Chad Taylor (1)

Ray Moody is washed up. He drinks too much and won't look after himself. He's separated from his wife (it's more complicated than that), living in the house that her family still pays for and he's got a full time pre-occupation with separating himself from his career. So explaining the double disappearance of Blanca Nul in small-town New Zealand becomes his quest, as well as an excellent way of pretending that the meltdown that is his own life isn't happening.

BLUE HOTEL is darkest crime noir. It takes place in old fashioned newsrooms, questionable newsagencies, seedy bars, S&M clubs and cars. It's as New Zealand-as, but it's not. Moody is as New Zealand-as, but he's not. He's a lone wolf by personal preference, a private investigator for distraction purposes, and equal parts good bloke / absolute waster. The reader is free to choose which applies at many many points in the story.

Styled as a traditional private eye, noir story, the backstory of Moody, and his wife in particular, reveal themselves as he doggedly pursues a really odd disappearance. In 1987, leather-clad (in not the right weather for that sort of attire) tourist Blanca Nul walks out of a small-town bar in quiet rural New Zealand and vanishes. Moody gets a lead on her past life as a porn model, only to crash his car, lose his job and commence a long, slow life stuff-up adding the recovery from serious injuries to the things he gets wrong. When Blanca is sighted a year after her original disappearance, Moody seizes on this as a way to get, at least, his career back on track. Which the reader will always know is going to tank on him, but how and why might surprise.

Fans of noir are going to enjoy BLUE HOTEL. It's structured exactly as you'd expect of an entry in the genre, and it works in the setting and timeline the author has constructed. Moody is a perfect example of a lone-wolf, seedy, slightly pathetic noir hero (? anti-hero), full of personal angst and questionable decisions, clawing himself precariously towards high-moral ground on occasions, with a decidedly shaky grip all the way.

Loved this book, summed up a lot by this final line from the blurb:

"As he searches for the real story Ray will learn how desperate, damaged and lonely people from all walks of life can be, and that the truth is hard-won and painful."

www.austcrimefiction.org/review/blue-hotel-chad-taylor… (mehr)

Mark is a burglar - a pretty good one, but then he has nothing else to do. He lives on his own, surrounded by goods which he has not bought. One day, going through several flats in an apartment block, he enters the home of the parents of his old high school girlfriend - Caroline May, who disappeared one day, decades before, without a trace. Mark is unsettled by this, and even more so over the next few days as he is contacted by, or contacts, others who were involved in the case: the detective investigating the disappearance, Caroline's best friend.

At the start of this book, Mark's deadpan narration of his life of crime is mixed in with the story of Caroline's disappearance, it's easy to think that you're reading a thriller. But in fact, it's much more about grief and loss: since the disappearance, Mark has in a way been stuck in the "departure lounge" of the title: You feel safe while you're waiting to board the flight. There are empty couches and potted palms and soft music, and the people on the other side look calm. You are no longer in the country, but you haven't left. You're in limbo. What happens from then on in is neither real nor unreal, proven nor disproved.

And in a way, that was my problem with this book. The thriller parts of it were enjoyably unsettling. But Mark's character is hard to get a handle on. He's cold and emotionless - but perhaps that's a facade, covering deep feeling? - no, when describing his prison counselling he deliberately fakes hints of emotion to fit in to what the counsellor wants to hear. In the end, the story revolved around whether he had taken up this life of crime because he had never been able to deal with the grief of Caroline's disappearance, which turned out to be quite a slight thing to hang a story on.

Sample: Mrs Callaghan's TV was shimmering in the front room when I got home. I did the usual circuit of the house to check that everything was okay. And then I stopped, because it wasn't.

The lounge window was wide open. The paper ticket that had been tucked into the crack was now lying on the round outside.

I walked back up to the end of the drive. The other houses were still. The empty cars were parked along the street. The trees were dark thoughts.

I walked back to my own front door.

And knocked.… (mehr)

This is the story of Mark Chamberlain, who is a small-time break and enter thief. He is obsessed with Caroline May, a classmate who disappeared without a trace while in high school. And, Mark isn't the only one obsessed with this case: there is Harry Bishop, the detective assigned to investigate it, Varina Sumich, another high school friend of Caroline's and even strangers who are inexplicably drawn to this story.

This isn't a detective story....it's about how people deal with loss and about how one event can shape someone's life. It's a page-turner.....like the characters, I found myself wanting (needing) to know what happened to Caroline.… (mehr)