Port Vila Blues

June 4, 2012
It’s thief vs. thief Down Under in Disher’s fast-paced fifth Wyatt thriller, first published in 1995 (after 1994’s Crosskill). Wyatt, a mellower version of Richard Stark’s professional crook Parker, is worried about his career options, especially with his caper planner, Jardine, suffering from cancer. Wyatt soon has plenty on his plate after a Tiffany brooch from a recent burglary brings him into conflict with the “magnetic drill gang,” bent cops robbing banks at the behest of their leader, the sinister De Lisle, a circuit court judge. Tense romance with an undercover cop adds some spice. The action swings through Australia (Sydney, Melbourne, Victoria’s Yarra River Valley) before building to an exciting finale in De Lisle’s hideout in Port Vila, the capital of the island nation of Vanuatu. Disher should win more U.S. fans with this colorful outing, but those with a taste for hardcore gore will have to look elsewhere. Agent: David Forrer, Inkwell Literary Management.

Starred review from August 1, 2012
Dirty doings Down Under as Australian superthief Wyatt (Wyatt, 2011, etc.) returns to steal something he wishes he hadn't. He's endlessly cool, enormously competent, a man who notices everything. But the eternal verities of Wyatt's larcenous world are shifting. Cops, for instance, can no longer be depended upon to be the honest plods that made them predictable adversaries. Robbers, fences and pretty women are developing unforeseeable vagaries. Most troubling of all, however, is the dereliction of Frank Jardine, Wyatt's old friend and job-planner. Jardine and Wyatt had had a good thing going, but suddenly Jardine's not what he once was, and as a result, Wyatt's life has become less comfortable. Consulting the floor plans Jardine has supplied to a plush Sydney mansion points him unerringly to the safe he intends to loot of $50,000, split down the middle between Jardine and himself. He finds the safe with no problem. It's what he finds in addition, without any caveat from Jardine, that turns out to be a problem. The diamond-encrusted butterfly is gorgeous, and Wyatt unhesitatingly adds it to his bag of swag. What he doesn't know, what he feels he should have been warned about, is that the butterfly has already been stolen. And that numerous hard guys will kill to get it back. To Disher's usual brisk pacing, add heaps of noir. The result is not for everyone but is a banquet for those who like it uncut and unsparing.

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June 1, 2012
There are loners, and then there is Wyatt. The Australian thief trusts no one and needs no one, keeping his emotions under wraps lest they undermine his meticulous planning. Last year's Wyatt was a triumphant renewal of a series that had been on hiatus. Port Vila Blues is not a continuation but the first U.S. edition of a book originally published in 1995. In it, Wyatt's attempt to fence a jewel-encrusted butterfly sets in motion a complicated set of events involving bent cops, a crooked judge, and assorted riffraff. Disher controls the chaos like clockwork, moving the desperate characters toward a showdown on Vanuatu with cool precision. Though out of sequence, this book is self-contained, and readers need not have met Wyatt previously. (If they have, however, they'll note that Wyatt has felt like a man out of time for some time now.) Like his hero, Disher is a professional not given to sentimental displays. There's a brief spark when Wyatt feels attraction for a female fence, but in the end, pragmatism wins out. Crime-fiction connoisseurs will find their attention stolen.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)