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The Royal Free depicts the fracturing of a stable reality – personal, institutional, and societal. James Ballard is a grieving widower with a six-month-old daughter, Fiona. He is a copy editor at the Royal London Journal of Medicine, the: “third-oldest medical journal in the world.” The Royal London is dealing with the surrender to online-only publishing, and the deep-fake takeover of scientific journalism. Ballard’s apartment is in a housing estate being besieged by young thugs, and his London is one of constant riots and mayhem, sparked by the police-killing of a “29-year-old black man”.

In keeping with the themes of disintegration, The Royal Free meanders from intra-office politics and foibles to Ballard’s personal difficulties, to national and international chaos. The point of view changes, at one point even being that of Fiona, probably a Ballard projection, but maybe not. The only theme that is consistent is Ballard’s plodding digitisation of the journal’s multi-volume style guide. Such a Baroque urge to order and uniformity is a stark contrast to the surrounding pandemonium: “It was very quiet but for the sirens outside.”

“Nothing quite like a six-month-old baby to adjust your expectations of yourself.” Ballard finds himself wanting when, after farewelling Tatia (“23, Lithuanian, ‘economics student’”) after a week of Fiona-minding and sex-providing, he goes for a run. Leaving Fiona in the neglected apartment, alone. Shuker is an expert in the looming dread – the reader horrified at all the things that haven’t happened but that might. Ballard has similar forebodings when he encounters a group of youths on his return. And thereby starts a sequence of events, with at one point Ballard doing “a stupid, stupid thing” – “They  would come back for him.”

The Royal Free highlights how modern life is increasingly wanting of a style guide, of “man as an ordered political animal, civilisation, and its critique”. There is no madness in a way, as all is madness. People behave as though they’re avatars in an online platform game, hurling rocks and bottles at anything, to see if they get a reward. First responders must often curtail treatment to just get the injured to a hospital. Or those wanting to cheer up the masses with entertainment end up regretting their choice. There is little social cohesion: catching public transport is to enter the domain of an individual – a driver who will rip you off, and who you have to just hope will take you to your intended destination.

Ballard loses himself in the monotony of the style guide. He and his colleagues appear a nit-picking, arrogant lot – an editor’s job is to be judgemental after all. And they are in the specific field of the medical – a group that don’t know the meaning of “petrichor” but don’t stumble over “vesicovaginal and rectovesical fistulas”. They edit “A Patient’s Tale” by a young Nigerian woman, an awful tale geographically distant from themselves – little knowing how soon her plight might be one befalling those closer at hand. They are more concerned with their journal going solely online. Some compare it to the fate of the OED: “Gives the word ‘Help’ in the menu bar a whole different feel, doesn’t it?”

The arc of the book, really a rapid descent into darkness, is provided by Ballard – his discoveries in Fiona’s nursery, a decapitated cat nailed to his door grill, his ending up always walking with a knife in his pocket. However, themes also emerge through the stories of his workmates: Dr Ibrahim al-Reyes, impeccable, dealing with the trauma of personal atrocities in Syria, watching horror movies with “the sense of cruising hostility and blankness”. The terrifying commute to work for Annabel Pitti, after her bike has been stolen out of her backyard shed. Kristian Shattuck, losing his sight, desperately volunteering for more and more work, making more and more mistakes – “words holding together the things that are falling apart”.

The book is like the sexist banter of some of the Royal London staff: “a weird, doomed fin-de-siècle finality that soon became a lurching inevitability.” All characters are fraught and flawed, the only judicious character being an uncanny Rhodesian Ridgeback. I think The Royal Free will be polarising; there will be those who worry that it doesn’t hold together, and those that think that that is Shuker’s point. The novel itself disintegrates. I was initially destabilised by the book, but I ended up finding it riveting. And increasingly disturbing the more I recognised that for many in this world, what is described would be their own non-negotiable, lawless reality.

Detective Sam Shephard is back at work after six months maternity leave, now mum to baby Amelia. She is immediately given a cold case from 25 years ago: an “attack against a man of God on the steps of a cathedral on an ungodly winter’s night”. Sam doesn’t know whether her nemesis The Boss, DI Johns, has given her the case because he thinks she can solve it, or as part of his ongoing game of “Slam-a-Sam”. All she does know is everyone she talks to about the crime is “being economic with the truth”.

Sam must work out whether the original investigation in 1999 missed anything, and/or whether those still alive know anything about the case that they would finally like to share. What makes her job more than tricky is that The Boss was not only on the original investigation team, but he is now married to the daughter of the victim, who was 15 years old at the time of the killing.     

What Sam uncovers is a morass of mis-directions about events surrounding the death. The scene of the crime is very triggering for her – and she becomes aware that the church can be as sexist and suspicious of anyone not regarded as ‘normal’ as many in the police force: “humans with dicks and balls seemed to have special privileges as far as The Boss was concerned.”

Two people who were originally seen as suspicious by both church members and police were Mel Smythe, who “pushed boundaries on what was proper”, and Aaron Cox, an ex-gang member who was friends with the victim. Sam sees through these prejudices and gives everyone the benefit of the doubt and a fair hearing. She does start to wonder if she’s lost the knack of making people open up to her when stories start to sound a bit off, not quite fitting together. However, that could be due to her having to manage poopy nappies, breast pumps, sleepless nights, daycare drop offs and pickups, as well as the cold case. A cold case that suddenly has the addition of a new murder.

Fortunately, Sam has her mate and Amelia’s dad, Paul, to help, and her friend Maggie as moral support. And she needs sounding boards when her suspicions veer from abuse in care, to blackmail, to mistaken identity. As always with Symon’s Sam Shepard mysteries, the book goes to some very raw places, and Sam has some confronting conversations, leading to affecting moments.

The characterisations in Prey are complex and interesting – genuinely good people behave appallingly, and some who behave appallingly do so to protect others. Sam is heartbroken that acts intended to safeguard victims, hurt them even more, and that people have slunk away rather than stepping forward to help when they have had the opportunity.

Symon has again crafted a well-structured, intriguing mystery. The addition of Amelia to Sam’s world, and her stable loving relationship with Paul, makes her aware that she needs to address some of the trauma of her own youth – adding further texture to this great #YeahNoir character.

Kataraina is breathtaking, swirling around a repeating incident, given form by the collective memories of members of the Te Au family. Stretching from the distant past, through colonisation, to their uneasy present: “How did the world become so devoid of magic?”

Kataraina Te Au is a child who brings peace and hope to her grandparents, Liz and Jack, yet later feels guilty “that her silence might have allowed Jack to be violent”. She is a girl who researches “how wetlands store a sort of historical knowledge”. She is a 15-year-old young woman at “the original splitting of herself, the moment she was made vulnerable to men forever after”.  She is a woman in a coma, dreaming: “She’s bawling in that coma.”

Kataraina is about the fracturing of women. There is the story of one literally cleaved in two by a jealous husband. There are those split between how they must behave to placate men and their inner turmoil, those pretending to be “happy as a plastic duck” to hide their sorrow, those who must leave their chores half-finished to be at the beck and call of their husbands. The split between a self who knows what will happen and the self who is heading into danger. And there are intergenerational links of trauma – as Kataraina first splits, “Nanny Liz’s faux-fur jacket watched like a cat”.

Kataraina is mesmerising in its distress, in its looming cruelties. Men’s actions made worse by their moments of kindness and caring, women’s bottled-up frustration occasionally exploding and leaving them wondering at their own culpability. People are at the mercy of their (usually white) bosses, their (usually white) rich neighbours, their (usually white) ‘saviours’, or of those bigger and stronger than them. And the land is also at the mercy of others, the land that was obviously terra nullius, belonging to no-one – until the surveyors came.

As well as the anchor of the repeating incident “the girl shot the man”, is the geographical anchor of the kūkūwai, the swamp. Drained a century ago, but refusing to leave, it is now filling up again – with salt water, with tears? There is an area where “just looking at the ground made you feel confused”. It defies fencing, a puzzle as there’s no reason for the lines “to lose their purpose, to become pliable as a silver chain necklace”.

The swamp hides past incidents and is home to the one with “inky-golden eyes, a pelt of eelgrass”, a danger that has become a source of hope. Meanwhile “a kuia’s cup of tea had a snake’s ghost spilling out to see the fuss.” And Kataraina is searching for something that will make her feel less like a person, to not be “this nervous system held up by bones and muscles, kept warm by fat, firing on oxygen and glucose”.

Kataraina is full of extraordinary characters, those who have read the author’s Auē will remember many of them. For example, the kids Ārama and Beth, much more self-aware than in Auē, and at one time mistaken for ghosts. The refuge that is Tom Aitken: “Didn’t kill anyone last night, did you, Kat?” And there is Nanny Liz, who walked barefoot to the swamp at night “and hoped a fistless monster would come and swallow her alive”.

And there are new characters, such as Cairo, part of a research team investigating why the swamp is rising, quoting Hone Tuwhare as she works. She is drawn by the ghostly smell of speargrass, leading to evidence of the violent history of the area. There is the question of what to do with the findings of research when intergenerational and lived experience is a part of it – can that ever be conveyed?

Kataraina is extremely tense in places, with its constant threat of violence, but it is also full of the love and support people, and the land, can extend. Both Nanny Liz and the swamp are talked of as being purifying kidneys – her for other people’s troubles, the kūkūwai for inorganic impositions. The novel has a chaotic structure that is easily navigable, with its strong recurring themes, its temporal moorings to the incident, and its geographic mooring of the swamp. It also has a useful family tree of characters at the beginning.

I found Kataraina a wonderful book, and I’m sure it will be as successful as the multiple -award-winning  Auē.

“… attempted murder, do you find the defendant guilty or not guilty?” Home Truths takes the reader back in time to follow the falling dominoes that have led to Livia Denby standing in a dock waiting to hear her fate. It is a tale of ‘for want of a nail’ – one small act leading to devastating consequences.

Livia is a probation officer, her husband Scott is a teacher at the school their daughter Heidi attends, and there is their delightful 5-year-old son Noah. On Heidi’s 13^th birthday she and Scott go for a bike ride, then return to discover Scott’s brother Nicky has died. The dominoes start falling, Heidi turns sullen,  and Scott, whose “life shattered like a glass on a concrete floor” starts falling down a rabbit hole in his grief.

“Close one eye and squint, you’d think everything was hunky-dory” – Livia tries to hold her family together. Professionally she can spot a person in danger, but closer to home she just wants Scott to get over it. And surely Heidi is just becoming a surly teenager? However, as Scott’s delusions escalate, she tires “of being bloody Tigger to everyone else’s Eeyore”.

Home Truths is about conspiracy theories, and how compelling they can be when fabricated from truths and half-truths. And Norman’s writing draws the reader in in a way that makes Scott’s descent totally believable. Home Truths is also about how difficult it is to save someone you love once there is no common ground from which to discuss things, and how quickly that ground can crumble beneath you.

It’s true that ghastly things happen, and are often orchestrated by agencies, even governments, but Norman shows the reader another evil; the manipulation of the vulnerable by those who crave money, or self-importance. The cowards who offer their followers a false sense of belonging and purpose – and even worse – offer them a plan of action.

For Scott his beliefs are not just one aspect of his character – as his belief in herbal remedies once was – they have become his whole life, and those who don’t agree have become the enemy. As with all of Norman’s books, the characterisation is complex and nuanced – the person who becomes the greatest support for Livia is one of her cases, ‘the Garrotter’.

The power of guilt and grief is well portrayed, how both can bring on harmful addictions – and an unbearable longing to belong, to be forgiven, to find someone, or something, external to focus on. And the reader feels the same – when I had a suspicion what might be going on, I questioned whether I too was seeing conspiracies where they didn’t exist.

Home Truths is a thriller, with nail-biting dangers, and tension is added by the timing of the triggering incident being prior to the Covid 19 pandemic – the reader knowing, and dreading, what is to come. The book also reads like a horror story: “He looked like Scott, he spoke in Scott’s voice. But this wasn’t Scott” – and the task of exorcising demons is slow and difficult.

The plotting is great, with the structure of the book the falling dominoes, bracketed by the court case. The story is told mainly from the points of view of Livia, Scott, and Heidi. The reader understands Scott and Heidi, but Livia’s predicament is the heart of the novel, “After so many years together, silence was communication”, and if Scott really believes the insanity isn’t he right to act? – but what if action leads to extreme harm?

Home Truths is such a good read – thought provoking, and so very very relevant.

How small people are and how “they only mean something in relation to each other” – when they connect like streams of a river it is a glorious flow, when they separate and become more and more isolated from each other, it is tragic, for them and for their environments. The Mires captures this message through the stories of three families.

The area they live in, on the Kāpiti Coast, is near a swamp, whose waters once flowed freely through the area, and will do so again: “We are too old and wise and deep to trouble ourselves with the impermanence of your wood and concrete and steel.” The eldest daughter of one of the families, Wairere, has matakite – she sees immensity that can’t be put into words. She can sense the inner turmoil of others, which is: “Exhausting and confounding”. She often visits the swamp for some peace.

Wai’s mother, Keri, is a solo mum who is constantly trying to engage in a meaningful way with teenager Wai: “How can they manage to be so clever and so scathing and so harmful and so vulnerable at the same time?” Keri is kept very busy looking after her young son, Walty, a delightful character: “The boy fills her with sweet joy and dread at what the world might do to him.”

Keri negotiates the hurdles of the social welfare system: “There’s never a crossover period between when the food runs out and when the money comes in.” She must conform to policies that probably make sense on paper when applied to everyone, but that create a sense of helplessness in individuals in differing circumstances.

Janet is one of Keri’s neighbours, Keri thinks of her as “prejudiced but alright”. Janet has freed herself from an abusive relationship, and she is enjoying the freedom of being able to say whatever she wants, no matter how hurtful those utterances might be to those around her. After a family moves in next door, uprooted due to climate disasters: “they’re lucky … most New Zealanders can’t afford to travel anymore, but they’ve hit the jackpot – they got to travel the world and settle here.”

The new neighbours are Sare, Adam, and their daughter Aliana. They have finally arrived in Aotearoa after many traumatic years trying to achieve refugee status due to the relentless heatwaves and regular wildfires that have made their Mediterranean home uninhabitable. Adam is one of the few decent blokes in the story, and his name seems no coincidence, first man, untarnished by society or politics. Sare does not feel as settled in their new home as Adam and Aliana do – however, she and Keri find they have a lot in common: as Keri points out: “We’re all just being processed, aren’t we?”

Our bodies are made of water, and all water is connected, so we are all connected – Wai becomes aware of a darkness entering the area when Conor, Janet’s adult son, turns up two years after he last visited. Janet is pleased to see Conor, but soon realises he has changed: he sports a buzzcut, and when not locked in his room with his computers, he exercises, a lot. And then she enters his room and glimpses what is on the computer screens.

The Mires is a tense read, dealing with vulnerable people facing multiple threats. Aotearoa is regularly experiencing its own extreme weather events. Sare’s family is already experiencing racism in their new home, despite their simple aspiration being for a measure of autonomy “The best thing would be a choice”. And the reader reads of Conor and his increasingly warped views: “This is why the world has to change.”

Makereti does a great job of trying to understand men like Conor, he isn’t painted as a mindless thug. An incident early on with Keri doesn’t spiral out of control. As he reads more and more propaganda, Conor feels doubts and uncertainties, but he pushes them aside in favour of the feeling of belonging offered to him if he espouses the right views. He is so inner-oriented that he doesn’t notice that his ‘kind’ already are dominant and powerful, and that they are so at the expense of everyone else.

The plotting of The Mires advances towards an epic denouement of acts of destabilisation, torrential rain and flooding, a missing child, an overrun Police force, and an imminent danger about to affect all three families. And there are friends working together to hold things together. Water can be gentle and soothing and can also arrive like ”the foot of an elephant”. A young woman can be awkward and insecure and can also be a formidable power for change and disruption, backed up by ancestors, and vengeful ghosts, both Māori and Pākehā.

The Mires is a thoughtful book, and I think many readers will relate to the choice imagined for Janet: “Whether she will be able to sustain the unease for long enough to become something more than she is, or whether her discomfort will cause her to weave elaborate narratives as a protective shield.” A great read that flows like the waters that feature so prominently.