Ghostlines

by Nick Gadd. Scribe, 2008.

As an unpublished manuscript, Ghostlines won a Victorian Premier’s Literary Award, and it’s a strong debut. Philip Trudeau, an investigative journalist fallen on hard times, finds himself drawn into a mystery involving corruption in the art world. The dialogue is convincing, the Melbourne settings are well-done, and Gadd pulls together the strands of the mystery neatly at the end. There’s no shortage of novels featuring investigative journalists. English author Joe Kelly, whose mystery novels are set in and around East Anglia, is possibly the best of the bunch at the moment, but Gadd could rival him once he’s got a couple more books under his belt. Not everyone will swallow the supernatural side of the story, which was an unnecessary element of the plot in my view, but I would certainly read more from this author.

- John.