Scavengers by Robert Hood
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
A vivid Aussie crime thriller with supernatural elements
Robert Hood is best known as a writer of horror and fantasy and he’s been described as ‘Aussie Horror’s wicked godfather’. But he began his publishing career in crime fiction and also commissioned and co-edited the anthology Crosstown Traffic, which featured a dozen crime stories blended with genres such as Westerns, Romance, Fantasy and Horror. All this is to say, Hood is a steady hand with a crime story and Scavengers proves that yet again.
Mike Crowe is a one-time private detective living in Wollongong and not above doing the odd job for local crime bosses. One such boss – Charles Pukalski – asks him to oversee a shady exchange of a ‘valuable artefact’ at Wollongong harbour in the dead of night. Things go pear-shaped when the local serial-killer-at-large – the Scavenger – intercedes in the deal, tussles with Mike and ends up leaving the bag-man bleeding out on the street minus his bag of money and the arm handcuffed to it.
Pukalski wants his cash back even if it means tracking down and confronting the Scavenger, but Mike begins to realise there’s more to the original exchange and it involves another former employer – millionaire Gregor Waldheim – whose daughter Lucy was brutally murdered years before on Crowe’s watch. Then Mike – who believes in solid facts and not a lot else – begins to receive messages from the dead Lucy…
Right from page one, Crowe presents as a fully-rounded, engaging and believable character, with the same heft as Peter Corris’s Cliff Hardy or Peter Temple’s Jack Irish. Hood has written about Crowe before in a couple of short stories and his long relationship with the detective shows in all the details about him and his life that accrete as the plot progresses. The other vivid character is Wollongong. I live just south of the city and seeing real places and locations become the setting for violent altercations – including a shooting in a particular up-market harbour restaurant – was an added treat. But even if you’re not familiar with the area, Hood’s descriptive powers will make you believe you are.
Another delight was Crowe’s struggles with the increasingly weird and potentially supernatural messages from the supposedly dead Lucy, counterpointed with the gritty and often grim reminders of life for those who live on the lawless side of the street. As the body count rises – due to serial killers or other criminal ne’er do wells – Mike begins to lose his grip on reality and the action builds to a cathartic and shocking conclusion.
Scavengers is a smart, propulsive ride that’s up there with the best that Aussie crime has to offer.
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