Shoot the Messenger by James Tatham

Australian Books

Title: Shoot the Messenger
Author: James Tatham
Pages: 432
Published Date: 1997
Publisher: Random House Australia
Series Details: stand alone

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Publisher's Synopsis

Denied justice in court by the long-armed protection of the Mob, Alan Riddle, barrister-at-law, is passionate about finding the chink in the armour of organised crime.

So when the Mafia's right-hand man wants out and is prepared to reveal big names and blueprints, Alan Riddle hands him to the National Crime Authority as a protected witness.

But the Mob want their wayward son back and nothing can prepare Riddle or the NCA for the force and ferocity of their attack. No-one betrays the family.

But, as Riddle uncovers, there is much, much more at stake.

And it isn't just Mafia secrets...

My Review of Shoot the Messenger by James Tatham

Stories involving organised crime in Australia are rare indeed, but James Tatham has put together an intense Mafia thriller in Shoot the Messenger that has created a vast network throughout the country. Setting the stage for this intense battle between the police and organised crime is a combination of a little fact leading off a great deal of hard-edged fiction. Leading off with a plausible scenario to set the scene, Tatham uses an infamous event, that of a letter bomb explosion in 1994 in the Adelaide offices of the National Crime Authority. The culprits who sent the letter were never identified, but for the purposes of this story author James Tatham has attributed the attack to a Mafia vendetta.


Projecting out from this opening, the reach of the Mafia in Australia is then graphically demonstrated by first a spectacular car bomb and then a more chilling cold-blooded hit to take out a witness and an undercover policeman who were about to testify against Don Dominico Fanucchi. The message is clear, you don't cross the Mob and live to talk about it.


So when barrister Allan Riddle, who made a name for himself during the high profile Fitzgerald Inquiry into police corruption, is contacted by a Mob insider planning to defect and inform on his bosses, he realises that a very delicate operation has to be put in place. To run such an operation he calls on Stuart Kennedy, the Director of the National Crime Authority. There isn't an agency in Australia that is more effective at protecting witnesses and in this case, they're going to have to be at their best because the defector is Fanucchi consigliere Vincent Silvesta. Silvesta has enough evidence to put away every single capo in the country and then some. When the Mob come for him, they're going to come hard.


The question is out there. Will the NCA extract the evidence they need or will the Mafia get to Silvesta first? And what will the cost end up in terms of human lives?

Mafia heavy-weights waste no time in organising themselves once the word hits the street that Silvesta has given himself up to the NCA. The mad scramble is on to find where he has been hidden...and there is an equally mad scramble to readjust the power base within the Mafia as Dom Fanucchi's position as chief enforcer is endangered by the defection.

This is an action thriller that unfolds at great speed, borne on the NCA's part by the fact that Silvesta and his family has to be spirited away to a secret location as quickly as possible, and on the Mafia's side by the need to find him and silence him. Time after time throughout the book, we are reminded by the ruthless nature of the Mafioso by the cold-blooded murders that take place, usually in the name of ensuring there are no witnesses to their crimes.

Allan Riddle proves to be the conscience behind the NCA protection operation, believing that justice should always take the form of due legal process. Kennedy, on the other hand, is more of a realist and a man of action who believes in fighting fire with fire. He's prepared to take the Mafia head on and welcomes the chance to clean their ranks right out not matter what lengths that means he has to go to. If there is a thoughtful commentary to take out of this extremely violent novel, it is the argument of violence versus non-violence and their effectiveness in the war against corruption.

I had a feeling that everything associated with the Mafia in the book was over-accentuated in an effort to give their presence maximum effect. Gun battles are frequent, as are close up murders and reprisals from within the family for those who break the honour code, witnesses, undercover cops – in fact, anyone who gets remotely in their way are dealt with in the most extreme ways possible. While this heightens the sense of danger, ensuring that you're well aware what Riddle and Kennedy are up against should they fail, it also eats into the believability quotient to a large degree.

Over the top or not, Shoot the Messenger is certainly a very entertaining novel if at times quite graphic in both the extent with which Tatham takes his scenes involving violence and sex. This may not concern some people one whit, for others it could be a big turn off, so just bear it in mind.