Review: Shadow Over Edmund Street

Engaging characters and a puzzle that gets murkier the deeper police dig make this tightly written murder mystery just what you want in crime fiction - a story told so well that you want to keep reading it in one go.

Page turner may be a cliché, but it’s also a necessary reality of a great read when talking about a detective yarn. Here the tension builds remorselessly into a gripping climax. A story expertly handled.

That Shadow Over Edmund Street is set locally, in Auckland, is a bonus. No cops charging around with guns drawn, no arcane UK conventions to get in the way. Centred on the central city suburb of Ponsonby, where author Suzanne Frankham grew up, the story takes us back and forth in time between pre-fashionable Ponsonby where poverty ran deep, and what it is now, gentrified streets of gutted villas and smart cafes populated by the sleek and self-satisfied with their big cars.

Our victim straddles both worlds. Edwina is an old-school battler from old-school Ponsonby who had it hard. Her life revolved around church, her job and a few friends that dated back to childhood, when Ponsonby was a tight-knit community.  Then Edwina came into money and began to transform her life. A bit like her suburb around her. There’s a new job, a new car, and a new friend.

But despite the metamorphosis, on the surface she seems the most unlikely of victims. It presents a case for our hardworking cops which at first looks like it could be unsolvable. But the clues are there, engrained into the fabric of Ponsonby, a long enduring shadow cast by a long forgotten event. If only the police can ferret it out.

Our hero is Detective Alex Cameron, the cop with a troubled past, but not in a hackneyed, stereotypical manner. He is a well thought out, believable character, with a backstory that has just enough unexpected twists that are expertly played out through the book to take us deeper into what makes him tick as the story evolves, without becoming tiresome. Along with his team of fellow cops and the witnesses they interact with, all the characters are well drawn and work.

The entire story is crisply written, there is no spare meat in any sentences, and it builds to its crisis in a skilfully executed arc. The plot twists are drip fed in masterly fashion – we’re given a glimpse of the solution, before the characters have pieced it together, so we can feel we’re on top of this story, only for it to be cleverly pulled away with yet more unexpected turns that keep the story compelling.

No wonder. It may be a debut novel but Auckland born and Melbourne-based Frankham has the credentials. On the surface, like Edwina, she may not seem the most likely of crime writers. Born in Auckland, living in the Philippines and then the US before Australia, she began her career as an environmental zoologist and now works as a chess tutor. But she also has a string of short stories that have won multiple awards – an SD Harvey Short Story Crime Award and Writer’s Forum UK Short Story competition to name but two. And Shadow Over Edmund Street is shortlisted for best debut novel in another string of literary competitions. It would be a well-deserved winner. 

Reviewed by David Gadd