P. M. NewtonCritiques

Terrific book, one of the best I've read this year. If you love Sydney with all her sleaze and diversity you'll like this. Set in the 1990s at the height of the ICAC police corruption inquiries, there are many threads pulled into the story including past ghosts from the Vietnam war, Aboriginal issues as well eternal themes of betrayal and justice.

This ticks most of my crime fiction boxes: a strong and convincing sense of place, a messed up main character, ethical dilemmas and a system that actively works to prevent good outcomes, but it didn't quite work for me as well as Newton's first book. The plot felt a bit more stapled together, and some of the joins weren't super convincing. Still, you'll rip through it and find plenty to enjoy along the way.

A dark, compelling crime novel, with a vivid sense of place (Sydney), some excellent characterisation and a rich, gripping story to tell.

Beams Falling by Pamela Newton follows her lauded 2010 debut, The Old School, featuring Detective Nhu ‘Ned’ Kelly.

Following the shooting that left Kelly wounded and a corrupt police officer dead (in The Old School ), she is shunted from her Bankstown unit to Taskforce Acorn in Cabramatta, the token Asian officer on a team investigating the area’s criminal activity. Though officially restricted to light duties, Ned is drawn into the investigation of a brazen shooting of a schoolboy, which leads the team into the world of the ‘ra choi’ – teen hitmen, drug mules, dealers and thieves, corrupted by easy money and the illusion of power.

The gritty plot reveals a confronting mire of crime, including murder, drugs and prostitution, tainting the Sydney suburb. Newton doesn’t pull any punches, twelve year old boys are assassinated in broad daylight and fourteen year old girls are raped in front of their fathers as object lessons. The violence is brutal and dispiriting and the solution an enigma.
The investigating police are hindered in their brief by language and cultural barriers, part of which Ned is supposed to address based on her half Vietnamese ethnicity. Frustration with their lack of progress pushes some to manipulate circumstances in the hope that the means will justify the end, despite the threat of ICAC.

Newton’s exploration of trauma is as compelling as the police investigation. Though her physical wounds are healing, Kelly is struggling with the psychological impact of being shot and Newton’s portrayal of Ned’s distress is raw and affecting. Kelly is hyper-alert, fearful and barraged by flashbacks of both past and recent trauma yet determined to deny her PTDS, until she is forced into group therapy after a humiliating incident.

Though this novel can be read as a stand-alone, I regret I didn’t have the opportunity to read The Old School before the release of Beams Falling. I found Beams Falling to be powerful, gripping and authentic crime fiction offering complex plot and characters. I really hope we won’t have to wait another four years for the next installment.

When THE OLD SCHOOL was released all the way back in 2010, I noted "As I was reading this book I couldn't help but create a checklist of the things that make up seriously good crime fiction for me, and apply it as I went." Every box ticked needless to say, which means that the follow up has been much anticipated. It doesn't disappoint in any single way.

As with the first book we've got a very good plot, with Kelly returned from sick leave, and on light duties. Still in physical rehab her mental recovery also gets some attention, as she struggles to cope with the PTSD symptoms which overwhelm her life and her relationships. Whilst she's battling those demons, and stuck, supposedly, on office duties, her ethnicity means she's pulled, however reluctantly, into a number of investigations that intertwine into drugs, home invasions, violence and murder.

Kelly's own personal experience is visceral, raw, clear as a bell. An expose on what happens when a cop's life is endangered, threatened, turned upside down and what they have to do to get back on the job. There's some beautiful passages woven into the narrative that talk about the idea of dealing with flight or fight, and how "the job" means that bad must be confronted, must be dealt with.

"She wanted to run away. Every muscle, every nerve ending, urged her to. Instead she turned, sagging under the load she carried. This was why cops were cops. Instead of taking flight, they turned towards the fear."

"They'd had no past, no future. Just that moment, survival. 'We talked about the fight-or-flight response,'... Cynthia reckons we're stuck there, in that moment. We survived. It finished. But it's like our flight-or-fight switch is broken. We can't turn if off.'"

There is, however, absolutely no sense whatsoever of pity. Kelly's struggling. Angry, scared, confused. Regretful definitely, but pity is never to be seen. There's even distinct glimpses of hope. The tentative sense of attraction to another human being, albeit one who has seen his own share of pointless violence and despair. There's even some sense of forgiveness or at least acceptance of the part that other colleagues played in her injury, her past, present and future. Along the way there's other cops in trouble as well - this is not a one person character study. It's about the difficulties of the job as a whole.

It's also about the problems in immigrant communities. People who come from the worst possible circumstances, seeking hope and normality. How that pans out in subsequent generations, how the idea of always being an outsider, even when you're born here can have an impact. If nothing else BEAMS FALLING reminded this reader, yet again, that life is a tricky business and it doesn't matter where you come from or how you get here, it's what happens to you here and what you do about that, that matters.

Newton writes with an honesty and clarity that's both confronting and soothing. These characters suffer, they suffer a lot, and the scenario's they deal with are mucky and base and nasty and the worst of the worst. Some of them don't make it, but the ones who do survive, are battered and bruised but not always lessened by their experiences. There are points when you wonder how close to the truth BEAMS FALLING comes, and why on earth you'd get out of bed every morning and attempt to deal with it.

The first book in this series promised much, but BEAMS FALLING delivers so so much more.

http://www.austcrimefiction.org/review/review-beams-falling-pm-newton

As I was reading this book I couldn't help but create a checklist of the things that make up seriously good crime fiction for me, and apply it as I went.

A sense of place that puts you right on the spot, without turning into a travelogue. Something that gives you a sense of the smell, the look, the way that people move around and interact with their location. THE OLD SCHOOL is set in Bankstown, a suburb of Sydney almost tailor-made for the action that is taking place - multitudes of cultures living up close and personal, dodgy dealings in all walks of life, overcrowded streets, haves and have nots, development and profound poverty, traffic and dust. Aboriginal activists are still fighting for land rights and against deaths in custody. The Prime Minister's famous Redfern Speech gets a mention. There is such a strong sense of the place, and the timeframe in this book, that I'd swear you can smell the kebabs she describes.

A solid plot, a believable set of circumstances in which people find themselves pushed to the limit, achieving great things, dealing with other people, solving problems. The events of the book - the discovery of two skeletons in the concrete foundations of a building being demolished and the death of an old homeless Aboriginal man are interwoven with the professional and personal life of Nhu 'Ned" Kelly. Ned is a young, mixed race woman, working her way towards promotion / change within the NSW police, at a time that ICAC (the Independent Commission Against Corruption) investigations are carefully dismantling the careers of many around her. It's a nice touch to weave the reality of the ICAC investigations, and mentions of some of its more notorious participants into the daily working life of Ned - adding not just a sense of realism, but giving readers a timeframe without having to stress dates. Perhaps there are a few elements in the plot that rely a little too much on co-incidence but frankly the way that THE OLD SCHOOL lays that out - well coincidences do happen.

Good characters, including some growth, a bit of backstory, a realistic feeling of people who aren't perfect, who make mistakes, who do good, and bad things. What glues the elements of this book together are the characters that Newton has built. Ned, her mentor and boss TC, her sister Linh and aunt MM, along with various other police and members of the Aboriginal community. Whilst it's undoubtedly Ned's story, all the other players get their moments, and provide a great supporting role. Newton also draws a very sensitive portrayal of being the child of a Vietnam vet in Australia, whilst slowly revealing the truth behind the death of Ned's parents, many years ago.

Social observation - exploring real things from real life that aren't right. THE OLD SCHOOL does touch on a lot of issues - police and official corruption, organised crime, Aboriginal activism and land rights, fallout from the Vietnam war. It uses all of these elements as aspects of the plot - there's never any sense of lecturing or pushing a barrow. Rather each element is revealed as part of the ongoing investigation, the lives of the characters, as aspects of the revelations leading to a solution.

Finally realism. Not to the point of user manual accurate - but a real feeling that there are elements of the story, the setting, the events that are being presented that have a believability about them (not that I actually care if they are or aren't 100% realistic or accurate - I just want to feel like the author knows what they are talking about). THE OLD SCHOOL does this in spades.

According to the blurb on THE OLD SCHOOL, Newton worked in the NSW police force for thirteen years, and this is her first novel. If this is a debut - bring on a whole lot more of the series

Publisher's blurb:
Sydney, 1992. Nhu 'Ned' Kelly is a young detective making her way in what was, until recently, the best police force money could buy. Now ICAC has the infamous Roger Rogerson in the spotlight, and the old ways are out. Ned's sex and background still make her an outsider in the force, but Sydney is changing, expanding, modernising, and so is the Job.

When two bodies are found in the foundations of an old building in Sydney's west, Ned is drawn into the city's past: old rivalries, old secrets and old wrongs. As she works to discover who the bones belong to – and who dumped them there – she begins to uncover secrets that threaten to expose not only the rotten core of the police force, but also the dark mysteries of her own family.

Bill Clinton has just become the US President, and Detective Ned Kelly has just failed Undercover Training Course #32 at the Goulburn Police Academy. It is a commonly held opinion that Kelly was always going to fail, set up as a lesson to other would-bes. Kelly is based at Bankstown Police Station, has been a detective for two years, and good at her job.The discovery of old bones in an excavation, and their subsequent identification, unravels elements of Kelly's past and threatens to destroy the memories that she and her sister have of their dead parents. Just as Kelly is really the new kid on the block, many of the other detectives have been around for decades, cadets and even higher when she was just starting school. Some are brushed with corruption, some are just plain tough.

THE OLD SCHOOL is strongly rooted in local Sydney history: the Royal Commission into corruption in the New South Wales police force, and political pillars from the late 70s: Aboriginal land rights and the wounds of the Vietnam War. P.M. Newton does an excellent job of weaving a story around these elements. The characters she creates are strong, credible, and well fleshed out. I'm immensely impressed with this book. It has an historical authenticity about it, but achieves a clever balance with the crime fiction.