Australia Ebook Crime: "Wyatt" by Garry Disher

Australia Ebook Crime: Wyatt by Garry Disher, 2010 and 2011, download from Wisconsin Digital Library.

I forgot about listing this novel. I finished it back in October or November.

I was trying to find the original pub date of this novel and everyone in the damn crime fiction world describes this novel as an Australian Parker. Well, yeah, that was what I was going to say. What's more this is the seventh novel in the series. I was looking for something else on the digital library and saw this. So I took it.

Wyatt is all sorts of Parker: a loner, suspicious, very careful, violent only when needed, and a multi-purpose crook. The novel is written in the sparse style used by Westlake/Stark. Wyatt is back in Melbourne after a years long absence. His rip-off of a shipyard bribery scheme goes haywire and he gets barely any money from the score. What's more, two of his hidden stashes of cash and weapons have disappeared through redevelopment during his years away.

Wyatt needs dough but experience has taught him to only work with professional thieves and take on realistic jobs. Of course things go wrong as Wyatt is double-crossed and other cops and crooks insert themselves into the situation.

Short take: I enjoyed the novel. The characters were okay. The plotting was pretty decent. The atmosphere and setting were fun. There is a dirty cop. Scuzzy diamond merchants. Wyatt's backstabbing pal and the pal's volatile and violent girlfriend. Unemotional Wyatt's unexpected and unwanted love interest. A French killer. All sorts of interesting crime drama with Wyatt overcoming seemingly insurmountable obstacles.

Longer take: The setting was a bit distracting because I kept cutting away from the story to look up the locations Disher had Wyatt and Co. traveling to and from. One scene has them in small park and Google Maps lets you zoom in and out and have street level views of the place. I just tried finding the park again - called Reserves over there - and cannot find it. I thought it was on Toorak highway. maybe my phone has a history, let me see... Nope. I cannot find it.

Comments:
1. I recall the bass player for INXS being named something like Gary Garry. Let me check on that... Nope, but close. Garry Gary Beers with some sort of story behind the name that you'll have to figure out yourself.