A Case of Matricide
Graeme Macrae Burnet
Text, $34.99

Graeme Macrae Burnet returns with the long-awaited final instalment in a beguiling literary crime trilogy. Featuring Chief Inspector Gorski, A Case of Matricide is once again set in the humdrum town of Saint-Louis in Alsace. Once again it has a metafictional frame – the novel purports to be another, previously undiscovered, fiction by Raymond Brunet, formerly a longtime resident of Saint-Louis who committed suicide. The melancholy Gorski, eyes sharpened by social isolation and disenchantment, is involved in a series of low-key investigations: a hotel manager reporting a foreigner acting suspiciously; a housebound woman who claims her son has gone mad, killed her dog and is trying to poison her, all of which her son denies; and a local factory owner who drops dead of an apparent heart attack, although a solid conclusion of natural causes might be premature. Burnet’s phlegmatic detective, the subdued sense of playfulness, the brisk attention to the details and atmosphere of small-town life, all elevate the Inspector Gorski mysteries. The initiated will love it; new readers should go back for the previous two before picking up this one.

NON-FICTION PICK OF THE WEEK
No One Knows Their Destiny
Tonia Eckfeld
Monash University Publishing, $39.99

After the fall of France in 1940, Churchill deported thousands of European refugees (many Jewish) fleeing Nazism, and sent them to the dominions as “enemy aliens”. Austrian refugees Reinhold and Waldemar Eckfeld (who’d settled peacefully in the UK) sailed on the infamous HMT Dunera for Australia, in appalling conditions, brutalised by British guards. This record of their trials, triumphs and tragedies, told in admirably restrained manner by Reinhold’s daughter (incorporating primary sources such as letters), is a moving portrait of a Catholic/Jewish family caught up in the winds of war. Reinhold married, lived in Melbourne and had a successful career. His brother, who took his own life in 1959, never recovered from depression and a near-death beating on the Dunera. A vivid documentation of tumultuous times that can feel eerily familiar.

Getting Back Up Again
Craig Semple
Echo, $24.99

When Craig Semple – a former detective-sergeant in the NSW Police Force investigating high-level, violent crime – was hit by the first shock waves of PTSD, he told himself “no one dies of a nightmare”, and tried to tough it out. But the condition, akin to being dumped in the surf, was bigger than him. The symptoms (depression, temper, lifelessness and no sense of hope) eventually overwhelmed him; he left his job, his marriage collapsed, and he attempted suicide But this is when he turned the deepest of negatives into a positive, and vowed, for himself, family and sons, that he would “reclaim” his life. His book is a record of how he did it. A confronting, but positive and often moving portrait of someone who’s been to hell and back: a record of dark times he refers to as a “resource” that may shine a light for others.

Warrior Soldier Brigand
Ben Wadham and James Connor
MUP, $34.99

Military institutional abuse, argue Wadham (former ADF) and Connor (UNSW professor at the ADF Academy), “has been an historical hallmark of military service”. The ADF included. Their aim, in this highly informed, detailed and often confronting landmark study is to put it on the record. At its best, a military force embodies its country’s beliefs while defending them. But, often enough to cause a royal commission, scandals and numerous inquiries, the tug of war between the warrior, soldier and the brigand is won by the latter – and institutional abuse (hazing, bastardisation, sexual assault, among others) is the outcome. This is facilitated, they say, by three things: the martial credo, fraternity (often code for “cone of silence”) and the military’s sense of “exceptionalism” which justifies abusive violence. Urgent and timely.

When Life Gives You Lemurs
Tim Husband with Deborah Kane
Allen & Unwin, $34.99

Tim Husband, who grew up as a Jehovah’s Witness in New Zealand, dreaded Sundays. That was when his fundamentalist father drove the family around seeking out the ignorant to convert. His grandfather referred to the Husband family home as the “insane asylum”, and it certainly emerges like that in this frank, often poignant, but sometimes grimly humorous memoir of childhood trauma. When he was 14, he was kicked out of the church and the family home (sex, an older girl at the church) and fetched up at a local zoo called Stagland, which gave him food and board, and which, rather than God, proved to be his salvation. At 16, he was looking after the eponymous lemurs, and they were looking after him. So began a rewarding life of working with animals of all sorts, learning about them as well as learning the wisdom of animals.

The Booklist is a weekly newsletter for book lovers from Jason Steger. Get it delivered every Friday.