WA author David Whish-Wilson explores what might possess a parent to put their child in danger in latest novel

I AM ALREADY DEAD David Whish-Wilson (Fremantle Press, $34.99) There’s no shortage of thrillers exploring the lengths that a parent will go to in order to protect their child, but the latest novel by Fremantle crime writer and academic David Whish-Wilson offers a fresh and disturbing spin on the trope, probing — as he’s put it — “what kind of twisted values would allow a parent to knowingly put their child in harm’s way, and what the ongoing repercussions of that might be”. I Am Already Dead centres on Lee Southern, previously seen in Whish-Wilson’s novels True West and Shore Leave alongside his stalwart private investigator, Frank Swann. It’s the mid-90s, and with “Swann’s old-school way of doing things” now “becoming increasingly difficult” as technology opens up new criminal horizons, he’s training the younger Lee to follow in his footsteps. When Lee begins working on a case that involves tracking down damaging photographs of the daughter of a wealthy businessman with ties to the WA Inc. era, he finds himself drawn into an increasingly perilous situation in which seemingly disparate threads — including a robbery at a Northbridge bar where Lee works as a bouncer and the attentions of a young female police officer — gradually begin to converge. To say much more would be to spoil the twists of the novel’s complex plot, but safe to say that Whish-Wilson’s expertise and experience — he’s published close to a dozen books — are evident in his adeptness with story elements such as characterisation and setting, and in his steady control over the strands of his plot. Indeed, it’s the way the latter come together than really sets I Am Already Dead apart, as the author allows the connections between them to emerge as intrigue and mystery give way to creeping realisation before — in classic hard-boiled crime-fiction style — it all comes together in a dramatic, hard-hitting conclusion. A REAL PIECE OF WORK Erin Riley (Viking, $24.99) Family, identity, community and care are among the subjects of this tender, thoughtful memoir in essays by author and social worker Erin Riley, the recipient of Penguin Random House Australia’s 2021 Write It fellowship program. Among the highlights is a consideration of how growing up a wrestling fan helped Riley to work through their relationship to gender and sexuality by showing them “the largesse of what identity could be, especially as a genderqueer person who had few cultural reference points”, and an essay that reflects on their 72-year-old mother’s close friendship with her 30-year-old piano teacher, the evolution of their own bond, and broader cultural ideas about mothers and our relationships to them. VINCENT & SIEN Silvia Kwon (Macmillan, $34.99) As Perth-raised author Silvia Kwon writes in her second novel, it’s easy to imagine that the life of someone as famous as Vincent van Gogh holds little to be discovered. And yet, when Kwon was researching van Gogh’s years in The Hague, she “was surprised to learn he had an intimate partner” — a woman named Sien Hoornik, who played a “crucial role . . . in his development as an artist, and as a man”. Beginning in 1882, Kwon’s elegant, vivid historical novel aims to tell some of Sien’s story, from her struggles to support her young daughter via sex work to meeting Vincent, becoming his model and muse, and enduring his family’s disapproval. INTO YOUR ARMS Kirsten Krauth (Fremantle Press, $32.99) Classic Nick Cave songs including Into My Arms, Red Right Hand and The Ship Song have inspired stories by Australian writers including Christos Tsiolkas, Mykaela Saunders, Tony Birch, Cate Kennedy and Toni Jordan in this new anthology, a follow-up to Fremantle Press’ successful similar volume centred on the songs of Paul Kelly, which was released late last year. The results are as distinctive as the musical source material, which — as editor Kirsten Krauth memorably puts it in her introduction — “can shoot you in the face, stroke you like a kitten, make you laugh, fill you with desire and longing, traverse the ecstatic to the heavens, before dumping you in the dirt”.