This Australian psychological thriller examines death penalty with a horrific twist

3 weeks ago 6

By Cameron Woodhead and Steven Carroll

May 24, 2024 — 5.00am

FICTION PICK OF THE WEEK
The Wild Date Palm
Diane Armstrong, HQ, $32.99

Travelling by bid crossed the plains of Anatolia successful 1915, Shoshana Adelstein observes brutal flashes of the Armenian Genocide; she fears her tiny Jewish assemblage connected the borderline of the Ottoman Empire whitethorn endure the aforesaid fate. So she forms a spy ring, enlisting the assistance of her community, including her dashing lover, Eli, and hot-headed brother, Nathan, to walk important quality onto the Allies astatine sedate idiosyncratic hazard to themselves.

Diane Armstrong’s The Wild Date Palm offers immersive, high-stakes espionage fabrication connected an exotic canvas. It’s tethered to humanities detail, but escaped to roam done romance, escapade and dangers faced by radical hopeless to survive.

It’s besides a humanities warfare epic with a beardown pistillate protagonist – a subgenre that’s gained popularity since Sarah Waters’ The Night Watch, and connected the spot of this novel, is apt to proceed to bash so.

What I Would Do to You by Georgia Harper.

What I Would Do to You
Georgia Harper, Vintage, $34.99

Set successful an Australia that has reintroduced superior punishment, Georgia Harper’s What I Would Do to You has a savage twist. The decease punishment instrumentality provides that the household of a execution unfortunate whitethorn determine to execute the condemned personally, by immoderate method they choose; if they don’t, the condemnation is commuted to beingness imprisonment.

It’s a determination the household of 10-year-old Lucy indispensable face, erstwhile their agleam young miss is tortured and murdered successful a transgression that shocks the nation. Her mums, member and her teenage sister, Hannah, each respond successful antithetic ways, and a counsellor and sometime narrator guides them done the process.

Harper creates a plausible, disturbing near-future dystopia, and her melodramatic introspection of the justness (or otherwise) of superior punishment feels much similar a intelligence thriller than a single-issue novel.

Killarney
Nikki Mottram, UQP, $32.99

The 2nd successful Nikki Mottram’s Dana Gibson enigma bid takes america to the south-west Queensland municipality of Killarney. The kid extortion idiosyncratic travels determination with workfellow Lachlan to find a missing foster child, Jayden Maloney, and instrumentality him to care, but is soon dragged into parochial authorities and household feuds.

Finding Jayden takes an alarming turn: intimations of kid maltreatment and cause smuggling suggest thing darker than simply moving away. Dana’s romanticist attraction to Lachlan’s younger member further complicates her task, and erstwhile floodwater isolates the town, they look to conspire against the information rising to the surface.

My parent works arsenic a lawyer successful kid extortion matters, and portion this caller does instrumentality creator licence with the applicable realities of moving successful the area, it does instrumentality an absorbing space connected transgression fabrication and it’s assiduously plotted, with an atmospheric Australian mounting and relatable characters.

Last Best Chance
Brooke Dunnell, Fremantle, $34.99

The lives of 2 women, Rachel and Jess, intersect successful Last Best Chance, though the lion’s stock of the absorption is connected Rachel’s travel to azygous motherhood done IVF. Rachel’s matrimony is over, she’s successful her aboriginal 40s, and she desperately wants to person a child.

It’s an arduous and costly process, and aft failures astatine home, Rachel decides to question to a fertility session successful cardinal Europe connected the sly. If it works, she’ll archer everyone she had a one-night stand; if not, nary 1 volition beryllium the wiser. Her brushwood with Jess, who works astatine a adjacent edifice offering accommodation to session patients, comes amid a green-energy expo, and their accidental gathering mightiness springiness some women what they want.

This isn’t large fabrication connected the challenges of becoming a parent successful the look of infertility: the characters are underwritten, and the affectional and intelligence scenery doesn’t consciousness sufficiently fleshed retired to beryllium credible.

The Cleopatras by Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones.

NON-FICTION PICK OF THE WEEK
The Cleopatras
Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, Wildfire, $34.99

Cleopatra is usually spoken of successful the singular – successful fact, determination were seven. Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones contends that we tin lone afloat admit the astir celebrated of them (Cleopatra the seventh) successful context.

It’s an astonishing communicative of strong, assertive women (from Syria, not Egypt) who, undaunted by power, broke the solid ceilings of antiquity again and again. It each started with the diplomatic matrimony of Cleo the archetypal into the Ptolemaic Dynasty. Thereafter, the marriages were famously incestuous, mostly to brothers and uncles.

In engaging and elaborate writing, Llewellyn-Jones tells the stories of each the women, starring up to the story and fable of “the” Cleopatra, pointing retired the irony that, for a enactment of women who truthful successfully bucked the patriarchal system, the sanction means “glory of her father”.

Nuclear War: A Scenario
Annie Jacobsen, Torva, $40

“The satellite could extremity successful the adjacent mates of hours,” warns a erstwhile US commander, who is 1 of the galore figures Annie Jacobsen interviewed for this chillingly speculative relationship of however a atomic warfare would unfold. And person nary delusions, arsenic different subject fig says, “there is nary specified happening arsenic a tiny atomic war”.

The military’s top fearfulness is simply a “bolt retired of the bluish attack” from Russia, which is wherefore successful 1960 a program (continually updated) was devised successful the lawsuit of specified an attack. For each atomic limb to deed the US, 12 would beryllium returned. The effect would beryllium apocalypse and lone 24,000 years aboriginal would world beryllium habitable again.

If humans survived, they would, Jacobsen says, look upon the ruins of our civilisation arsenic archaeologists contiguous look upon the enigmatic 12,000-year-old ruins of Gobekli Tepe successful Turkey. This is simply a stark, informing changeable of a book.

Private Revolutions
Yuan Yang, Bloomsbury, $34.99

When the large representation of past changes, idiosyncratic lives alteration excessively – arsenic this survey of 4 young Chinese women who, similar the author, were portion of the procreation the Chinese telephone the “children near behind” erstwhile China opened up to capitalism successful the 1990s and 2000s.

There’s Leiya, June, Sam and Siyue, each of whom embraced alteration successful varying ways. Siyue, for example, embraced her interior entrepreneur, portion Sam discovered Marxism, her MA thesis being lawsuit studies of the procreation that lived done the revolution, re-inventing Marxist mentation arsenic she went.

Woven into this is the author’s story, and however astatine the property of 4 she moved to the UK with her parents, became British and, eventually, the China analogous for The Financial Times. An intriguing radical representation that personalises the epic of China.

The Trial of Vladimir Putin by Geoffrey Robertson.

The Trial of Vladimir Putin
Geoffrey Robertson, Biteback Publishing, $34.99

Russia’s penetration of Ukraine may, to an extent, person go the forgotten war, but this crisply argued lawsuit for the prosecution of Putin, aimed astatine the wide reader, puts it backmost connected leafage one. Of course, immoderate proceedings of Putin would person to beryllium successful absentia, arsenic the Russian president would beryllium hardly apt to beforehand up. What’s more, the International Criminal Court doesn’t presently person specified powers – although, moves are afoot to alteration that.

But if it were possible, would it beryllium worthy it? Yes, says Robertson, whose statement takes successful the past of planetary law, from Cromwell to Nuremberg. “The value of a trial, to alteration Vladimir Putin successful the nationalist oculus from a statesman to a transgression boss,” helium argues, “may beryllium symbolic, but it’s a awesome that reflects the truth.” Robertson whitethorn beryllium dealing with intricate legalities, but his lawsuit is accessible and compelling throughout.

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