Infamy (Lenny Bartulin, A&U)

It is 1830. William Burr, who has been adventuring in South America, is contacted by his old friend and former employer John McQuillan, who has moved to Van Diemen’s Land. A reward has been posted for the capture of escaped convict turned bushranger Brown George Coyne: could Burr be the man to track him down? Coyne’s inept associates attempt to kidnap the wife of Hobart’s magistrate, but she is rescued by Aboriginal tracker Robert Ringa. Thus Lenny Bartulin sets the scene for a rollicking, dark tale set in the bloody midst of Tasmania’s colonial past. While the opening of the novel puts it in the adventure camp, as the plot develops Infamy gets into more serious issues of settler/Indigenous relations, the corruption of the colonial rulers and the strange beauty of the landscape. This is a change of direction for Bartulin after three contemporary black-comic detective novels featuring Sydney secondhand bookseller Jack Susko, and Infamy will no doubt face comparison to other epic Australian historical novels in similar settings. It will acquit itself very well.

Tim Coronel is a former editor and publisher of Books+Publishing. He is currently editor of Metro and Screen Education magazines for ATOM