Blue Wolf Reviews

Tag: dead

  • Dead Horse Gap

    Dead Horse Gap

    Dead Horse Gap sees Lee Christine returning to the Snowy Mountains once again, this time to investigate the death of a pilot on the remote Khancoban airstrip. How did a tractor get parked in the middle of the small airstrip and what was the pilot doing flying on a night which was registered as a blizzard? What was so important that it could not wait until morning or the weather cleared.

    Detective Mitchell Flowers is sent to investigate; he’s has had too little sleep, it is seriously cold, and he is hungry! As this is his first solo case, Peirce Ryder being involved with a Court case and Sterling being undercover, not all that far from the accident site, he is determined not to overlook a thing.

    And so begins another absolutely page turning ‘who done it’ as Sterling is trying to find the link between the brutal bashing of drug dealer Scruffy Freidman, whose body was found floating face down the Thredbo River some six months previously, and the drug ‘king pins’ ferrying drugs into the region.

    Ryder has his own issues as this looks like his last case before he moves on to country policing, something that troubles him, but a decision that he is not prepared to change as he is committed to the love of his life Vanessa. He is keen to hand over to Flowers who he is learning is a through detective.

    The plot twists and turns as much as the roads to through the high country, as the more Flowers looks into what appears to be a lot of very disparate events, the more confusing it seems to be that someone would deliberately place a tractor in the middle of the airstrip, knowing full well who was flying in that night.

    A family feud comes to light in the small community of Khancoban which has been thinly papered over by the modern generation, a land development is well underway which also involves the members of the two families involved with White Winter Station, and secrets are carefully kept close to the chest.

    Running throughout the story is a possible romance being kept alive between Flowers and Stirling as she checks in with him every evening, which for both of them holds mixed feeling. Flowers because he would like a more positive relationship to develop. Stirling is not happy at all as they work in the same team and she has worked so hard to leave a bad rap behind her and make her mark as a serious detective.

    Another slice of intrigue has been added as Flowers is always so tired, never wants to go to dinner with Eva, renown for her culinary skills, as is Flowers renowned for his eating ability, Ryder, Vanessa and Jack. What is it that is keeping him up so late into the night?

    All these many aspects begin to come together in an explosive finale which will see a family shattered, a life threatened and the basis for the next story laid.

  • Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead

    Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead

    If you were to choose a book by its title only, then most people would give Everyone in this room will someday be dead a miss. Don’t. It does focus on death, but with some dead pan humour, a suspected murder case, and a confused young woman, the plot is never predictable.

    When Gilda is a young girl, she discovers the body of her adored pet rabbit. The memory of this, and watching her father, from her bedroom window, as he buries the bunny, recurs in her dreams. It also frames her thoughts and actions as she grows. As an adult, Gilda has moved out of home. She has lost her job and is in a depressive state and as she reads the paper, she reads about a woman who was fatally stabbed by a beach umbrella. Life seems very precarious!

    An advert in the paper shows free therapy sessions given in the local Catholic Church. When Gilda goes along to enquire, the busy Priest thanks her for coming to fill the job of Secretary and shows her to a desk. The previous worker has disappeared, and Gilda’s problem of employment is solved. She is expected to take part in the religious services and not being a Catholic this presents some challenges.

    When Gladys, the previous Secretary, is found dead, police suspect murder. As we follow Gilda’s innermost thoughts, and actions (which have a way of backfiring) we see that she is understandably a suspect in the murder. It is hard to describe the anguish that Gilda feels, and the anxious depressed state she lives in, while laughing at some of the humour and situations that she weaves into her life.

    The end of the book reveals how life, medication, new friends or maturity have had a profound effect on Gilda. Everyone in this room will someday be dead is a very satisfying, quirky read.

  • Dead in the Water

    Dead in the Water

    A very angry book about our greatest environmental catastrophe. . . the death of the Murray-Darling Basin

    The subtitle of Dead in the Water states this is a ‘very angry book’, which is totally correct as, by the end of the first three chapters the very real sense of anger, frustration and an almost total sense of despair is present which becomes a powerful combination, as page after page is devoured relating to the tragedy of the Murray Darling Basin and the death of the once mighty Murray River.

    Dead in the Water is also book which could very easily see a lawsuit or two take place, as Richard Beasley clearly sets out in his pages, everything in the book has been placed under the eagle eyes of a barrage of legal experts, and rightly so, because if even half of what is on the page is true, that would be horrific enough, but everything that is in the book is so tragically true.

    This does not bode well for a once mighty river system, a river system poetry has been written about, movies made on and about, writ large in the history of First Nation people and recent ‘Australians’ as a powerful, life giving force.

    But what happens when this life giving force becomes far, far less than it ever was, due to the callous disregard by the very people who owe their income, sense of identity and lifestyle to this very river; the graziers, food producers, cotton growers and politician to name a few; it dies!

    Clouding the facts and the issue, in a very big cloud are the Politicians, on all side of the political spectrum, who do truly appear to believe that the people of Australia are really stupid, which they are not; they are just battered, bruised and exhausted by the constant obfuscation (the action of making something obscure, unclear, or unintelligible) of facts when it comes to the Murray Darling Basin, along with the issues of Environmental and Climate change.

    Presented year after year for more years than most would like to admit, so called facts about the death or rather the non-death of the mighty Murray, the destruction of wetlands, the salting up of the once gloriously rich Coorong eco system, vital to the health of the Murray are trotted out:  scientific reports deliberately misconstrued and antics, such as the blatant burning of The Murray Darling  Basin Plan , The Guide to the Proposed Basin Plan (The Guide),  has seen a plan full of workable solutions with real scientific fact and figures denigrated.

    As soon as The Guide was released the lobbyists commenced action. Read chapter three. If it is the only chapter you read, it is powerful, amongst other powerful chapters and probably just about says it all….. This plan is now almost as dead as the dinosaur which is a tragedy.

    Richard Beasley makes a very good case, speaking out loud and clear about the absolute disrespect a once mighty river system is receiving, the environmental effects that follow and of course Climate Change. A very recent cataclysmic event, in 2019, the death of thousands of fish, is one most Australians were aware of, which was directly attributed to lack of oxygen in the river due to several causes.

    Essentially, Dead in the Water is a book that MUST be read, discussed and read again. It is a book that will leave a real anger, a genuine sense of frustration, as well as a far clearer understanding of the utter disregard for the Murray River.

    Provocative, outrageous and almost satirical, if it wasn’t so terribly true, this is a wake-up call for Australian’s everywhere to take a stand, take note and read clearly between the lines, to discover what is not being said about the lack of health relating to the Murray Darling Basin and the waters that need to flow to bring it back to robust good health.

    Richard Beasley is a Senior Counsel at the New South Wales Bar. He was the Senior Counsel Assisting at the Murray-Darling Royal Commission, established by the South Australian Weatherill Government in 2018 and conducted by Commissioner Bret Walker SC.

  • Dead Air

    Dead Air

    An inbuilt sense of mystique is the overriding element in all of Marconi Unions works, a mystique which sets their music apart, and one that has seen them rise to the top of the electronic music scene over the past eighteen years.

    Dead Air, their latest inspired release, has pushed the boundaries to create a sense of time and space which, although there are five tracks to the work, appears to be seamless, simply melding into each other, constant, perfect and very melodic in the creation.

    Although the work commenced with a different sense of direction, it did, as music often does, developed its own space and place, causing Richard Talbot, Jamie Crossley and Duncan Meadows to reassess their destination and go with the flow, literally.

    Ethereal, spacey, almost diaphanous, each track drifts slowly across the soundscape seeking a place to remain, if only fleetingly, then upon departure, leaving behind a lovely sense of peace, tranquillity and harmony, such is the power of music.

    Smooth electronic melodies with no beat or particular rhythm, have created a vast change of direction from their recent releases Ghost Stations (2016) where a blend of electronica and instrument was used with great effect. Prior to that Weightless (Ambient Transmissions Volume 2) rose to world acclaim in 2014. Weightless is perhaps more in the ambient sector, but both demonstrate the vast capabilities that can be discovered within a vastly disparate music genre.

    Dead Air redefines the boundaries in a genre where boundaries are not considered in any aspect of the creation, but in this minimalist form a sensual kind of beauty emerges, a beauty unable to be obtained in any other format.

    A perfect album for simply drifting and allowing time to stop for a small moment or two, in world often gone mad!