The Casino by Iain Ryan – Review
Iain Ryan is one of the most promising new writers to emerge from the Australian crime genre. His novels such as The Strip and The Dream have brought the 1980s Gold Coast setting to life in noir fiction. With his latest novel, The Casino, Ryan has really hit his stride. This is his best novel yet, and one that could make him a big name.
In the novel, The Saturn is the titular casino. It’s run by Queensland Mob Boss Colleen Vinton, and is a hangout for crooked cops, desperate gamblers and incurable grifters. It becomes the refuge of private detective Ewan Hayes, who is tasked with escorting Grace Holloway, the daughter of a Melbourne journalist, out of town to escape criminal elements. Hayes takes on another case while he’s away, to find a missing person named Herb Fleming, and he discovers that Grace is quite a formidable investigator herself. Meanwhile, the Queensland police forces are still knee deep in corruption. Detective Lana Cohen is a rare example of a copper you can trust. Wrestling with demons from her past she is hoping for a quiet life with her new boyfriend, but the grisly discovery of a severed head on Nobby Beach plunges her right back into the most dangerous form of police work. There are other elements at play, including the activities of a particularly violent ring of shoplifters and whether these crimes connect to the murder of several police officers. In The Casino, a police badge is no guarantee that the criminal underbelly will regard you as untouchable.
While these plot strands might seem convoluted, the author weaves them together with considerable skill and demonstrates a real flair for the language and milieu of the Gold Coast. No one knows this setting better than Ryan. The Casino is a gripping read from start to finish, and I’m putting my stack of chips on Iain Ryan becoming the next big star of crime authors from Down Under.
The Enchanters by James Ellroy – reviewed for Ellroy Reads
While we await the release of James Ellroy’s new novel Red Sheet, to be published later this year, I thought it would be interesting to revisit Ellroy’s previous novel The Enchanters. I was spending a lot of time with Ellroy, as his biographer, while he was writing The Enchanters and, in the video below, give an in-depth viewpoint of his process, his relationship with the real-life leading character Fred Otash, and how Ellroy’s publishing colleagues perceived the novel.
The Enchanters represented a big change in Ellroy’s writing plans, essentially abandoning, or reformulating if you prefer, his ambition to write a Second Los Angeles Quartet. I hope you enjoy the show. You won’t find this content anywhere else, so why don’t you subscribe to the channel and you’ll never miss an episode.
Exodus by Leon Uris – Reviewed for Ellroy Reads
For the latest episode of Ellroy Reads I look at Leon Uris’s novel Exodus. An epic tale of the Holocaust and the creation of the State of Israel, Exodus was the biggest bestseller in American literature since Gone With The Wind, but as with Margaret Mitchell’s novel of the American Civil War, Exodus is now viewed with increasing scepticism due to a number of controversial factors in the book.
I discuss these factors as well as a number of controversial issues surrounding James Ellroy’s life. I hope you enjoy the episode, and do remember to subscribe, share and like the content. Shalom.
Crucible: An Interview with John Sayles about his latest novel
John Sayles is one of the great storytellers of our age. His films include such classics as Matewan (1987), Eight Men Out (1988) and Lone Star (1996). They grapple with such themes as individual and institutional corruption, moral complexity, American identity and its place in the world. While this may sound heavy, Sayles is first and foremost an entertainer: To step into any of the fictional worlds he creates is a compelling and enriching experience.
In addition to his extraordinary output in the cinema, Sayles has also had a distinguished career as a novelist since his debut work, Pride of the Bimbos, was published in 1975. In recent years he has become more prolific as a novelist, averaging a book a year. His latest work Crucible is an epic tale covering fifteen years in the history of the Ford Motor Company. It begins with the introduction of the Ford Model A car in 1927 and ends with America at war with the Axis powers in 1943, and also at war with itself as race riots burn through Detroit. In the interim we have a panoply of characters and scenes – Henry Ford policing his River Rouge plant with an ICE-like private army; Diego Rivera turning up to paint a mural; gangsters, middle managers and organised labour all jockeying for power and influence and, most fascinating of all, Ford’s disastrous attempts to establish Fordlândia, an industrial town in the Brazilian Amazon that sinks all of its inhabitants into a Heart of Darkness-style nightmare.
The rapid-growth of the Ford Company parallels the ascendancy of the United States as a world power. War brings out the full might of America’s industrial power but at what cost?
Crucible is a novel that comments on the America of today by shining a light on its past. I had the good fortune to talk to John Sayles about his latest work:
Interviewer: You have covered so many locales in your art, from Texas to Alaska to the American occupation of the Philippines, what made you pick the setting and locations of Crucible to tell this story?
Sayles: I’ve spent some time in Detroit, was very aware of the 1967 race riot there, and became very aware of it as more of a high-pressure crucible where American political and cultural forces collided than the more benign ‘melting pot’ we like to think of. When I read Greg Grandin’s Fordlandia (some producers wanted to turn it into a mini-series) the last, imperialist, part of the equation fell in for me and I started on the novel.
Interviewer: Before reading Crucible I had, rather lazily, bought into the idea that Henry Ford was an American hero. You offer a much richer and more complex portrayal of the man. When did your interest in Ford begin?
Sayles: I’d always seen Ford as the last of the great private capitalists- he and his son Edsel were the sole owners the giant international motor company- with the megalomania that kind of success and power often comes with. The more I learned about him, the more complex a man he was revealed to be- his relationship with his adoring son Edsel is really tragic.
Interviewer: In Crucible you weave a tapestry of sub-plots, from prohibition bootlegging to the doomed utopian Fordlandia scheme. How did you manage to bring all of the disparate the plot strands together?
Sayles: Detroit became a crucible because of Henry Ford- he pushed prohibition (Michigan went dry before America followed), paid black workers the same wages as white, and was fascinated with the underworld, directing his ‘enforcer’ Harry Bennett to make side deals with the local mobsters. History gives you a template and a timeline the plug your characters into, they can help tell different parts of the big story and eventually start to cross paths in interesting ways.
Interviewer: Crucible presents some stark parallels with the current political climate in the US. Does America still need men like Henry Ford or will they inevitably become tyrants?
Sayles: All of society benefits from men like Ford the tinkerer- finding a better way to do something that needs doing. But as my version of Ford says late in the novel, people aren’t machines, and any inflexible social or economic formula will eventually fall apart. Our zillionaires today are mostly interested in controlling people and living in securely guarded bubbles, though a few dare to go the Elon Musk route and start dictating how everybody should live.
Tokyo by Mo Hayder, reviewed for Ellroy Reads
This week’s episode of Ellroy Reads is a little different, as I want to share with viewers some of the biographical research I have conducted since Love Me Fierce in Danger: The Life of James Ellroy was published. So this episode isn’t particularly about James Ellroy and his reading choices. Instead, the focus is on the extraordinary life of the British author Mo Hayder and her brilliant novel Tokyo (also published as The Devil of Nanking).
This episode is something of a one-off. Next week I’ll be back to talking about Ellroy and the books that have inspired him. In the meantime, thank you for watching me discuss my current research, and don’t forget to subscribe to the channel and share the content.
The Night Manager Returns – Dawn of the Night Owls
I have always loved the story of The Night Manager. Even before the TV show, I was gripped by John le Carré’s novel. It’s hard not to be enamoured with the perfect blend of intrigue, romance and adventure as the reader follows Jonathan Pine. Plucked from his job as a hotel night manager by British Intelligence to infiltrate the arms dealing operation of arch-villain Richard Roper, Pine is at once charming and deceptive, out of his depth and uniquely qualified. I was hooked by the 2016 television adaptation of the novel, and impressed by how it broadly stayed faithful to the book while cleverly updating the geopolitical setting to the events of the Arab Spring. While I was initially sceptical of the final episode, which veered from the novel and delivered a completely different ending for the characters of Pine and Roper, I eventually grew to appreciate how this version of the story was aiming for a more emotional response from the viewer than the novel delivered.
So, after ten years The Night Manager has finally returned, and I’m happy to say that I enjoyed the story all over again, although I did experience, no hotel metaphor intended, some reservations about the whole exercise. Jonathan Pine (Tom Hiddleston) is still working for British Intelligence, heading up a unit known as the Night Owls, whose job it is to monitor the suspicious nocturnal habits of foreign guests at London hotels. There are shades here of le Carré’s world of scalphunters and lamplighters, and also a nod to more recent spy fiction by Mick Herron (Slow Horses). When Pine spots a former mercenary of Richard Roper’s at an exclusive hotel it sets off a chain reaction of violent events. Pine’s senior colleague Rex Mayhew (Douglas Hodge) is found dead in an apparent suicide, and Mottram has left behind a series of messages for Pine which links MI6 Chief Mayra Cavendish (Indira Varma) to Colombian arms dealer and self-styled philanthropist Teddy Dos Santos (Diego Calva). Pine follows the trail to Madrid, where half of his Night Owl unit are killed. Operating outside the Service with two loyal agents, Pine’s death is faked and he travels to Colombia to infiltrate Dos Santos’s operation in Cartagena. It’s not long before Pine finds himself chasing some very old ghosts. Dos Santos models himself as the heir to Richard Roper, and this is true in more ways than one.
To be clear, there are plenty of flaws in The Night Manager’s return to television. There are scenes where Pine conveniently overhears crucial conversations, and it beggars belief that no one spots him eavesdropping. There are false notes when Pine’s attractive neighbour asks him out to dinner after returning his stray cat (did she think asking for a cup of sugar was too obvious?) and a puzzling scene where Mayra Cavendish intimidates an underling to handover some files – she’s the Chief, why doesn’t she just order him to handover the files? Oh, and don’t get me started on the $300 million Pine stole from Roper at the end of series one and which he has kept stashed in a Luxembourg bank account for ten years. Are we seriously meant to believe that this money hasn’t accrued any interest over the past decade, and that Pine is happy to live off a civil servant’s salary when he has enough money to buy a Premier League football club?
And yet there is much to admire in The Night Manager. The story is as compelling and pacy as ever. The acting, from the ubiquitous Tom Hiddleston as Pine to new additions to the cast such as Diego Calva as the sinister Dos Santos to Camila Morrone as the sexy and enigmatic Roxana Bolaños, is uniformly excellent. The story veers off into preposterous territory more than once, but the overall production has enough wit and verve to win you over. The Night Manager was always one of le Carré’s most adventurous and action-packed tales, and this adaptation captures that spirit. It may not be a spy classic in the same mould as Smiley’s People, but Jonathan Pine might just be the spy we need for our screens in 2026.
‘Murder, Obliquely’ and the Fallen Angels Noir Anthology Series
In this week’s episode of Ellroy Reads, I look at Cornell Woolrich’s short story ‘Murder, Obliquely’. I talk a little about Woolrich’s life and the story itself, and then use this as a segue to discuss the Fallen Angels television show which ‘Murder, Obliquely’ was adapted for, as was James Ellroy’s short story ‘Since I Don’t Have You’.
Subscribe to the channel if you haven’t already. You won’t find this behind the scenes content anywhere else. Enjoy!
Death at the Altar by Donna Gowland – Review
Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (Mary Shelley) is in the grip of a deep depression. Her baby daughter has died. The baby’s father Percy Bysshe Shelley is too preoccupied with the literary life to provide Mary much solace. Her stepsister Claire Clairmont has her own designs on Percy, but soon gets distracted by a campaign to woo Lord Byron. And life in early-nineteenth century London is generally bleak and difficult, especially for young women who have given birth to the child of a married man. Percy was still married to his first wife Harriet Westbrook at this point.
So when Mary receives an invitation to the wedding of an old school friend in Scotland, Percy thinks a break from London will do them both good. However, violence and tragedy seem to stalk Mary and Percy wherever they visit. The phrase shotgun wedding had, most likely, not yet entered the lexicon, which is a shame as a country parson is shot dead at the wedding Mary and Percy attend and such events are not supposed to happen in polite society. The culprit is quickly found hanged, presumably a suicide brought on by overwhelming guilt. But Mary knows that the mystery is only just beginning to unravel.
Regular readers of this blog will know that I am a big fan of the ‘Mary Shelley Investigations’ series. Donna Gowland knows her literary detective well. Gowland’s expertise on both Mary Shelley and the times she lived through is brought to vivid life on the page. Death at the Altar is the third book in the series and the best so far. My advice is to buy and read all three volumes in the series. Gowland writes some of the best gothic fiction being published today.
The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk, reviewed for Ellroy Reads
Happy new year, dear readers! I hope you have enjoyed the holiday season. 2026 promises to be an important year for James Ellroy with the release of his new novel Red Sheet in July. This will be a very active website over the next twelve months as I cover all Ellroy and crime fiction related-news.
Today, I bring you the latest episode of Ellroy Reads in which I discuss Herman Wouk’s classic novel of World War Two – The Caine Mutiny. Ellroy has always admired Wouk’s novel about life in the US Navy as one of the greatest studies of how people behave under intense pressure. I hope you enjoy the episode and remember to subscribe to the show.
The Venetian Vase 