Cass Tuplin is back, muddling her way through another mystery in Rusty Bore, a small drought stricken town out on the middle of the Mallee.

"Dead men don’t order flake. But that’s exactly what Leo Stone asked for the April afternoon he strolled in, his gladiator shoulders filling up my shop doorway. A blast of cold wind whirled in behind him, slapping the fly strips against the wall."

Cass's old flame has walked back inter her life, her takeaway shop to be precise, after twenty years presumed to be dead.

"I stood there in gobsmacked silence. Twenty-odd years ago we had a top-notch memorial service for Leo. Every one of Rusty Bore’s hundred and forty-seven residents made it. The church was full of the sound of stifled sobs by the time Ernie got up to do the eulogy'

Full of mixed feelings, confused, angry that he hadn't attempted to contact her over those twenty years, wary over a potential partner Serena, Cass is unsure what to do so she charges him $9.50 for his fish and chips and tries to get some perspective.

All this is put on hold when she is asked by a grieving father to look into the death of his daughter, local reporter, in a single car accident involving a tree on the notorious Jensen Corner.

"I sat still a moment. Natalie Kellett. That’s why I knew the name: Natalie Kellett died in that car crash on Jensen Corner. It’s a renowned black spot; my own mother died there when I was a kid. Named after the first person that crashed and died there: Alistair Jensen, back in 1950-something, decades before my mum. Nice for the bloke to be remembered for something, I suppose. It doesn’t seem to matter how many accidents happen there, apparently there’s no money to fix that bit of road."

This simple request puts Cass into a mix of corruption, climate change coal versus solar investments, Government inquiries, fracking, more suspicious deaths, battles with her disbelieving son Senior Constable Dean and troubles with her environmentalists son Brad.

This novel is set some sixteen months after her first novel "Murder With The Lot". Williams again fills her mystery with an assortment of the odd characters found in any dead and dying country town. The wealthy town of Muddy Soak lording it over poor Rusty Bore.

It's a tongue in check take of the amateur meddling 'lady detective' transplanted into the most unlikely of small towns, Rusty Bore.
It's a delight.

p.s. Flake is a term used in Australia to indicate the flesh of any of several species of small shark, particularly the gummy shark. The term probably arose in the late 1920s when the large-scale commercial shark fishery off the coast of Victoria was established. Until that time, shark was generally an incidental catch rather than a targeted species. Its is the standard fish you receive when you order fish & chips. ( )

In crime fiction, particularly at the lighter, cosier end of the genre spectrum one of the issues that authors have to deal with is what I’ll call the Cabot Cove Effect. That being that in reality small towns and communities simply do not experience the number and variety of murders worthy of dramatic re-telling that even one book, let alone a series of them, demands. So there has to be something else about the books that makes it possible for readers to suspend disbelief. In my experience a lot of authors completely fail to achieve this which is the main reason I follow so few lighter series (many are started, few are finished). Having now published the second of what I hope will become a longer series of books set in the fictional Victorian town of Rusty Bore, population 147, Sue Williams could give lessons on how to get it right.

DEAD MEN DON’T ORDER FLAKE follows on from MURDER WITH THE LOT but you don’t have to have read the first book in order to enjoy this one. That fact is worth stating explicitly as it’s often difficult to dive into a series at anything other than the beginning so I am impressed when a book stands on its own merits. Furthermore, you could easily go back and read the first book after this one which is even less common. Full marks.

The next element Williams gets right is the tone of the story. It can’t be too serious (because of the aforementioned Cabot Cove Effect) but it can’t be so silly or gimmick-laden that it induces eye rolling in the average reader. Aside from the fact that there’s a higher than credible murder count for a small town, everything else about the story has a ring of truth so it is easy to ignore that one issue and go for the ride. The dead man of this book’s title is Leo Stone, an old flame of series heroine Cass Tuplin. Everyone in town thought Leo was dead. So dead they even held a remembrance ceremony and gave him a headstone. But he’s turned up now very much alive and with gun and/or diamond smuggling skills to his name. Or so the rumour mill goes. Meanwhile Cass is asked by the father of a local reporter to investigate her death. Police – in the form of Cass’ oldest son Dean – say Natalie Kellett was speeding and crashed her car at a notorious black spot. But her father is convinced this isn’t true. Could she have been working on a story important enough to have gotten her killed? Finding out proves to be very entertaining with lots of humour offsetting the dramatic moments.

The characters here are the sorts of people you work with or are related to or are neighbours with. OK maybe you don’t know anyone who owns multiple ferrets and don’t have a potential in-law who makes you buy g-string underwear while it’s on sale but I bet most of the characters display traits you are familiar with. The result is that it’s almost like being told a story about people you know. Sometimes they are annoying – I find Cass a mite too wrapped up in her adult children’s lives for example – but that’s what makes them realistic. And collectively Williams has created a group of people who are interesting and fun.

Based on the number of unfinished ones littering my ‘books to donate’ pile I suspect it sounds a lot easier than it actually is to wrte this kind of book well. Sue Williams has the balance of humour and drama just about perfect and without going over the top on ‘ocker traits’ provides an authentic Australian sensibility for this story. With a dash of nefarious local politics, a mysterious romantic element and terrific minor characters spanning twenty-somethings to the elderly there is something – or someone – for every reader.

Cass Tuplin has returned in second book DEAD MEN DON'T ORDER FLAKE. Proprietor of the recently rebuilt Rusty Bore Takeway, she's a fish, chip and dim sim dispenser extraordinaire with a sideline in private enquiries. Which means she's one of those slightly nosy women who can find out stuff, despite objections from her eldest son, and local Senior Constable, Dean. Her propensity to dig until dirt moves out of the way is part of the reason why a local father, Gary Kellett, asks her to look further into the death of his only daughter. Natalie was a journalist in the "big town up the road" Muddy Soak, and her death in a car accident at a notorious traffic blackspot was put down to poor driving, until Cass starts looking around, and Dean starts getting a bit huffy about the question marks over police conclusions.

Now you'd expect that an investigation like that would ruffle a few local feathers - not just Dean's - but Cass has the state of her own plumage to worry about as well. The return of presumed-dead, teenage heart-throb, and previous romantic interest is causing mild interest in lots of places. When Leo Stone casually wanders into the Rusty Bore Takeaway, acting like his twenty year disappearing act, and the headstone in the cemetery (incidentally organised by Cass) are just a blip in the timeline of their shared attraction, the questions over where he's actually been and what he's been up to fight for prominence with the questions about that car accident. To say nothing of what happened to a watch that went missing many years before.

Needless to say, if you hadn't worked it out from the blurb, this is a humorous, on the eccentric / cosy side, Australian rural series, set somewhere fictional in the Wimmera / Mallee of Victoria (in other words just up the road), populated by a mildly dotty crowd of locals with a track record (after two books) of death and destruction that is starting to feel like it could give Midsomer Murders a run for their money.

Told from Cass's viewpoint, the first book in the series, MURDER WITH THE LOT, did for self-deprecating humour what over-salting takeaway chips can do, but the balance in the second book is much better. There's still plenty of one-liners and a lot of wry observations, but they don't hold up advancement of plot, and Cass doesn't come across as quite the flake (pun only slightly intended) that she might have in the earlier novel. As with the earlier book, the investigation is only part of life - it goes up against the ongoing business workload, the problems with maintaining good relationships with two sons and their love interests, offers of more than friendship from the other shop-owner in town, and the need to be there for the older members of the community. And the long-lost love interest, now unencumbered by fiancé's, husbands, potential mothers-in-law, and the daftness of youth.

The plot here is good - with interwoven elements between the present and the past nicely held together with a combination of believability and local involvement to support that. There's also some good old fashioned motivations behind a lot of actions - money, power, prestige - human nature being what it is regardless of size of location. Lovers of dogs might also want to be aware that all's not well in that department, although a supporting cast of ferrets fare considerably better.

DEAD MEN DON'T ORDER FLAKE obviously comes from the entertaining side of crime fiction. It's central character is one of those women of a certain age, unencumbered by the constraints of expectation and "rules of behaviour" that age, experience and a certain level of "who gives a..." provides, eventually, to us all. The only downside to DEAD MEN DON'T ORDER FLAKE is personal as there are fish and chip shops in small Mallee towns that I have a lot of trouble going into without a bit of a giggle. Luckily last time I was in one, the bloke behind the counter didn't have red hair, and didn't have the slightest idea what I was laughing about.

https://www.austcrimefiction.org/review/review-dead-men-dont-order-flake-sue-wil... ( )