If you thought that the Australian Government’s drastic actions had banished the problem of asylum seekers it is time to think again. Not only have Australian artists, playwrights, musicians and novelists, such as Tom Keneally (The Tyrant’s Novel) and Sandy McCutcheon (The Haha Man) adopted the theme locally, but concern for refugees is now inspiring creative works worldwide. The latest novelists to focus on detention centres and the ways that they challenge us for a compassionate response include crime writers Ian Rankin, Garry Disher and Alexander McCall Smith.
Rankin is the master Scottish storyteller who created Detective Inspector John Rebus. Few readers in the English speaking world would not have heard of Rebus, who is among the most credible crime fighters of the last two decades. His adventures evoke the architecture and the characters of Edinburgh. Some 15 stories draw on local history to make these tales unique to the city of Scottish thinkers, warriors and artists. Set in Darkness for example, involves the site for the new Scottish Parliament, rising above the town in an old castle, and mired in political intrigue and corruption.
Rebus’ compassionate response to the plight of asylum seekers is remarkable considering that his outlook is generally cynical. Partly because he needs a shell to protect himself from the terrible sights he witnesses, and partly because he sees more corruption than idealism in those supposedly working for justice, Rebus has a hard comment about everything. When an immigrant is found murdered in the Knoxland housing estate, the police erect a portable office but are met with racist views on the aliens. When local residents try to burn the office using newspapers, Rebus comments sarcastically that he is amazed that ‘someone in Knoxland actually reads’. When a police car has a carton of eggs smashed on its windscreen, he expresses surprise that someone in Knoxland buys fresh food.
Some critics dismiss the crime genre as an unworthy literary form. Certainly there is variable writing in crime novels, which include a range of styles from the hard-boiled to the soft-boiled; from the forensic to the police procedural; from the thriller to the comic. But it is possible to distinguish good writing from bad, and to identify novelists with serious intent. An example of crime writing adapting to contemporary trends was the way that female authors took a feminist perspective on crime and detection in the early 1990s. By