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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'A reformed alcoholic, New York doctor Jack Nugent, takes on the challenge of running the medical centre at utopia in remote Central Australia. After two and a half years of advertising the position, there were no other applicants for the job. Nugent becomes engrossed in the exotic Aboriginal people and culture and is outraged by the government neglect he sees everywhere. Unexpectedly, he is swept up in a bizarre ritual murder investigation, in such a remote place he must assist the state coroner by gathering evidence and provide police with his forensic findings. Vital evidence goes missing and every avenue Nugent takes is blocked. He falls in love with Carla, a black lawyer, who helps him overcome the obstacles police and the Aboriginal community place in his path, a better social outcome for this ancient desert community depends largely on them.' (From the publisher's website.)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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Philip McLaren and the Indigenous-Australian Crime Novel
2016
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Coolabah , no. 20 2016; (p. 22-37) 'This paper locates the postcolonial crime novel as a space for disenfranchised groups to write back to the marginalisation inherent in the process of colonisation, and explores the example of Australia. From its inception in the mid-19th century, Australian crime fiction reflected upon the challenging harshness and otherness of the Australian experience for the free and convict settler, expelled from the metropole. It created a series of popular subgenres derived from the convict narrative proper, while more ‘standard’ modes of crime fiction, popularised in and through British and American crime fiction, were late to develop. Whereas Australian crime fiction has given expression to the white experience of the continent in manifold ways, up until recently it made no room for Indigenous voices – with the exception of the classic Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte series written by the prolific Arthur Upfield in the first half of the 20th century. For the longest time, this absence reflected the dispossession, dispersal and disenfranchisement of the colonised Indigenous peoples at large; there were neither Aboriginal voices nor Aboriginal authors, which made the textual space of the Australian crime novel a discursive terra nullius. This paper will look at the only Indigenous-Australian author to date with a substantial body of work in crime fiction, Philip McLaren, and elucidate how his four crime novels break new ground in Australian crime fiction by embedding themselves within a political framework of Aboriginal resilience and resistance to neo/colonialism. Written as of the 1990s, McLaren’s oeuvre is eclectic in that it does not respond to traditional formats of Australian crime fiction, shifts between generic subtypes and makes incursions into other genres. The paper concludes that McLaren’s oeuvre has not been conceived of as the work of a crime writer per se, but rather that its form and content are deeply informed by the racist violence and oppression that still affects Indigenous-Australian society today, the expression of which the crime novel is particularly well geared to.' (Publication abstract) -
McLaren Set for New Book
2015
single work
column
— Appears in: Koori Mail , 17 June no. 603 2015; (p. 15) ...author philip McLaren says he is getting ready to write his "John Grisham novel"...' -
French Prize for McLaren
2010
single work
column
— Appears in: Koori Mail , 7 April no. 473 2010; (p. 47)
-
French Prize for McLaren
2010
single work
column
— Appears in: Koori Mail , 7 April no. 473 2010; (p. 47) -
McLaren Set for New Book
2015
single work
column
— Appears in: Koori Mail , 17 June no. 603 2015; (p. 15) ...author philip McLaren says he is getting ready to write his "John Grisham novel"...' -
Philip McLaren and the Indigenous-Australian Crime Novel
2016
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Coolabah , no. 20 2016; (p. 22-37) 'This paper locates the postcolonial crime novel as a space for disenfranchised groups to write back to the marginalisation inherent in the process of colonisation, and explores the example of Australia. From its inception in the mid-19th century, Australian crime fiction reflected upon the challenging harshness and otherness of the Australian experience for the free and convict settler, expelled from the metropole. It created a series of popular subgenres derived from the convict narrative proper, while more ‘standard’ modes of crime fiction, popularised in and through British and American crime fiction, were late to develop. Whereas Australian crime fiction has given expression to the white experience of the continent in manifold ways, up until recently it made no room for Indigenous voices – with the exception of the classic Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte series written by the prolific Arthur Upfield in the first half of the 20th century. For the longest time, this absence reflected the dispossession, dispersal and disenfranchisement of the colonised Indigenous peoples at large; there were neither Aboriginal voices nor Aboriginal authors, which made the textual space of the Australian crime novel a discursive terra nullius. This paper will look at the only Indigenous-Australian author to date with a substantial body of work in crime fiction, Philip McLaren, and elucidate how his four crime novels break new ground in Australian crime fiction by embedding themselves within a political framework of Aboriginal resilience and resistance to neo/colonialism. Written as of the 1990s, McLaren’s oeuvre is eclectic in that it does not respond to traditional formats of Australian crime fiction, shifts between generic subtypes and makes incursions into other genres. The paper concludes that McLaren’s oeuvre has not been conceived of as the work of a crime writer per se, but rather that its form and content are deeply informed by the racist violence and oppression that still affects Indigenous-Australian society today, the expression of which the crime novel is particularly well geared to.' (Publication abstract)
Awards
- 2010 nominated Ned Kelly Awards for Crime Writing — Best Novel
- 2010 winner Prix Litteraire des Recits de l'Ailleurs
Last amended 10 Oct 2016 12:02:57
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- Australian Outback, Central Australia,
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