Weathercock Black
JM.J Bruty Pan Macmillan 190 pages, $25

M.J. Bruty’s fi rst novel Weathercock Black is a fast-paced, full-scale espionage adventure set within the Australasia region.

The plot follows David Grant, an Australian agent from Bruty’s invented super-agency AUSEC, as he and female British exchange officer Kristin Pace seek the perpetrators behind a string of ASIS agents murdered throughout the region.

Bruty manages to pull-off what I consider the difficult task of setting a good espionage who-dunnit in our region as the story travels through Indonesia and Papua New Guinea – as many might consider this type of novel better suited to Europe or America, which is why I suspect she included a British exchange officer as one of the main characters.

Bruty has a descriptive, but flirtatious style of writing that can annoy at times, and although she does draw upon her experience as an officer within the Australian Army intelligence corps and thanks subject matter experts in her acknowledgements, it does feel that the content is structured with the civilian readership in mind by including preconceived opinions of service life, as I noted about six chargeable offences within the fi rst two chapters.

That aside, the book is well-researched and Bruty displays a firm grasp of regional politics and instabilities and combines them well with great imagination and all the intrigue, deception, betrayal and drama needed to deliver a good cloak-and-dagger read.

A good book for out bush, and hopefully we’ll see a lot more from her.

– CPL Damian Shovell