Dark Clouds On the Mountain

by John A. Tully

Set in wintry Tasmania in the early 1990s, with flashbacks to post-war Hobart and Europe during World War II, this story deals with dark secrets, crime and Nazi plots, interwoven with familiar domestic tensions of family life and marriage. Tully creates a fictional world strongly embedded in authentic details of real locations and well-conceived characters. The earthy, passionate main protagonist, Jack Martin, is richly drawn: 'A typical copper - detective anyway - stressed out most of the time, running on adrenaline, nicotine and coffee. Booze too, but not as much as some of his mates. Running to flab from a diet of meat pipes and sauce, chips and the deep-fried dog's turds they called chicken rolls, goobbled down on the run between cases, ingesting cumulatively lethal doses of salt, sugar and saturated fats.' In this elaborate web of intrigue the ground shifts, the past intrudes and time and place are vividly realised. Brooding violence, tangled mysteries... a gripping read.

Genres: Australia, Tasmania, Crime

283 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2010

Reviews

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

John Tully writes well. Yes, the book features the usual world-weary detective, overweight and preoccupied with smoking too much. Yes, Jack Martin has the usual relationship and family issues that go with his line of work. Yes, there are the usual ‘office politics’ that feature in the genre: police corruption, poor management, incompetence etc. But what made this book work for me was the authenticity of place, the author’s refusal to dumb down for his readers, and a tight, intricate plot that drew on the history of WW2 and its aftermath.

I must not give away any spoilers here, so I shall content myself by reminding readers that Nazi war criminals did indeed make their way to Australia in those hectic days of post war immigration…

[Alex Cantone · Rating 3 out of 5]

Set in winter 1991 in Tasmania, overworked Det. Inspector Jack Martin (born Martinuzzi) is tasked with investigating neo-Nazi activity at the Hobart synagogue and the attack on a greenie protester camp near Queenstown where he has a chance meeting with an old girlfriend, daughter of a displaced Ukrainian who emigrated to Tasmania after WW2.

Plagued by incompetent staff, long hours, a bad diet and too many cigarettes his health and family life are under stress, and then the murders begin....

This noir police procedural ticks all the boxes for characters, wonderful descriptions of locations and scenery, authentic Tassie dialogue and subcultures. I have visited Tassie many times over the years and somehow Hobart will never be the same again.

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dark clouds on the mountain
John Tully
Hybrid Publishers, Melbourne, 2010
ISBN 9781921665035
Ed Lewis: 'John Tully’s second novel dips into the history and sociology of the working class in Tasmania, weaving in Nazi war crimes and death camps in the Ukraine, leftist campaigners for Palestinian human rights, right-wing antisemitism, domestic violence and much more.
The protagonist is that rarest of animals, a decent cop, Jack Martin, born Martinuzzi, son of an Italian communist and partisan fighter in the Balkans who survives the war only to be murdered in Hobart in 1948.
Martin’s investigation of a sudden and unusual spate of antisemitic attacks on the Hobart synagogue takes him into the 1990s Tasmanian left, including an establishment called Pursey’s Wholefood Shop; sad, rain-sodden, environmentally ruined Queenstown on Tasmania’s west coast and many points between, usually with a deft brief description and some point of interest from its history.
The story rattles along at a fast clip, with numerous vignettes of working class and Tasmanian life, all with “the immense Mountain brooding above the puny city, rocky, eternal and indifferent”. Also brooding over the story is Tasmania’s dark history as a convict colony, and the attempts to exterminate its indigenous population.
Tully is a socialist, and as Michael Hamel Green pointed out at the book’s launch, his fiction is reminiscent of Steig Larsson. No doubt the influence of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chander is also at work. Chandler gets a mention in the book.
This not the sort of book that gets reviewed by the right-wing cultural warriors of the Australian Literary Review, or in the Saturday reviews section in The Australian and it seems to have been too rich fare even for the slightly more liberal Fairfax Media reviewers.
Dark Clouds on the Mountain is stocked by the better class of bookshop, such as Readings in Melbourne and Gleebooks in Sydney, and it is available directly from the publisher’s website.'

[Nic · Rating 4 out of 5]

Picked up in Hobart airport because I'm a sucker for all things Tasmanian.

A bit overwritten at times, but by page 50 I was engrossed. A great blend of history, social politics, and clever plotting.

[Ann Tonks · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some wonderful descriptive phrases (e.g. the awning over the toy shop = belly) in a book that hasn't found a consistent tone. It captures the Tasmanian land- and town- scape well but the tone and structure undermined the story telling.