I don't know why Gary Disher isn't well-known over here... his WYATT books are simply wonderful. This is required reading for Willeford, Westlake, and Thomas Perry fans. FALL OUT is the last book in the series... so start at the beginning with KICKBACK and you won't be sorry. I read all six books in the series in one stretch and was sad when it was over.

The book The Devin Wind is a great book written by Garry Disher. It is set in broom in the 1946's and is about 4 friends, Hart, Alice(who are brother and sister), Jamie and Mitsy,who go through a lot with World War 2 happening and Broom getting bombed, and with close ones getting killed. The book is mainly about frindship and two friends who fall in love, and they are both from a different cultural background. I would recomend this book to any one who likes a good book to read and enjoy reading a love story ,and with a great story line. when you start reading it you will just want to finish reading it.

Despite all the intellectual disdain for American culture, there are a number of great literary genres that are distinctly American, among them the hard-boiled detective and crime noir story. In fact, it seems not too much of a stretch to say that the prose and story-telling styles of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler were as influential, or more so, than those of any of the more high-toned literary icons of the 20th Century, with the added distinction that folks who tried to like them actually produced readable books, while those who tried to write like Joyce, Woolf, and Faulkner generally produced drek.

Strangely enough though, two of the best current practitioners in these genres are Australian. The Cliff Hardy series by Peter Corris is among the select company of great homages to Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe, while the Wyatt novels by Garry Disher are probably the best crime series since Donald Westlake's Parker books (written under the pseudonym of Richard Stark) of thirty and forty years ago. From the one word name of the antihero to the problems with the "Outfit" (organized crime), the Wyatt stories actually quite resemble Westlake's.

Here's Disher's description of his protagonist :

Wyatt was forty years old. Respectable men his age were marking time until their retirement. The hard men his age were dead or in gaol.
Wyatt was different. He'd never been burdened by doubt, uncertainty or personal ties. He worked from an emotionless base. He could
cut to the essentials of a job and stamp his cold hard style on it.

He needs to be cold and hard in this, his second, caper, as he's being hunted by the Outfit after crossing them up in the first book; he's trying to pull a payroll job in the unfamiliar surroundings of Belcowie, three hours north of Adelaide; and he's got untested partners, including a woman, violating one of his own rules.

The language is terse, the action brisk and brutal, and the book terrific. Cover blurbs for such novels always refer to them as realistic. I suspect the opposite is actually true. Thankfully there aren't many criminals as smart and emotionless as Wyatt, otherwise we'd all be in trouble.

GRADE : A

Speaking as an American who has lived in Australia for 2 years, I can say this is authentic and I felt as if I were Down Under with these pure Australian characters, the town, and scenes along the highways. This adventure mystery kept me cheering for the main character and feeling a part of it, as it quickly kept revealing clue after clue. Americans will have no trouble understanding the book as there is no obscure Australian terminology, AKA Aussie slang. Compare this mystery to Garry Disher's "Kickback" written in 1991.

The Bamboo Flute was a very interesting book about a boy called Paul, who's family was poor. He meets a man called Eric the Red who tells and shows him how to make a flute out of bamboo.

I recently discovered that the Minneapolis Public Library has a bookstore. This is very cool - I hauled a good summer's worth of reading out of there for less than $15.

One of my finds was a book called Kickback (1991) by an Australian named Garry Disher. This is the first of the Wyatt Series (Wyatt is the main character). My first and lasting impression was that if Elmore Leonard was an Aussie, this is what he'd write. The Wyatt thrillers have been called a landmark in Australian crime writing, according to Harper Collins Publishers.

The mid-north of South Australia is the setting. Except for some of the terminology, however, the city could be any US metropolitan area. Wyatt is a professional robber and in the Leonard tradition is the coolest character in the book. He has a young Clint Eastwood thing going: He's quiet, watchful, careful, and sharp. Wyatt has no close friends and he keeps an eye on his associates. You can't help but respect him and the way he operates.

The story is crisp, well-plotted, and has a few unexpected twists. A heist is complicated by a surly cowboy named Sugarfoot Younger who is out for his piece of the action and personal revenge. The book is a quick and fun read that flows smoothly and effortlessly. As a writer, I'm jealous.

Kickback (1991) Paydirt (1992) Deathdeal (1993) Crosskill (1994) Port Vila Blues (1996) The Fallout (1997)

Mildly diverting, a quick read. I picked the culprit from the first page of his appearance. Lots of read herrings - but you KNOW the characters with the records are the red herrings - don't you?

Some nice character development, but I am afraid the denoument lacked any surprise for me.

The Dragon Man is the first crime novel to depart from Disher's Wyatt series of crime books. Written in the third person, it is vivid with details and a world little known to Americans. Set in a coastal town of Melbourne, Australia, Disher has managed to capture in great details police life in that region. Our protagonist Hall Challis is up to his elbow trying to hunt down a killer who's working his way up the Old Peninsula Highway. Christmas is around the corner and the heat is unbearable. For Challis and his team, the nightmare begins. An enjoyable read from one of Australia's best writers.

What kind of a name is MITSY? And by the way what kind of a name is DISHER? We have been forced to study the Divine Wind in english and we hope this love story (if you can call it that) isn't a re-enactment of Disher's childhood. The characters in this book are undeveloped, the romance is cold and boring, the scene is as well set as a rubics cube. How can this book be compared to Romeo and Juliet? Overall leave romance to the experts.

The Divine Wind is a beautifully written book, there's no doubt about that. The descriptions and setting is written wonderfully. However, the plot is way too similar to "Snow Falling on Cedars", has rather dull undeveloped characters, love with hardly a mention of the actual falling in love and a selfish and self-absorbed main character (Hartley Penrose) you dislike after a few chapters- who unfortunatly narrates the entire thing. The plot dragged on and on and on. Perhaps Disher would make a better poet.

THE DIVINE WIND: A LOVE STORY is a tense and riveting read set on the northwest Australian coast at the dawn of the Second World War. I don't care that its fiction--I will be clenching my fists for days as I recall the results of the havoc wrecked by the insanity of the adult world upon the story's three young central characters: Hart, who narrates the story, his sister Alice, and Alice's best friend Mitsy Sennosuke--a girl of Japanese parents.

Before moving to California as a young man, I had never heard of the Japanese internment during World War II--nope, it wasn't ever mentioned in the history books they used back on the East Coast in my youth. So, I am not at all surprised to learn from THE DIVINE WIND that a similar "procedure" took place in Australia. Nor am I shocked by the manner in which the Australian white supremacists in the book treat individuals of the various nonwhite groups. But the way in which those prejudices and the War engulf the three young people and totally screw up what should have been their idyllic young lives brought me to the verge of utter despair as I read page after page of Hart's touching love story:

"I fell in love with Mitsy in the darkness of the tin-walled cinema in Sheba Lane, where cowboys roamed the range and airmen spies slipped away from foreign countries in the light of the moon, and great white hunters saved beautiful women from maddened rogue elephants.
"In the daylight, Mitsy was a separate being, slim and restless and full of jokes and mischief like Alice, but when the lights were dimmed and the screen glowed with lovers and heroes, she would grow quiet and still, and settle in her seat, and imperceptibly shift until her shoulder and knee touched mine. Alice, on the other side of her, would crane her head around and meet my gaze, but never say anything, or tease, just as Mitsy would never acknowledge the intimacy when the lights came on at the end but simply treat me as one of the gang again. I sometimes thought that I dreamed of her."

In stark contrast to the other white adult characters, Hart and Alice's father, Michael Penrose, is the one that I'd want to know. A complex, good-hearted guy who makes one awful mistake, he repeatedly stands up and speaks loudly for what is right. In addition, the colorful, multiethnic supporting cast is a lively crowd that had me smiling despite the horrors that they frequently bore the brunt of.

THE DIVINE WIND: A LOVE STORY takes us to a rugged and beautiful place at a tough time in history and introduces us to three young people who I hope are still out there somewhere--old and at peace.

Richie Partington
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