Salt and Blood by Peter Corris

Publisher's Synopsis

An old flame, Glen Withers, has come back into Cliff Hardy's life - but this time it's strictly business.

Former policewoman Glen is now a PI too, and with a much classier clientele than Cliff's - she's been told 'money's no object' by her latest, a wealthy family from Sydney's eastern suburbs. Together, Cliff and Glen take on the case of Rodney St John Harkness, recent inmate of a mental institution and a recovering alcoholic with a murky, possibly murderous, history. But Glen is also a receovering alcoholic - and the combination proves disastrous.

When Rod and Glen vanish, Hardy finds himself in a race against time to untangle Harkness' tortured past and find the pair. The trail leads up to the central coast and some of Sydney's best-known beaches. Will Cliff be in time, or will the 'salty tang of blood' fill the air?

My Review of Salt and Blood by Peter Corris

For the majority of the past 24 novels, Cliff Hardy has worked alone, looking out for himself, keeping erratic hours, accepting the bumps and bruises that come with the territory in the private detective business. In Salt and Blood, the 25th book in Peter Corris' consistently tough and fast moving, hardboiled series, Hardy is working with a partner and remembers why it is that he works alone.

Glen Withers is a private detective and also an ex-lover of Hardy's, although nowadays she's just a friend. She meets with Hardy to offer him a job. She has a wealthy client who has assured her that "money is no object", but the job is really a 2 person operation and she can think of no better partner than Hardy.

The job involves minding, or perhaps babysitting is a better word, Rodney Harkness, an inmate at a mental institution. He is about to be released and his mother and brother want him eased back into society. Rod is a recovering alcoholic prone to falling into murderous rages and his wealthy family, thinking more about themselves than Rod, would like him watched. The second part of the job involves finding Rod's estranged wife and daughter because, as his mother explains, she thought he might respond positively to meeting his daughter again.

Glen has the task of trying to track down Lucille and Rose Harkness while the task of collecting Rodney and installing him in his Bondi flat falls to Cliff.

The last thing that Cliff was expecting while driving Rod home was a bullet through his windscreen, so imagine his surprise when the first bullet was quickly followed by a second! Just like that, Hardy's job changes from minding Rod Harkness to protecting him.

Further complications arise when Glen and Rod meet for the first time and the attraction between the two is instantly obvious to Hardy. This is also a potential problem for Hardy because Glen Withers is also a recovering alcoholic and is finding it increasingly difficult to stay off the sauce. Mixing the two personalities could be disastrous.

The story moves along nicely, particularly once Rodney Harkness comes into the picture. Harkness is a dynamic character eager to carry on with his life after his incarceration, but he's also a highly unpredictable character and it's this side of him that keeps you on your toes. Unfortunately for Cliff, he's too much of a loose cannon and the minder turned protection role soon turns into a hunt for a missing person.

We get a pretty good insight into Cliff Hardy the man in this outing thanks to the fact that he is actually working with a friend and that forces him to bare his soul a little more readily. Towards the end of the book, Hardy is told that his "stoicism's intact" and it's a fitting way to describe his demeanour as he carries out his job. Unfazed by most events he always seems to bounce back no matter how desperate or traumatic things get, and in this case, things get about as hairy as you'd ever want them to.

Among mad dashes around Sydney and an even more hectic hunt up around Newcastle, Hardy also manages to find time for a romance, although I thought the circumstances surrounding this side of the story were pretty flimsy. If there was anything that anchored things down it was the time out for a budding love story. I much rather my tough, hardboiled private detectives unfettered by emotions unrelated to the immediate job at hand and this little distraction took him out of his comfort zone.

All in all, this is another solid detective thriller slotting nicely into the hardboiled genre. The plot weaves wildly before coming to an extremely dramatic ending that definitely caught me on the hop. The way things panned out would have had a lesser detective gasping and ready to give up, but not Hardy whose heart appears to have remained as hard as his head (which once again takes a helluva pounding).