The thing that struck me most about GHOST MONEY was the feeling of authenticity and detail about a period in Cambodian/Vietnamese history that I have lived through but am sadly ignorant about, despite Australia's involvement in the so-called Vietnam War. Andrew Nette uses his principal characters and those whom they meet, to deliver a series of mini-history lessons, starting with Australian/Vietnamese Max Quinlan's own background.

In a strange way, Quinlan and Cambodia had history. Memories of his father shouting at their black and white television, on the screen, Asian soldiers, terrified faces under steel helmets too large for their heads, running from an invisible enemy, the sky behind them full of fire and smoke.

It was 1975; Max was nine years old. Phnom Penh was about to fall to the Khmer Rouge. His father Lester Quinlan was stationed in neighbouring Vietnam as an Australian army advisor in the mid-sixties and images of the war had been commonplace in the lounge room of their house in North Melbourne.

The images fascinated Quinlan as a child, only becoming menacing with his father’s growing agitation over the course of the conflict. When Saigon had fallen a month earlier, Lester Quinlan had yelled at the newsreader like an irate football fan castigating an umpire for a bad decision. Maxwell Quinlan had been born in the port town of Vung Tau in 1965. Three months later his Vietnamese mother was killed when a bomb exploded in the local market where she was shopping. Lester brought the boy home – his last act of bravery before drink and bitterness consumed him.

Quinlan's search for missing businessman Charles Avery takes him, and the reader of course, from Thailand to Phnom Penh. Despite the slabs of historical detail, or maybe because of the vividness of it, we remain engaged in the realism of the search for Avery and an understanding of what he is up to.

An impressive debut novel hardly surprising given Nette's own journalistic experience, and interest in pulp fiction. ( )

Start out reading GHOST MONEY and you're quickly immersed in a tight, tough, noir story set mostly in Cambodia. But don't be surprised if at some point, you also find yourself right smack bang in the middle of a history lesson and a subtle exploration of racial politics.

Knowing a little of Nette's interest in pulp fiction, I confess that the taut, noir stylings of GHOST MONEY didn't come as any surprise whatsoever, so for this reader, what was most rewarding about the book was the unexpected complexity of the central character, Max Quinlan. As well as one hell of a plot that just does ... not ... let ... go.

In a testament to the power of the storytelling there's something very matter-of-fact about the son of a Vietnamese woman and an Australian Vietnam vet as an ex-cop, a specialist in finding people who would rather stay lost. It also seems to go without saying that Quinlan, despite his lack of extensive PI experience, and his own misgivings, would find himself in SE Asia looking for the once successful Melbourne lawyer Charles Avery. Who is now a missing, dodgy gems trader whose sister wants to know what happened to her brother. It doesn't come as any surprise at all that Quinlan would follow the clues to post Khmer Rouge Cambodia and right smack bang into the madness of a country still recovering from the extremes of that regime.

What's also frighteningly matter-of-fact and at the same time very revealing, is the nature of the world in which Quinlan moves. The tension between Cambodian and Vietnamese, the vulnerability of people in a society that's been so brutalised, the casual way in which life is regarded as dispensable, and the greed and self-interest. Quinlan survives because of his own background, because he can read people, because he can see things and people for exactly what they are. And because he's careful about who he allows to get close.

It's one thing to know the theoretical history of a place, it's another completely to see the outcomes from within, to experience the result from the point of view of a direct observer or participant. That is part of what's so clever about GHOST MONEY. In the character of Quinlan, Nette has created a very realistic dichotomy. A man with an Asian look, yet his knowledge of his Vietnamese mother is non-existent. Australian raised, by a man who was profoundly damaged. Thai speaking, but looking enough Vietnamese to be regarded as suspicious by the Cambodians, there's so much about this man that demonstrates perfectly the complexities of the Vietnamese / Cambodian / Australian experience. Pairing him with Sarin, a Cambodian who has had direct and devastating experience of the Khmer Rouge, who remains in his damaged and difficult country, desperately trying to find a way to continue to survive, he's realistic and considered. He's all too aware of the difference between the reality and western perception of Cambodia, he's not an observer, he is the experience.

Great characters are one thing, but stick them into a plot that is not just realistic, but tight and fast moving, and frankly, nerve-racking, and something else starts to happen. Again, there was something so matter-of-fact about the lows that people will sink too when it comes to greed and self-interest, the way that loyalties shift and personal gain remains paramount that was chilling, especially when you match that up with the extreme violence of whatever it takes to win attitudes. Fingers crossed GHOST MONEY is the start of a new series.

http://www.austcrimefiction.org/review/ghost-money-andrew-nette ( )