Eden is the third of a series of four stories about Sandra Mahoney; each taking place during a different season in Canberra, the capital of Australia. Eden is set during a hot summer.

Mahoney and her partner, Ivan, operate a security consultancy. Ivan on an overseas trip when a politician rings asking for a report on anti-censorship Ivan had completed just before his departure.

Intrigue in the politician’s enquiry and the impulse to quickly solve a mystery on her own drives Sandra to get involved in the seedy world of porn and prostitutes; mixed with politics making it muddier. She uses skilful questioning to draw information from the suspects with her police detective friend, Brooke, providing information she would be unable to access on her own.

I had previously read “The Fourth Season” so was going backwards with Sandra’s story but I had enjoyed it immensely and looked forward to reading Eden. Unfortunately I was very much disappointed with Eden. It didn’t have the depth of storyline I had come to expect and in some places I had trouble following it.

Having said that, the story line is not boring and is heightened by Johnston’s wonderful expressive prose with vivid descriptions of picturesque settings one minute and frightening, tense and heart beating moments the next. She has an ability to reach the senses with sights, sounds and smells of each moment.

Johnston obviously knows Canberra extremely well; its climate, varying neighbourhoods and the road confusion to visitors. She uses this knowledge to paint clear pictures of her scenes.

This review is also available on my website www.pam.id.au ( )

http://www.austcrimefiction.org/node/3730 ( )

‘Eden Carmichael died on a hot Tuesday afternoon in January. He was found lying across a double bed at one of Canberra’s best-known brothels, dressed in a blue and white flowered silk dress and a blonde wig.’

Thus begins Eden, the third Canberra crime novel by Dorothy Johnston, featuring security consultant Sandra Mahoney. Eden is set in summer, a hot summer that sees Canberra initially empty of its politicians and many of its citizens as well. Mahoney runs the consultancy with her partner, Ivan Semyonov, and is often assisted by their friend in the ACT police force, Detective Sergeant Brook. Both these men, and Mahoney’s children as well, are on holiday at the start of the story. Solitude creates unexpected opportunities.
Mahoney is drawn into the ripples surrounding the cross-dressing local politician’s death when an anti-censorship lobby group hires her to investigate CleanNet, a company producing Internet filters. At first the two seem to have no real connection, though Carmichael did attend a presentation the company arranged for a Federal Minister, which Mahoney considers odd, given Carmichael’s long-standing anti-censorship views. Mahoney continues to research the company, at the same time building up a picture of Carmichael’s political and personal life, in particular his relationship with Margot Lancaster, the owner of the brothel where he died. His death is assumed to be the result of a heart attack, since he has already suffered one spectacular public heart attack, when he fell over the banisters at the Old Parliament House.
Mahoney’s investigation takes her to Sydney, where she meets CleanNet’s public face, and learns of an incident at Margot’s, and the death of Jenny Bishop, a young women who worked there, another death that seems to have been accident – a heroin overdose this time. By following leads that the police don’t have time for, and that others, including the lobby group employing her, consider irrelevant, Mahoney gradually uncovers connections between Jenny Bishop, Eden Carmichael, and two old friends, a Canberra pornographer and a Sydney-based florist. The florist obligingly lends the pornographer his website after new net censorship laws have made his site illegal.
A chase down the Federal Highway almost results in Mahoney’s death, then another of the women working at Margot’s disappears. After two tense days and nights, Mahoney manages to work out where she’s gone. The denouement reveals who is really behind CleanNet, and exposes Jenny Bishop’s killer. ( )