Wickedly well written, a phrase turner that powers a page turner, trust me, TRUST is a rip-roaring read.
With Corris and Temple departed, Chris Hammer almost makes up for the hole in Australian crime fiction left by them. TRUST is Hammer’s fourth novel, the third in his Martin Scarsden series, and arguably his best.
TRUST starts with a prologue that is so slickly cinematic it reads like a pre- title sequence so if you can’t wait for the movie you don’t have to. If it ever does become a movie, the film makers can eschew a screenwriter. It’s all here.
TRUST has the Holy Trinity of the A class thriller – sense of place, sense of pace and sense of character – to thicken the plot and nourish the narrative.
Banks behaving badly and a secret society of snobs and silver spoons, a CBD cabal involved in murder, fetishism and money laundering are just the tip of the iceberg in this titanic tome of the past playing catch up with the present.
Topical and contemporary as Covid 19 – indeed the pandemic is mentioned in a hopeful past tense- TRUST is set in a Sydney hazed in smoke, the Harbour City seemingly in perpetual peril of becoming a pyre.
A fire of a different sort is set ablaze by the twin occurrence of the discovery of the body of an alleged embezzler thought fled not dead and the execution with attendant ignominious innuendo of a veteran investigative journalist and a Supreme Court judge.
These seemingly separate events twist and turn into each other in serpentine coils of devious and disreputable action, yielding more ghosts than a horse can carry, delivering us into a sinister twilight.
Hammer’s prose is like honey. It sticks to the imagination and spreads with a sweet viscosity through the narrative, persuading the reader to plough through one more ‘nother chapter, the suspense murdering sleep, tearing all thought of slumber asunder.
All the characters are well drawn but the presence of Henry Livingstone, a deadly dandy armed with a Dirty Harry handgun, somewhat reminiscent of Ian Fleming’s Francisco Scaramanga, has a particularly picaresque standing.
TRUST by Chris Hammer is published by Allen & Unwin