Bella Greaves Series #4

Death in the Gardens is the fourth book in the Bella Greaves series. Bella’s note that prefaces the novel gives her readers an important assurance: “This is not the first book about my adventures with Detective Inspector Paul Ruel, but it can be read as though it is the first.” This is entirely true. In this latest instalment the reader is given all the background needed to follow the story. But for those who have followed the series, there are nuances that will be rewarding.

The Bella Greaves novels are special to us. They are set in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, where we live. They aren’t sensationalist crime thrillers which typically escalate with ever more elaborate and improbable twists. Frankly, I feel the contrivance in the writing and the strain on my credulity from many commercial thrillers of that type. The Bella Greaves series is more thoughtful, more character driven, and it is meant to make you think about the view out the window of the train as much as wonder about the destination. I’ve previously described them as a ‘slow burn’, and Duffy himself has described his books as ‘slow crime’. But these days ‘slow’ is too easily interpreted as sluggish and boring rather than considered and interesting: too much the tea-cup ride rather than the roller coaster (to mix my metaphors). Rather, Death in the Gardens is a slow-boil thriller that nurtures its mystery from humble materials, and is just as much about the lives of the characters who inhabit Duffy’s world. If you want an opening with a horrific sex crime the likes of which you have never seen, go read Terry Hayes. Mr Duffy will introduce you to his mountains world with a bit of lawn vandalism, instead. And really, that’s all the thread he needs to pull upon to make everything else unravel. Only later, you will discover that the old-world charm of the mountains also contains a dark underbelly, as does the lives of his characters.

That’s where the novel starts. Paul Ruel, Duffy’s detective, has been called to Everglades Gardens where someone has used weed killer to burn the word ‘Fucker’ into the lawn. Everglades is a real place in Leura, but the Blue Mountains Garden Society that is responsible for running it in Duffy’s book is fictional. Rafe Heylin chairs the society. Billionaire Greg Ives and his wife, Serena, are members. There is tension between Ives and Heylin over an upcoming election, and Ruel suspects that Ives is responsible for the vandalism. Is Rafe having an affair with Serena? Already the idyllic world of Everglades Gardens is a point of contention: a place of seething resentment and nefarious intent.

The novel develops two main stories. The first is a crime story – a murder – but for a long time we are more concerned with the unfolding mysteries around the initial act of vandalism, which quickly escalates into more serious situations, seemingly mired in the past. Duffy doesn’t simply give us a body with a puzzle to solve. He takes care to develop our understanding of his eventual victim so that we know them intimately. It isn’t until well into the book that they are even a victim: “If this was a normal crime story, it would start here”, Bella tells us two thirds of the way through the novel. Duffy is contextualising crime within its community and the social history which has produced it. Duffy’s approach recalls a speech by Agatha Christie’s retired solicitor, Mr Treves:

“I like a good detective story,” he said, “But you know, they begin in the wrong place! They begin with the murder. But the murder is the end. The story begins long before that – years before sometimes – with all the causes and events that bring certain people to a certain place at a certain time on a certain day .  . . All converging towards a given spot .  . . And then, when the time comes – over the top! Zero Hour. Yes, all of them converge towards zero .  . .”

Agatha Christie, Towards Zero, 1944

The stage for this convergence of events is naturally Everglades Gardens in Leura, as suggested by the title. The vast tracts of wilderness, the mist and yawning canyons that characterise Duffy’s previous books are ostensibly distilled into the garden environment in this latest novel. Where the juxtaposition of human habitation and wilderness previously served to suggest the darker impulses of human nature and the fragility of our civilised world, we understand that gardens are meant to be under our control; a place where nature’s beauty is promoted while its darker impulses are repressed. A garden is “a humble occupation where we meet nature halfway”, Bella is told by her newish partner, Alek. For Serena, a garden is a place imbued with God’s grace. Myra, Bella’s assistant, says gardens are good for the soul. But they are also a place of potential danger; a place for predators. The belief that human industry can overcome nature and civilise it is presumptuous. Bella’s mother reminds her, “You can drive nature out with a pitchfork, but it’ll come right back.”

The ‘Great Lawn Outrage’ is the catalyst for the story, but as that plot begins to unspool, much of the tension in the novel stems from the second major plotline, the personal lives of the central characters in the series, especially in relation to events from book 2, The Strange Death of Paul Ruel. There are personal tensions between Paul and Bella, and Bella’s daughter, Siobhan (or Sib), who is in a relationship with Paul; tensions still simmering over Paul’s fake kidnapping in book 2, and stemming also from the morally ambiguous ending of the first book, The Problem with Murder. In book 2, Bella helped Paul cover up the fact that he faked his own kidnapping to force a police investigation into a criminal, Blake Cosic, who was targeting Paul and his family. Now, a court case to try Blake Cosic is soon to start. But there is a risk that the truth about the kidnapping will come out. Nicci Conners, Paul’s rock-climbing buddy and a recent Christian convert, insists on telling the truth. If she does, Bella and Paul could go to jail. On top of this, there is a place in the recesses of Bella’s mind in which she entertains the possibility that Paul is a murderer. The circumstances around the death of Brad Mackerass from the first book are truly murky. Like the mysterious misty landscape of Duffy’s Mountains which suggest the darker impulses of nature, there are dark portents in the simmering uncertainties of Duffy’s narrative that surround Paul Ruel.

Part of the appeal of this book is that its story can be imagined in various ways by the reader due to the way that Bella’s narrative is constructed: that unlike traditional crime literature, we may not know, for certain, the answer to every question the story poses. In short, Bella’s narrative is full of ambiguity. We may choose to accept that Paul’s actions are necessary, even if they look sketchy from the point of view of an outsider; that he hasn’t done anything more than what anyone else might do, put in the same circumstances. But this is a reading perspective that classic crime fiction has trained readers to accept – that the detective is the arbiter of truth and justice – whereas, as the implications of the backstory become clearer, what we understand to be true has been implicit since book one: that Bella’s narrative perspective is incapable of establishing anything unequivocally true about the most salient aspects of Paul Ruel’s actions.

Bella signals this as early as her first Narrator’s Note in The Problem with Murder. The narration in all the novels is split between alternating chapters of first-person narrative from Bella’s point of view, and chapters centred on Paul, written in third person. Bella’s narrative is unreliable because she cannot be certain that what Paul has told her is true. What she offers as a third-person narrator, “is more like an abstract painting than a realist one”, according to her first Narrator’s Note. And she admits, “The truth lies somewhere among the two accounts, although, as you will see, I am not always sure of its exact location.” Now, Bella is left to wonder about the reason for Nicci Conners’ growing fear of Paul, and whether there are unknown reasons for the distance between Paul and her daughter, Sib. In a moment of doubt, Bella reflects that, “I had thought about whether Paul was capable of vigilante action. Certainly, in the moral sense he was, but whether he would actually kill someone I just didn’t know.” And when a murder does take place, Bella is left with the uneasy thought that the “death was enormously convenient for me – and also, of course, for Paul. It was this that worried me . . . wondering just what Paul might have done.” For the reader, the problem of uncertainty is only exacerbated by Bella. When Sib alibis Paul she admits to Bella that she can’t be sure if Paul is innocent since, “I sleep like a log these days.” Paul may have left the house unnoticed for all Sib knows. Even so, Bella later defends Paul to Alek – “Sib says he was at home all night”. Later, when evidence appears to vindicate Paul, Bella’s narrative suggests an inner monologue that reads as an unadulterated voice of innocence. But surely, this is her fabrication, since she still cannot be sure of Paul’s actions. “It was dispiriting that he could be a person of interest for such a crime . . .” she suggests as Paul’s emotional response to accusation. We think we hear Paul’s inner voice, but it is Bella’s uncertain construction that we read.

Death in the Gardens is nominally about the events that start with the Great Lawn Outrage. But like Christie’s zero moment, the true story in Death in the Gardens is the complex reasons why people take action: the failures of character, the rationalisations of self-deception, the pressures of any given moment and the social and historical context which shapes everyone, no matter how much wealth or status seem to mitigate their impact. After all, wealth may create a garden, but a garden is still nature.

There is much to discover in Death in the Gardens on the level of a traditional crime novel with a mystery to be unearthed. Trust me, you will be surprised where this book goes if you think this review has revealed anything. The story of Bella and Paul may be the narrative’s underlying backbone. But the book is about so much more. Through Bella and Paul, Duffy creates a world full of deception, misplaced trust and secrets. It’s a world where everyone lies to the police. Even the police. And it’s set in such a wonderful part of planet Earth that you just might be inspired to come and take a look.

The Bella Greaves Series

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