Under the Cold Bright Lights
by Garry Disher
Fifty-five year old Alan Auhl, a retired Homicide Detective, has rejoined the Melbourne police in their Cold Case and Missing Persons Unit. He may be a Retread or a “sad old bastard,” as some younger colleagues call him, but experience pays off as he plows into investigating cases.
A couple living in the country, breaking up a cement slab to get rid of a snake living underneath, have uncovered a skeleton. How old is it? Not all that old – there’s a coin dated 2008.
Two sisters, grieving their father’s 2011 death, insist it wasn’t accidental: they’re sure he was murdered. Auhl finds a fresh lead in a photo of the inside of their father’s car.
A doctor claims his third wife is trying to kill him. Auhl knows him from before, and is sure the doctor killed his first two wives, but he's never found any evidence. Now there’s more to the story.
Auhl wins grudging respect from his partner and other colleagues as he doggedly uncovers the truth, one step at a time. One way or another, he’s determined to bring the perpetrators to justice.
There’s more to this compelling book than the plot, though. Disher is known for character-driven novels, and Auhl is a complex and sympathetic character. He has a fine (though idiosyncratic) sense of ethics and a great empathy for the underdog. His own personal life is unsettled — he’s separated (but not divorced) from his wife, who lives in another city but swoops in periodically to stay at his house.
That house — “Chateau Auhl” — is almost a character in itself: it’s big and rambling, located in inner-city Melbourne. Auhl inherited it from his parents, and it’s now filled with a collection of tenants: family members, students, and people down on their luck. These include a mother who’s hiding out from an abusive husband, along with her ten year old daughter; the two of them inevitably draw Auhl into their story.
Garry Disher is one of Australia’s best-known and most prolific writers. He’s published over 50 highly praised and widely translated books in a range of genres: crime thrillers, literary/general novels, short-story collections, YA/children’s novels, and writers’ handbooks. He’s won numerous awards, including the Ned Kelly Lifetime Achievement Award, Australia’s top literary award for crime writing.
Disher has three crime series: nine books with antihero professional thief Wyatt, seven featuring Detective Inspector Hal Challis, and two with rural Constable Paul Hirschhausen. He’s also written several standalone novels, of which Under the Cold Bright Lights is his most recent. The characters introduced here – Auhl himself, his police colleagues as well as family, friends and tenants – are very appealing and could easily continue on into a fourth crime series for Disher.
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