My Review: St Kilda Blues By Geoffrey McGeachin

I had previously read, and thoroughly enjoyed Digger's Rest Hotel, and I was thrilled to find the high quality of the series has been maintained in Geoffrey McGeachin's latest release, St Kilda Blues - the 3rd instalment of the Charlie Berlin police procedural series. 

Detective Sergeant Charlie Berlin was cooling his heels, underutilised, underappreciated and undervalued in the Fraud Squad when asked to run a covert parallel investigation into the disappearance of a number of young Melbourne girls. Teamed up with his unorthodox old mate DS Bob Roberts, they sift their way through Melbourne's 1967 dodgy underworld in search of a serial killer. 

Charlie Berlin suffers from undiagnosed Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. He is scarred from the horror of being a WWII fighter pilot and then as a captured POW, he is haunted by witnessing the death of a young Jewish woman in Poland. A nightmare exacerbated in St Kilda Blues by the canny resemblance of one of the key characters to the German SS officer responsible for the killing. Despite his failings, Charlie is a clever intuitive policeman and the plot enables him to let his deductive skills shine through. He is a complex character, and his vulnerability and self-destructive streak coupled with obvious intelligence endear him to the reader. 

Along the way the reader gets to enjoy the time-machine experience of the period. Life was 'groovy', vinyl record stores were commonplace and the social scene of the time was well-researched. Go-Set was the trendy magazine, Johnny Farnham was just starting out, airline travel was rare, but was with either Ansett or TAA, cameras used film that needed developing, mini-skirts were in, bras were out and the pornographic and drug industries were busy establishing themselves in the burgeoning metropolis of post-war Melbourne.

Written in a clear and easy-to-read style, with a plot that draws the reader in from both the killer's perspective and Charlie's, I thoroughly recommend this book to anybody who enjoys police procedural crime novels, particularly in an Australian historical setting. In St Kilda Blues, Charlie has his resolve, relationships and his entire existence thoroughly tested. Yet Charlie is a survivor. Even better, the crumbs are left for the next Charlie Berlin mystery. The queue for which starts behind me.

Thankyou to NetGalley and the publisher Penguin Books Australia for my Advanced Reader Copy.

5 Stars *****