DISHONOUR
By Gabrielle Lord
Hachette, $29.99
Gabrielle Lord is a gripping crime writer with a knack for writing one step ahead of the news cycle.
Her latest thriller, Dishonour, trails some nasty Middle Eastern drug lords and outlaw bikie gangs with links to Iraqi and Syrian jihadists. Its release coincides with the appalling beheading of two American journalists, drone attacks in Iraq and threats to withdraw the passports of foreign fighters.
"Just awful," Lord tuts. There is a quiet fury to her voice, as there is in Dishonour. The book follows Detective Inspector Debra Hawkins retracing the clues to the execution-style murder of her policeman father, while workingas lead investigator of a fictional police unit set up to deal with hidden family violence in migrant communities.
As is the case now, the airwaves are full of anger about drive-by shootings as criminal gangs wrestle for turf and Hawkins' brief is to respond to allegations of coercion, intimidation and under-age marriages.
"I wasn't aware of how timely it would be when writing it but I was very concerned by the plight of women in certain ethnic groups," says Lord, cradling a cup of hot chocolate at a favourite beach cafe. "Then I heard about women, Australian citizens, living in fear. I got that same sense of anger when I wrote Fortress and Whipping Boy, which are about people who don't have a voice."
Dishonour is Lord's 16th crime novel. Her first published novel in 1980, Fortress, was loosely based on the the kidnapping for ransom of a teacher and her pupils in rural Victoria. It was published in the same year Peter Corris made his debut.
Between them, Lord and Corris helped lay the bedrock for Australia's subsequent crime fiction boom. They were among the first homegrown writers to cast their scenes in the streets of Sydney's eastern suburbs, where Lord had grown up as the eldest child of a doctor.
Dishonour came out of a meeting Lord had with her publisher and agent last year, in which she was urged to write a stand-alone crime thriller. While she was writing 17 books in a young-adult series, Conspiracy 365, and dealing with health issues, many of her adult readers had moved on.
"I heard myself say, "I could do that". My first six novels were all stand-alones before I got inveigled in [the Gemma Lincoln] series. It freed me up."
She came up with the character of Debra Hawkins, closely modelled on detective Superintendent Debbie Wallace, who had headed the Middle Eastern crime squad before becoming the first female boss of the gang squad.
The author was drawn to Wallace's refusal to sacrifice her femininity or integrity in policing, and met her for lunch; Wallace was a picture in suit and heels. "I told her the story I wanted to write and she helped me iron out the creases, nothing procedural or confidential, but if this were to happen, what might happen then, that sort of thing."
Hawkins' nemesis is Adam Massoud, loosely based on Bassam Hamzy, founder of the vicious Sydney street gang Brothers 4 Life, which Wallace helped dismantle.
Lord also took a couple of stray storylines from a crime-examiner friend, with whom she had hung out for more than a decade, about a cop set up for murder. She interviewed migrant women - and their advocates - who had fled domestic violence or oppression, including one in hiding after fleeing her family and converting to Christianity.
"It's a huge thing to do a book," she says. "I've got to feel as if I have something important to say. Not bring out another bloody serial killer and work out horrible ways to mutilate women and have him caught.
"That sort of thing doesn't interest me in the slightest. I also thought it would be nice to have a sane investigator. I'm just so sick of all these shambling physical wrecks. Let's have a practical country girl, which is risky."
Lord doesn't like to write explicit violence either. Suspense is her aim. "I aim to grip."
