HUNTING BLIND
Paddy Richardson
Penguin Books - $28
Reviewed by Nicky Pellegrino

Perhaps there’s something in the water in Dunedin. Or maybe it’s all down to the city’s famously gloomy skies. But it’s becoming a mini-literary enclave for a certain sort of writer – nice, middle-class women with a fascination for the darker side of human nature. In fact, Dunedin’s two queens of crime, Paddy Richardson and Vanda Symon, were living only a few doors away from each other while busy coming up with the evil, twisted characters that fill their stories.

“We didn’t know it though,” says Richardson. “Vanda was in her writing room working away just like I was.”

The disappearance of a child is the jumping-off point for Richardson’s second psychological thriller, Hunting Blind (Penguin, $28). It’s the story of what happens when little Gemma Anderson goes missing one perfect summer’s day during a lakeside picnic in Wanaka.

What Richardson wanted was to explore the idea of a single event changing the lives of an ordinary family and to her the loss of a child seemed like the worst thing that could possibly happen.

“The case that really influenced me was Teresa Cormack because I had a daughter that was nine or ten at the time and I remember worrying about her going to school,” she explains. “Like everyone else in New Zealand, when a child goes missing I watch TV and get drawn into the parent’s horror and anxiety. But then inevitably it stops being news and the public moves away from it. I’ve always wondered how it is for the family and what happens later on.”

Hunting Blind tells that story. It follows Gemma’s elder sister Stephanie as she struggles with guilt and grief; it looks at the fruitless searches, the suspicions that fall on the family and the tearing apart of relationships. Then the action moves forward 17 years when Stephanie, by then a psychiatrist, hears a story from a new patient that’s so horribly familiar she is driven to re-examine her sister’s death and find out what really happened.

It’s a compelling and involving read. Richardson perfectly captures the claustrophobia of small town life, her prose is pacey and masterfully she builds tension towards an all-action ending. All in all she seems born to be a crime writer.

“But I’ve never even been a great reader of crime fiction,” she admits. “I fell into it really.”

A former primary school teacher, Richardson began dabbling with poems and short stories in her 30s. As a solo mother of three who had to earn money to support her family, she didn’t have much time or energy left over for writing and it wasn’t until a summer school in creative writing at Otago University that she began to take it more seriously.

Her first novel The Company of a Daughter was published a decade ago and was a literary saga about five generations of New Zealand women. Back then she was hailed as a promising new author but, struggling to work fulltime and write, found it took ages for her to finish her second novel.
A Year To Learn A Woman turned out to be a very different sort of story, a thriller about a freelance writer commissioned to work on the biography of a serial rapist.

“I didn’t consciously set out to change direction,” says Richardson. “Still I think it’s good to venture into different styles of writing. There aren’t any rules. There are no literary police around. I don’t like the idea that you have to stick to something although I’m really enjoying this type of writing so will stay with it until something else comes along.”

She reckons she’s had a little bit of criticism for jumping genres. “There’s just a feeling you’ve gone to the dark side,” she says. “Sometimes crime is seen as secondary to literary fiction but in fact it’s got a long and interesting tradition. And lots of books that are seen as literary – Ian McEwan’s for instance – have got some sort of crime at the heart of them.”

What fascinates Richardson about the genre is working out the intricacies of plot and character. “I think it’s something we reject as part of ourselves but crime is all around us in society and we all have a dark side to our nature although most of us are able to control it.”

With both her thrillers set to be published in Germany, Richardson is currently working on a third. At 59, she’s finally free to write fulltime and is revelling in it.

“I still do a little teaching when I need ready cash but mostly I’m writing,” she says. “It was a difficult decision in terms of financial security but not in terms of what my heart wanted.”

Now living in Broad Bay, her writing room offers a view of the harbour and she loves spending her mornings working there. Inspiration is never very hard to find and Richardson has ideas for several more novels to come.

“I’m always listening to people,” she says. “I like gossip and hearing about the things that have happened to them. I suppose I’m simply in love with stories.”

Booklover
Ventriloquist and comedian David Strassman is touring New Zealand this month. Right - David Strassman's futuristic Angel photo by Tony Ashby

The book I love most is…The Star Rover by American writer, Jack London. It’s the story of a university professor, Ed Morell, who claims to be wrongfully sentenced to prison and is repeatedly put in a straight jacket whilst in solitary confinement. During lengthy and tortuous periods in this "jacket", Morell time travels and lives complete and full “other” lives as other people throughout time. He is a Roman centurion, a shipwrecked sailor, a Chinese peasant, a young boy in the American west and several more. For me this book covers so many angles - historical, fantasy, social commentary, and pure entertainment!

The books I am reading now are…The Book of General Ignorance by John Lloyd and John Mitchinson, a wonderful book that debunks popular knowledge. The Big Burn, Teddy Roosevelt And The Fire That Saved America by Timothy Egan, the amazing story of a 1910 massive forest fire in Northwest America resulting in the creation of the United States Forest service. The Empty Ocean by Richard Ellis, a sobering book about the ecosystems in the world's oceans and how over-fishing could result in an "empty" ocean.

The book I’d like to read next is…A Treasury Of The World's Great Letters published by Simon and Schuster. This is a collection of letters written by some the world's most famous people, from "ancient days to our time".

Footnote:
Nicky Pellegrino, in addition to being a succcesful author of popular fiction, (her latest The Italian Wedding was published in May 2009 while her next, Recipe for Life is due from Orion in April), is also the Books Editor of the Herald on Sunday where the above review and Booklover piece were first published on 14 February..