Kittyhawk Down

By Garry Disher

From the two-time winner of the Ned Kelly Award and the German Crime Fiction Critix Circle Prize

A missing two-year-old girl, an unidentified drowning victim, arson, and the threat of murder bring Homicide Squad Inspector Hal Challis of the Mornington Peninsula Police Force and his staff to Bushrangers Bay, an Australian seaside resort outside Melbourne. Allis not idyllic in this resort community—far from it. Cars are stolen and torched; letter boxes are burned; and the Kittyhawk airplane of an attractive aerial photographer suffers malicious damage.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Jul 1, 2006
• ISBN: 9781569477137

Garry Disher

Garry Disher is a genre-defining writer of Australian crime fiction, hailed as 'the gold standard for rural noir' by Chris Hammer, and as 'one of Australia's finest writers' by The Times. He has published fifty titles across multiple genres, and is known as Australia's King of Crime. He has won the German Crime Prize three times and the Ned Kelly Award twice. In 2018 he received the Ned Kelly Lifetime Achievement Award.

Reviews for Kittyhawk Down

[arubabookwoman · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is the second installment in the Hal Challis Australian detective series set on the semi-rural/semi-suburban peninsula south of Melbourne. As in the first volume I read, there are lots of crimes hanging over the police department. An unidentified body has been found in the ocean. There is a serial rapist on the loose. Challis's friend, aerial photographer Kitty Casement is murdered.I like the series because of the sense of place that Disher creates, and because in this series each of the members of the small police department seems to play a co-equal role with Challis in solving the crimes. In addition, I find that the characters in supporting roles are more developed than in some other crime novels. Those with recurring roles include Ellen Destry, a detective with a teenage daughter and some marital issues; Scobie, a by-the-book bore, who can't stop bragging about his daughter; Pam, a constable who surfs and is having financial problems; John Tankard, a macho chauvinist who is actually quite insecure.Recommended for crime fans.3 stars

[anniemod · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I prefer to read detective series in order but this caught my eye in the library today and the first one is not there so starting this series with number 2. Set in the south coast of Australia, close to Melbourne, the story links a few different plots (and crimes) but without making a big mess of an interconnected gaggle. A child had gone missing a while back, a body washed out from the ocean (well... technically was pulled by a fisherman), an apparently drunken driver tries to collide with a plane and then suddenly people start dying. Initially all the cases seem unrelated but as the bodies pile up, connections start emerging. Some of them prove to be real, some of them end up being just wishful thinking but by the end of the novel all is solved - logically and without relying on someone tripping on a piece of evidence that puts everything together. The Detective, Hal Challis, is a senior member of the homicide investigation department who had been stationed in the south as a change from the old practice of sending teams only when there is a crime, bulldozing over the local cops and making sure that they have no cooperation from anyone. As this is a second story in a series, there is some back story that happened before - but Disher handles it very nicely with small comments and short explanations, giving the reader all they need to know to make sense of the happening: his wife, locked on prison for helping her lover try to kill him; his current love interest and the woman that he does not seem to be in love with but is important for him. Same applies for the rest of the policemen and women in the story - Ellen Destry's family (I am not sure why the series is not called Hal Challis and Ellen Destry but then I had not read any of the other books so maybe that will explain it), the local cops lives and the way the police department works is all there, in small reminders when needed. You can read this story on its own and not even realize it is not the first in a series. And the story itself is very Australian - from the language used (so very different for some terms from British or American English) to the settings and the explanations and comparisons. It makes the story more compelling in a way but also requires some more work in some places - most of the local words and expressions are easily understandable from the context but it still takes a bit. Overall a pretty good detective story - and I am going back to pick up the first book and then off to the third in the near future.

[teaperson_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A lively mystery set on the coast of Australia. Several strands all tie together in the end, in an ensemble cast of a procedural. Not as much of the fascinating local color as in Disher's first Inspector Challis mystery, but a good read nonetheless.

[skybalon · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Nice Australian mystery novel. Of its unique features is that part of the police work described seems to have nothing to do with the case, just like in a real police station. All loose ends are not completely wrapped up, but the case is solved. The book is clearly written by an Australian and doesn't bother to explain any cultural references, doesn't get in the way of the story, but might annoy some people. It is the second one in a series, but could probably be read without reading the first one.

[laytonwoman3rd · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In this second Hal Challis investigation, Hal's aerodrome colleague, Janet Casement (known as "Kitty" because her vintage plane is a Kittyhawk) seems to be the target of a murderer. A toddler has been missing for months, and the man everyone suspects of killing her is free for lack of evidence. A man known to the local paper as "The Meddler" takes pleasure in squealing on scofflaws, and may have stirred up something dangerous. It's all told in relatively short segments from various points of view (coppers and perpetrators), keeping the reader very well-engaged. A great escape.

[pgchuis · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This ended abruptly, but was intriguing while it lasted.

[bsquaredinoz · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is the second in a series of four (so far) books featuring DI Hal Challis, Ellen Destry and the officers of the Waterloo Police Station (which although it’s never explicity stated I have pictured nestled somewhere on Victoria’s gorgeous Mornington Peninsula). Once again there are a swag of plots that might, or might not, interconnect. There’s an unidentified dead body, a suspected murderer but no body found and a potential major drug promblem identified all within the first few chapters. Although it sounds like a lot to keep track of Disher’s writing is clear and the events lead logically to the conclusion (in hindsight anyway says she who pegged the wrong suspect) so it all unfolds well.

What I like most about this book is that it doesn’t rely on a single, central character or two to move the plot forward, solve all the crimes and provide interesting human dramas. Uniformed constables, junior plain clothes officers and senior ranks all feature strongly in this story which makes the resolution of events more realistic and prevents the “all that can’t possibly happen to one person” fatigue factor from setting in.

My second favourite thing is that the book is refreshingly short. I am growing increasingly weary (and wary) of 500 page books which give wordy evidence of the fact they don’t have much to say, so to find 272 tightly-written, action-packed pages is a treat. This book is proof that if you’re talented enough you can provide thoughtful character studies and multiple interesting plot developments without giving readers carpal tunnel syndrome from holding your heavy book for too long.

The last thing I feel the need to highlight is the ‘feel’ of this book. It’s so very Australian without resorting to unnatural colloquialisms every second paragraph. The location and the language and the people all combine to offer a very credible picture of a modern, semi-rural Australian town.

It's not exactly a happy book, the events are too nasty for that, but it's not as overtly depressing as some realistic crime fiction can be and the ending is satisfying without being twee.