DEAD MAN'S WHISPER

Dystopian crime noir. A dying detective battles a mastermind gang boss over the smuggling of the killer drug fentanyl which is 100 times more powerful than morphine. Detective Alex "Whispering" Smith has taken down some of Sydney's toughest gangsters with his feared martial arts skills but now he faces a fight he cannot win, a diagnosis of a motor neurone disease, named after Yankees baseball legend Lou Gehrig, which is eating away his body. The first symptom is the loss of his voice, which has earned him the nickname "Whispering" after an old western movie. But while his mind is still sharp he is given the job of investigating a series of fatal and grievous street attacks, known as "coward punches", which has the city on a knife edge and locked in political turmoil. For the job he is given a hotshot rookie partner Chris Ritchie to talk for him and the guidance of impossibly beautiful cyber detective Jenny Lee. Inevitably they are drawn into the web of scheming educated biker boss Sonny Graba and his behemoth minder Stripper Cook. Bullets fly and bodies mount up. To keep the cops and government on the wrong foot Graba uses teenage hoodies as shooters and a hacker to manipulate social media. Smith senses that some of the city street killings have been staged and learns from Jenny Lee that a dark web site Kayo Klub is being used to incite violence in the clubs. It sounds like Sonny's work but is it a classic Graba smokescreen for something much bigger? Smith becomes alarmed when he gets a tip off that Graba has flown to Moscow for a fentanyl deal, then to Saudi Arabia, China, and Manila. He could be looking at a crime that would shock the world. There would be a confrontation when they got back but would he have the strength to stop them as his skeletal body fails him. The ending is a shock, a bitter twist.
The story is more than just about cops and crooks. It is about an epidemic of violence that feeds the media circus and the nightly news but is rarely analysed or countered. Throughout the story characters succumb to it in different ways. The city has become unrecognisable to the older generation. The younger generation just seems to want part of the action. Should it be like Covid? Should we just learn to live with it? Thankfully Smith is the narrator with his laconic sense of humour and with nods to crime kings like Raymond Chandler and Elmore Leonard the one-liners keep on zinging. It is Gothic urban noir.