Bloodflower

Christine Hinwood's novel, Bloodflower, is in the shops now. The cover is striking: rich crimson fabric lying beneath a bloodied arm wearing a leather cuff.

It's thrilling to walk into a bookshop and see copies on display.

It was exciting for me to start reading the book. Christine and I are workshop mates, so I knew what to expect, but instead of encountering her work in small bursts I was about to plunge into her world for an extended period, enveloped in her unique and glorious language.

Little Pin and Cam, her older brother, were not new to me. I loved them already. But it was bliss to begin my journey with them again, right from the start, with Cam recently back from the war, minus one arm, and with a horse too fine for his family's small land holding. And to meet once more the young Graceful Fennister, homely daughter of the richest family in Kayforl, who had been betrothed to Cam, but whose well-meaning father breaks off the betrothal, thinking she could do better than a poor, maimed young man.

Cam left the south as a boy soldier to travel north to war. Of all the town's men who marched off that long ago day, he is the sole survivor - silent, mysterious and damaged. Now, in his restlessness, he reminds me of other returned soldiers who struggle to put the intensity of war behind them and to be content once more with the smallness and petty niggles of home. Cam is unable to settle and we follow him when he journeys northward once more.

Christine has created an entire world with characters to care about - even when they're not likeable - like fat Farrow Gorlance - or complex - like Graceful's father. The sadness and unspoken longing of Ban Coverlast moved me; I cried for Aston Mastow's losses, for the loss of all those Kayforl men.

With prose taut as a drawn bow, Bloodflower is a timeless book that is sure to become a classic.

The Contract

It's an odd experience to read a book written by someone you know. You look for traces of them in the writing - their personality, the person you're familiar with. And it's scary too. I'm not talking about characters being chased and shot at and other assorted thrills. I mean real danger - what if you don't like the book? It's one thing in a workshop situation, but I'm talking about a published book here. What are you going to tell the author?

Fortunately for me I loved Brett Hoffmann's The Contract.Couldn't put it down in fact.

The book's two main characters, Stella Sartori and Jack Rogers, are Australians living and working in America. They've only met once but now their lives are about to be entwined in ways they couldn't imagine.

Stella has stumbled on a forty-year-old contract that should be of no interest to anyone, but instead leads her into a murky world of deceit and death, where nobody can be trusted and no-one is exactly who or what they seem. When fellow Wall Street banker, Jack, is sent in by their company to exercise some damage control, he discovers more than he bargained for, and soon his life too is on the line. The action moves from place to place and involves, amongst other elements: the FBI, the Mafia, plots old and new, old and new love, a poem written in code, and vast amounts of money.

The writing in a thriller has to be transparent, like a window, not drawing attention to itself but instead getting out of the way of the action. Hoffmann's writing is exactly that. The detail is authentic; the settings obviously well researched. The characters' Australianness gives them a connection with each other (and with me as an Australian reader) but also an outsider status that allows them a sharper view of the society they find themselves in. This added another dimension for me.

Brett Hoffmann is a fresh new voice in international thriller writing. I recommend The Contract. Lucky for me, it's a real page turner. Phew, I don't know about Jack and Stella, but I at least am out of danger!