked when he receives a call to a mansion in East Melbourne. There he encounters a brutal double murder: a young man killed in the living room in the style of the Crucifixion, and his father upstairs, shot in the bath.

Lambert very soon finds himself at loggerheads with Military intelligence: one of the victims was an intelligence agent. MI demand that Lambert give them his sergeant, Joe Sable, to help investigate the Nazi sympathisers that they are sure are behind the murders. Lambert is unhappy with this, given wartime manpower shortages. He is forced to supplement his team with (shock, horror!) a woman - Constable Helen Lord.

Gott's police procedural is certainly intriguing in terms of its setting and concept; there are a few wartime detective stories around, but i can't recall anything set in wartime Melbourne. Gott's descriptions of Melbourne and surrounds are very accurate, and recognisable even today. However there are some problems with this book. Lambert is improbably modern in his attitudes towards women, fostering Lord's career over her male superior in Sable, and running all of his investigations past his wife, even when covered by Official Secrets. The Jewish Sergeant Sable somehow manages to forget that Hanukkah is going on during the investigation; this simply never comes up, which seems an oversight, given the character and title. The right wing group's name - Our Nation - is cutely close to that of a modern right wing group. Gott also telegraphs his punches quite a bit, there aren't really a lot of surprises and the ending is all a bit too neat. These flaws mar the book, but I still think that I'll give the next book in this series a whirl, just to see how Gott develops his promising concept.… (más)

At the beginning of this book a synopsis of each of the three preceding titles in the series appears. I hadn't read them all, but it did serve me to bring me "up to speed".

The novel is a reminder that strange and violent crimes continue even when a country is at war, and so there is need of a police force and even private investigators. Helen Lord and Joe Sable, once part of the Victoria Police's Homicide squad, are now private investigators, but they keep in close touch with their former boss, Inspector Titus Lambert. The other main characters are Tom McKenzie, a former pilot, and Clara Dawson, a doctor at the Melbourne Hospital.

There are a number of linked plots in the book, which makes for interesting reading. For example Tom returns to work to undertake surveillance of a man married to woman in Japan, and therefore under suspicion of espionage. Clara's boss is a doctor who despises female doctors, and she is befriended by his wife. The main plot is the murders that take place in Nunawading on a farm next to one run by a sect.

Between them the plots paint a strong picture of life in Melbourne towards the end of World War II.

Highly recommended. Very readable.… (más)