Smoke by Michael Brissenden

Publisher's Synopsis

What secrets lie in the ashes?

After a brutal wildfire tears through the town of Jasper in the Californian sierras, a body is discovered in a shed. It looks like an open-and-shut case of accidental death – until further investigation reveals that the victim was locked in from the outside.

Years after leaving Jasper, Detective Alex Markov has been sent back under the shadow of an LAPD corruption investigation. She is convinced that the man, a family friend, was murdered opportunistically under the cover of the fire. As the smoke clears, Alex reveals a town corrupt to its core – but exposing that corruption could destroy her and the people she loves. Will she ignore the crookedness and deceit, or face the consequences of pursuing an inconvenient truth?

My Review of Smoke by Michael Brissenden

The opening of Smoke by Michael Brissenden is dramatic and tense as a wildfire reaches a property. The devastation of the rampaging forest fire is used to attempt to disguise a murder in what then becomes a somewhat complicated police procedural mystery. Smoke itself, though, is a slow burn rather than a fast moving juggernaut with a hinted at backstory hanging over the main character serving to muddy the waters of the action taking place in real time. 

Alex Markov is a cop who has moved back to her hometown after working with the LAPD. She made the mistake of reporting one of her fellow officers to Internal Affairs, crossing the blue line and making herself a pariah within the force. Her move back to her hometown is an attempt to escape the wrath of her former colleagues as much as it is to move on with her life. 

California wildfires are devastating the tinder dry countryside around the little town of Big Jasper and lives are under threat. So when one man is found burned to death in a shed on his own property there’s little consideration that foul play may have been involved.

But the dead man is only the start of the problems that Alex is going to encounter as police from her past enter the scene to make life extremely difficult for her. And when there’s a growing realisation that a questionable development proposal is in play, one that will have significant ramifications for the local community, it seems that she’s going to come up against enemies that are intent on protecting their financial interests. 

The characters are introduced into the story in rapid fire with only a minimum of detail as to how they’re related to others. In fact, it took me quite some time to work out Alex’s relatives as opposed to merely other townsfolk. Sadly, as the story progresses and still more people appear on the scene, there is little effort to provide any information of substance about any of them and the result for me was that I felt no connection to any of them. The result is a book full of paper cutouts of people, good and bad alike, making it impossible to get a true measure of the motives behind any of the actions that take place.

I’m unsure why Brissenden chose to set the story in the US (regardless of his explanation in the acknowledgements). There were quite a few times I recognised colloquial Australian words and phrases in some character’s dialogue as well as some of the cultural references that came up were decidedly Australian. I’m confident that Americans don’t refer to distances in kilometres. 

There is more to Smoke than the dangers of the natural world. While smoke comes about as a result of bushfires, it can also be used to hide nefarious dealings allowing corruption at many levels to take place undetected. While Brissenden managed to get there in the end to uncover what was hidden in the murk, I found it to be a an overly slow moving affair with predictable plot twists and a slightly disappointing ending. 

Other Reviews

Amazon.com

This was such an eerie opening to a book, incredible setting of the scene of immediately after a blaze passed through. Especially because it’s a reality so many people face. The premise was very promising and I was very excited to read this different take on a crime novel, where I hadn’t read anything similar before.
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Unfortunately there wasn’t enough suspense to keep me interested and gripped turning the pages, in saying that - it was a great insight into investigations, police corruption and culture, with plenty of side stories within the pages. Read all reviews

GoodReads

This is a story of family, of survival, grief and doing what is right. Alex is determined and outspoken, which makes her a target for those who are in power. Corrupt politicians and police are rife and Alex needs to stay true to herself to keep her family and herself safe. It is a dangerous situation, and will keep you turning those pages to find out what happens next. Read all reviews

Reading, Writing and Riesling

Intelligently written, fast paced and consuming, this mystery speaks not only about climate change, fire and its aftermath, about crime and corruption; it weaves addiction, institutionalised racism, misogyny and dementia deftly through the pages as is raises the question of loyalty – to family, the job, the town… who do we owe our loyalty to? Who is worthy of our loyalty and what are the costs? Read full review

Pile By the Bed

Former Australian journalist Michael Brissenden’s third novel Smoke (after The List and Dead Letters) was inspired by the devastating bushfires that ravaged the Australian east coast in late 2019 and early 2020. But rather than setting his story in that time and place, Brissenden takes the action to another fire flashpoint – the forests of California. Read full review