Graham Greene used to call his more commercial novels 'Entertainments’ to distinguish them from his more literary work. He wasn't alone. Novels have often sported a subtitle declaring as much: Such and Such - An Entertainment. I suppose the phrase is meant to put the reader at their ease. The book you are about to read, it seems to say, will not demand too much of you, but it will provide you with a few good hours of cheerful, diverting, fun, whether that be in the guise of a blood splattered crime novel, or a sleep denying thriller, or a swoon inducing romance, or something fantastical or absurd. Importantly, these, like Graham Greene’s entertainments, needn't be thoughtless rubbish. They can be as clever, witty, thought-provoking and informative as they like as long as they live up to their name and entertain.
One such novel is Jack Heath's immensely entertaining and charming mystery novel Kill Your Boss. It is an accomplished piece of writing, consistent in style and tone from the first page to the last, and filled with clever, fresh and frankly funny dialogue, ingenious plotting and deft, imaginative character studies.
Set in winter in an apparently thriving medium-sized town in country NSW, this is more A Country Practice territory than the searing heat and dust of Scrublands and The Dry. And to underscore the point, the action takes place in the town's well appointed library. Not a bikie to be seen, or heard.
Come to think of it, this could be Jack Heath's Northanger Abbey. Having lived on a diet of gothic romances, Jane Austen set out to write a novel which poked fun at the genre's excesses while drawing attention to its finer qualities. Perhaps this is what Jack Heath is doing to the Australian crime novel.
I mean, for one, our hero is Detective Sergeant Kiara Lui, a highly competent, well-rounded, and respected country cop who recently returned from her honeymoon having married the love of her life, Elise, and not, as you would expect, Wayne/Stevo/Robbo, a recently divorced, high functioning alcoholic cop battling with PTSD because he accidentally shot a kid/partner/dog in a raid/rescue/bust gone wrong.
‘No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy would have supposed her born to be an heroine,’ begins Northanger Abbey, while Kill Your Boss opens with a body dropping from the sky at Kiara Lui’s feet in an apparent suicide. Same but different. And from that initial splat, Jack Heath never stops playing with our comfortable assumptions about how an Australian crime novel is meant to go.
Kill Your Boss may or may not be Jack Heath's satire of/homage to the Australian crime novel, but it is undeniably a great deal of intelligent fun. A solid entertainment, to labour a point, and very much recommended.
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