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The Wolf Tree by Laura McCluskey

3.0

The Australian crime boom continues apace, but not everyone is happy to keep their crime restricted to regional Australia or the big cities. Some, like Dervla McTiernan or Adrian McKinty, expats who found themselves on the island’s shores, became hooked on writing about their Irish homeland before branching out to America with mixed success.

Laura McCluskey has done something slightly different: she’s Melbourne (or Naarm) based and presumably Australian born, but she has Scottish grandparents. The Wolf Tree, her debut novel, is set on a remote island off the Scottish coast. It bears the lack of specificity that you can get away with from such a setting, and it promises the sort of insularity you get when everyone knows everyone else and there’s only one way off … or two, if you count the reason the police are there in the first place.

Months after sustaining a catastrophic injury on the job, George Lennox is trying to get back into police business. She and her partner, Richie Stewart, are eased back into it by investigating the seemingly open and shut suicide of an eighteen year old on the island of Eilean Eadar. The locals, under the thumb of the priest Father Ross, are not keen to talk, and while George battles her own demons she starts to almost believe the island is haunted by wolves. If George can last five days on the island and rule the death a suicide, perhaps she can make it out alive.

Crime novels often come down to the strength of their lead characters, and George Lennox is not the most sympathetic person. Eilean Eadar is the sort of place that has its own authority, which means that you have to come at it from a soft power angle; unsurprisingly, George has none of that to offer. She is a blunt instrument that isn’t even tempered with a preternatural talent for policing, with a primary talent for baseline rudeness.

The strongest element of George comes from without, in the form of her foil. Richie’s levelheaded veteran officer who does a special line in not being mad, but disappointed, doesn’t break any new ground, but he’s a nice contrast whose solidity helps to make The Wolf Tree not entirely by the numbers.

Partially inspired by the Flannan Isles Lighthouse mystery of 1900, the wisest choice in the construction of this book is that it sticks to a single timeline. Not for these readers alternating chapters 125 years apart, but rather flavour and texture that give a homeopathic tinge of history to the proceedings. It only sort of ties in to the book as a whole — one character keeps asking George “have you read the lighthouse keepers’ logs yet?” — but it informs it never the less.

Eilean Eidar is a more interesting locale than McCluskey strictly gives it credit for, and George’s bluntness acts as a smokescreen for their insularity. McCluskey briefly touches on the idea that children can be sinister, but doesn’t take it very far. She is more interested in the concept that people who reject the other have in fact othered themselves; this late revelation that George possesses an empathy that many of the citizens of Eilean Eadar are incapable of are really what seals the fate of the book, and prevents it from the delicate tipping point of policing as an act of colonisation.

Obviously it was never going to be a clearcut case of suicide (it is only on the odd occasion that you get the double blind of an open and shut case actually being open and shut despite the investigators’ attempts to convolute it), but quite how far McCluskey chooses to take it is something to boggle at.

There has to be a degree of suspension of disbelief at play here, because the outcome will have you wondering how the police could ever hope to prosecute any of it. Even if you’re not in law enforcement, you’d be glad this case isn’t yours.

The Wolf Tree is a confident, if semi-anonymous, debut novel. George Lennox is interchangeable with many other tortured detectives, with the added bonus of a mentor that she intermittently chooses to listen to. Despite the scale of the conclusion, the book isn’t neat. It is unclear whether George can return — although it would be pretty funny if she got assigned a new beat investigating murders on a series of lonely islands — but if she does, there’s enough here to bring readers back.

The Wolf Tree released in the US on February 11, 2025, and is set for release in Australia on February 28, 2025.

An ARC of The Wolf Tree was provided by HarperCollins Publishers Australia in exchange for review.

What I Ate in One Year by Stanley Tucci

2.0

Stanley Tucci's followup to Taste is a frequently tiresome adaptation of his diary from 2023, opening with his arrival in Italy to shoot Conclave. For a book that is reliant on the man's charm, it is jarring to see its descent into rants about how fashion standards for men are slipping and how parenting styles are too lax these days (a note that even he acknowledges has no place where he put it, as the parents he's hanging out with are cool).

Intermittently interesting, with all sorts of names you'll recognise, there's no real mission statement here. How well it works for you is dependent on how much you enjoy kicking around in the mind of Tucci without the structure he afforded himself in Taste, but too often his tangents are negative and nitpicking, or name dropping, or self unaware.

Tucci even mentions that no one is going to bother editing him like they did Proust, which explains why there is no consistency about swearing. December 28, something is described as "[f]uckin' extraordinary", but two pages later "what the f— is happening?!" Either Tucci or his handler can't decide which approach to take, or they don't care. This isn't a nepotism book, it's an extension of an empire, and one that has forgotten the appeal of the main branches.

It's funny to see a man who travels all over the world, not always for work, and who has a holiday house that he can spend weeks at at a time, consider the cost of living. The SAG strike is an undercurrent in the book (and honestly, although he follows it, he doesn't seem that sympathetic to it), but Tucci is clearly comfortable and his wife Felicity Blunt is a publishing superstar (if you don't read acknowledgements sections of books, you should start, and count mentions of Felicity Blunt until you run out of fingers).

The most memorable sequence is Tucci's visit to Guy Ritchie's manor with his brother-in-law, John Krasinski, where they see such elegance and eat so well that they will likely carry the experience to their graves. Tucci clearly does not have Ritchie's riches, but his life is so charmed that he has access to these luxuries regardless. It is difficult to see ourselves as the world sees us, but Tucci is plainly not the journeyman that he imagines himself to be.

Almost completely lacking the charm of Taste, when What I Ate In One Year (And Other Thoughts) is not bland or schmaltzy (the man loves his young children), it is by turns bitter and sour. This was designed as "book you give someone for Christmas" rather than "book you should read for yourself", and its publication date reflects that. In the spirit of giving, pass around this handsome hardcover instead of reading it and you'll have a much better time of it. 

Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity by David Lynch

David Lynch has left us, but he'll never leave us. His work has made an indelible mark on culture in a way that few others have. We could go into a lot of that, but instead we'll consider his brief 2006 autobiography and self-help guide, Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity.

When Lynch talks about his life, his art, and how he relates to people, Catching the Big Fish sparkles. It kind of loses it when Lynch talks about his grandiose ideas about the power of meditation, and the tenth anniversary edition is padded out with two largely content-free interviews with Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr about meditation. It's interesting on a personal level, but you can pretty much write off the "Consciousness-Based Education" chapter.

There is an optimistic chapter on the "Future of Cinema". Lynch worries about how "[a] tiny little picture, instead of a giant big picture, is going to be how people see films," and counterbalances that with the optimism: "at least people will have their headphones." He was half right; one has to wonder if he ever got out amongst the hell of people watching videos, but perhaps it's best to think he was spared.

Catching the Big Fish is the work of moments, but its brevity makes it, yes, meditative. If you want a more comprehensive view of David Lynch in his own words, you can always do 2018's Room to Dream. But in this very brief window of having just lost him, Catching the Big Fish still provides a valuable glimpse of the elusive figure himself.

 

Incredible Doom: Volume 2 by Matthew Bogart

4.0

Volume 2 is when stuff gets more real for the troupe, and the reason they formed becomes clearer. The characters become more human, their concerns more real and grounded, and the resolution hits.

Incredible Doom by Matthew Bogart, Jesse Holden

3.5

Captures a specific moment in time, when misfits were able to connect through the limited freedom of the local BBS system. An easy read, albeit one that will make the squarer among us tug their collars at its conception of anarchic mutual aid.

Catwoman: When in Rome by Tim Sale, Jeph Loeb

3.5

 

At long last, the final piece of The Long Halloween puzzle - until The Last Halloween debuted towards the end of last year. But that’s still ongoing, so we’ll put it aside. Initially intended to be published shortly after Dark Victory, Catwoman: When in Rome was delayed for four years; Hush, a very different flavour of Jeph Loeb, was published in the interim.  

 

This six issue run details what Selina Kyle was up to while Batman was investigating the Hangman in Dark Victory, a story which Selina only features at the start and end of. Realistically it’s an excuse for Tim Sale to illustrate Selina in a series of high fashion pieces - for the covers, at least. She spends a lot of the inner contents either naked or close enough to it. Combine this with an overtly lecherous Leprechaun-like Edward Nigma, and you’ve got a DC title custom-built for perverts. Sale’s art is excellent as always — and different to his previous titles, as always — but after a while the attention to detail is notable. 

 

Frustrated with Bruce Wayne’s distant nature, Selina Kyle takes herself to Rome to investigate the Falcone crime family, which she suspects she has deeper links to than simply an easy target for funding her lifestyle. Plagued by vivid nightmares, thwarted by overly familiar enemies, and abetted by Edward Nigma in heat, Selina has to hope that she not only solves her mystery, but survives her European sojourn. 

 

Loeb doesn’t have access to the full Bat rogue’s gallery that he loves so dearly, because he was using most of them extensively in Gotham at the time this is set. Still, he makes an effort: he borrows Cheetah from Wonder Woman, and various weaponry crosses Selina’s path in ways that she’d rather it didn’t. Thanks to the miracles of modern villain science, Sale's gloriously tetanoid Joker gets to make a guest appearance. 

 

Due to the holiday nature of When in Rome, Loeb doesn’t tangle it near so much as he did the other Long Halloweens or the famously twisted Hush (for which Loeb has admitted that one key element came out of nowhere). The solution to this one, such as it is, is less surprising than it is inevitable. It's a pleasant diversion from the dramas in Gotham, a sun drenched adventure for Selina and all that entails. 

 

Loeb and Sale were a formidable team, rarely using the same aesthetic twice - while Long Halloween and Dark Victory were of a kind, they look quite different to Haunted Knight, which is the platonic ideal of Batman art (to this reader, at least), and the luscious Italian vistas offered by When In Rome. The Riddler is some sort of grotesque, but everything else is beautiful. Selina has a lot of skin, and a lot of butt, but it's gratuitous in a completely different way to Jim Lee's take on the character in Hush. 

 

That's why it's so weird to end When in Rome with an epilogue taken directly from Dark Victory, with no changes to the art - Sale was in a different mode. 

 

The more comics you read - pretending to an unearned expertise here - the more you realise that they're not all momentous events. Catwoman: When In Rome has no sense of immediacy to it because it really does play like its title: it's a holiday from more serious stories, despite a relatively high body count. Loeb has written Selina as a credible protagonist, and Sale has lavished her with an intense amount of attention to detail. It all adds up to complete the character arc that was alluded to throughout the Long Halloween series and, while not a towering achievement, it's certainly a satisfying one. 

 

City Under One Roof by Iris Yamashita

2.5

A book set in a fictionalised version of an Alaskan city where all of the citizens live in a single apartment complex, written by an Academy Award nominated screenwriter, should probably be more of a slam dunk than this. City Under One Roof tries to be something a bit like Northern Exposure meets Twin Peaks, but it never quite gets there. 

 

Point Mettier, Alaska. 205 people live in a single building year round, with an occasional boost for tourist season. When severed body parts are found along the shoreline, detective Cara Kennedy’s interest is piqued. She’s not on active duty, but the people of Point Mettier don’t need to know that. It doesn’t matter, of course: the city is a closed eco-system and they don’t speak to outsiders. 

 

The biggest draw for City Under One Roof is, of course, its setting. You don’t get many books set in such an isolated location, and the real Alaskan cities like this, remnants of World War II exercises, would be fascinating to visit but difficult to live in. Yamashita is sympathetic to how little support these places get while also emphasising that they would be good and remote strongholds for people who need to get away from the larger world. Yet her prose is often quite childish, even when she’s not using one of her teen POV characters, and the majority of the novel is ungrounded. There’s an eccentric woman who has a pet moose, because of course there is, and in some ways she’s key to solving the murder, because of course she is. It’s that sort of book and, while Yamashita tries to be respectful, she doesn’t sell either the quirkiness or seriousness of the woman, and she fails to split the difference. 

 

Cara Kennedy is a boilerplate cop with a secret and traumatic past, and a huge chip on her shoulder. Yamashita is skilled enough to people Point Mettier with enough characters with points of difference that it feels like Cara is walking around a population aren't mere clones of her, even if most of them are reduced to their most base desires. The gang of out-of-towners, of course, don't fare as much more than ciphers. 

 

It all culminates in something that utilises the location effectively, if not necessarily believably, and then Cara gets dropped into a cliffhanger about her Dark Secret Past. You've read it before except, thanks to the titular city, you haven't quite. City Under One Roof feels slightly amateurish for something published by a major imprint, but it’s an easy enough read. 

Conclave by Robert Harris

3.5

Robert Harris' Conclave is an imagined look inside a modern Papal conclave. It is difficult to characterise, because while it's often touted as a thriller, it's almost clinical in its description of the process of electing a new Pope. It takes a while before the backbiting starts to set in.

Three weeks after a progressive Pope dies, Father Lomeli must oversee the conclave of cardinals from all over the world as they gather in the Sistine Chapel to anoint their successor. Will it be an Italian Pope after a long drought, the first Black Pope, or even the first Third World* Pope? Will their Doctrinal approach influence the decision at all, or is it all down to identity? Over as many votes as it takes, Lomeli must shepherd the cardinals to their ultimate decision, and yet he is so very, very tired.

Harris was taken on a tour of the forbidden parts of the Vatican while researching this novel, and he got the approval of the Archbishop of Westminster, so much of Conclave reads as inside (Catholic) baseball. It has the potential to be dry, but Lomeli is a sympathetic lead and his own strong opinions about his fellow cardinals mean that neither he nor they come across as shrinking violets.

But because of the implicit approval of the Catholic church, who either had no opinion on this novel when it was published or respected its accuracy, Harris comes at his subject matter with a respect, if not reverence, that means nothing particularly scandalous can happen. Individual cardinals can be corrupt, but there is no threat of the church itself being to blame for anything. When it becomes clear there is no peril to the institution itself from within or without, Conclave loses much of its teeth.

Like Al Capone, much of what Conclave hinges on is forensic accounting - and Lomeli is on the case. In between rounds of voting, he investigates as much as he can within the strictures of the rules, and he either skips meals or bemoans the quality of the catering offered to the members of the conclave.

It boggles that this is the stuff of bestsellers, but there is a germ in here for a slick movie with an all-star cast – and of course, that's exactly what's happened. The pomp and ceremony described herein would translate well to the screen, and there perhaps would be a dynamism that's not quite there on the page.

Conclave is a relatively straightforward novel, and it is a bit more interesting than is communicated here. It takes a while to build up momentum, and it's amiable, but there's definitely an interest barrier to admission that simply won't be there for many readers. With the success of Ralph Fiennes' film (Lomeli becomes Lawrence, who cuts a dashing figure amongst the men in red), Conclave is going to get more attention. It's good, but consider whether it's really for you.

*Harris' term. 

Time of the Child by Niall Williams

4.0

Time of the Child is a book that will go down in personal legend as one that all of the stops had to be pulled out for to get it over the line. Is it nearly as accessible as This is Happiness, a book about the simple pleasures of life and the lengths that one might go to to prolong them? It most emphatically is not. Does the promise of a far off hope help to offset the drear and dread that the predicaments of the Troy family engender? Not overly. 

 

Yet in the final analysis Time of the Child is a warm piece of fiction about a village that operates its own way even within the strictures of the heavily Catholic Irish society of 1962. It just takes a bit to get there. 

 

Doctor Jack Troy has kept himself apart from the town of Faha all of his life, despite being raised there. He worries, too, that he has kept his daughter Ronnie from living her own life, and that he has rendered her unlovable. These issues come to a head on the day of the Christmas fair, when a baby left at the church is delivered unto the Troys' surgery and residence. As Doctor Troy tries to protect the child, he has to reconsider everything that he knows about his relation to the town and his perception of his daughter. 

 

Time of the Child has been promoted as both a companion to This is Happiness and an introduction to Faha all by itself, but the reader would be hard pressed to say that this book is quite so immediately accessible, spending most of its first third on a single morning with a man that you would know the basic shape of if you had read the previous instalment, referring to things that nag at you, that you think you should know. 

 

So if you've somehow got yourself a copy of the premier book of the festive season just passed (maybe you were gifted it for Christmas, and haven't got around to it yet?), I would advise putting it down and finding out what happened in Faha before the Electric came. 

 

By the time the titular Child shows up, the shape of the novel has changed. As she shakes up the Troy family, so too does she alter the form of the piece. There are so many ways that it could go, and Williams spends a decent time tottering on the precipice of disaster and creating another, far darker, novel. What seemed like idle thoughts before the Child suddenly become manic fantasies pursued with an unhealthy zeal, and the ends needed to achieve them are dubious at best. 

 

Williams elides much of the horror of what would become a child born out of wedlock in the era in a way that Clare Keegan, for example, did not. Regardless, it is clear that the Child would not thrive if surrendered to the Department. Ultimately Time of the Child is not interested in worst case scenarios beyond the acknowledgment that they are real and perilous, and it opens its heart to a world of possibility, however unlikely it may be. 

 

Unlike This is Happiness, there is not a defined narrator. We already know the fates of some of these residents from what Noel Crowe told us on the last visit, and this time Williams' omniscience is as miserly as he is generous. He knows the future, and tells some of it, but other important factors he leaves up to the reader. This is one of the quiet joys, the mixed ambiguity of a future only half-written. 

 

Time of the Child is a cumulative affair, with less of a carnival feeling than the previous trip to Faha and more of a quiet contemplation. There are many worries along the way, an almost leaden gloom, but it all adds up to a final sequence that at last feels like a proper celebration of Faha, an explanation of why we'd want to spend our time among its lives in the darkest and coldest months of the year. Perhaps that is happiness.

A Christmas Carol: A Signature Performance by Tim Curry by Charles Dickens

5.0

Every year, in one capacity or another. This year, Tim Curry again. He really sinks his teeth into it and, of course, A Christmas Carol endures for a reason. Maybe one time you'll read it and Tiny Tim really will die. But not this year! No sir.