Pig’s Head by David Owen

Publisher's Synopsis

There are good cops, there are bad cops...and there is Pufferfish, aka Detective Inspector Franz Heineken.

Pufferfish (Contusus brevicaudus): Body moderately short, pectorals rounded. Slow swimmer. Scavenger in the mud, at home in the murky shallows, where it roots out and feeds on detritus, body able to bloat and even explode under extreme provocation.

A severed head rolls out of the runnish in a crowded Tasmanian caravan park, and the hunt is on for the killers ... and for their victim, a man no-one seems to miss, a man no-one wants to know.

As Pufferfish digs deeper, he runs straight up against mainland law and order ... and the smell of corruption grows.

My Review 

This is a rare breed indeed, not for the fact that it's a police procedural, for there's any number of those kicking around the place. No, it's the setting that is unusual and for that alone I was very keen to check Pig's Head by David Owen out. This is a mystery set in Tasmania, the Apple Isle, not well represented as far as crime novels go and I must say I was more than impressed with a cleverly contrived mystery investigated by a repulsive yet strangely endearing character known as Pufferfish.

Detective Inspector Franz Heineken of the Tasmanian Police Force takes perverse pleasure in his nickname of Pufferfish and the ugly connotations it evokes. As he describes himself:

'An insular bastard: that about sums me up…Many would say – on either side of the law – that I’m in fact an utter, total bastard.’

He realises that the brown suit he wears so badly is to no-one's taste and even goes as far as to tell us that he "likes being unliked, being regarded as a repulsive sort".

He's the kind of detective who loves the dirty work involved with investigating a homicide, delving deeply into the distressing details and coming out the other side with an answer.

But back to his nickname - Pufferfish. An ugly, poisonous scavenger known to bloat in times of distress. Heineken assures us it's an apt description and gladly lets us know that his fellow police officers aren't game to call him the name to his face. Oddly, I was immediately drawn to such a refreshingly candid character, complete with his bluntness, crudity and single minded determination to solve the case, particularly if it makes his immediate superior, Chief Superintendent Walter d'Hayt (whom he describes thusly as "smooth. Imagine if you will running your fingers lightly along a shiny, fresh, moist slug.") look bad.

Heineken is called into action when a man's head is found in a rubbish bin in a caravan park on the state's east coast. The Chief Commissioner, Grif Hunt, wants a quick result on the investigation and knows that the Pufferfish is the man for the job. The confidence of Hunt is not shared by d'Hayt and the antagonism gradually builds throughout the book supplying a steady source of amusement owing largely to Heineken's efforts in besting his boss.

As it will turn out, the case of the found head (or the missing body, depending on which way you want to look at it) will span 3 states and expose a grimy underbelly in at least one police force. The investigation proves to involve an intriguing web that tangles into an ongoing investigation into a major drug ring. Despite attempts made to shut his investigation down, Heineken proves that determination and sheer bloody-mindedness counts for a lot in successful police work.

It's the determination of Heineken that moves the story along at such a tremendous rate as he quickly catches a sniff of a trail and jumps right onto it. Shades of the marshals on the trail of Dr Richard Kimball from The Fugitive creep into the figure of Franz Heineken as he hunts his suspects. Unfortunately, all of that comes to an end when the stoppers are placed on him by the complication that his case may somehow affect an ongoing major drug operation.

This is an extremely enjoyable police procedural mystery that is told in a rather airy fashion from the point of view of Heineken. His particular take on most situations is just skewed enough to have you scratching your head, but not so far gone that you worry about the man, making him a strangely likable fellow. His treatment of a couple of junior detectives, expected to jump when he crooks a finger at them, typifies his gruff persona.

The Tasmanian missing head murder becomes an interstate corruption scandal involving a major drug smuggling operation. In the background we are also confronted by a brutal inter-office battle, quite possibly the blossoming of a very unexpected romance and one very clever homicide cop. There's enough here to make any crime reader more than happy.

I must admit, although I've read a lot of Australian crime novels by a lot of different Australian authors, David Owen was completely unknown to me until very recently. It looks as though he will go down as one of those authors whose books were greatly under appreciated, with the early entries in the "Pufferfish" series now out of print and very difficult to find. This is a crying shame because Pig's Head is a darn good novel and Franz Heineken is one of the most refreshing protagonists I have come across. If you can get your hands on a copy it will be well worth the trouble.