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.