DIRTY WORK A-FEET
Published: May 18, 2022
With the December 2021 release of ‘Dirty Work Revisited’, local Author Brett Sody rounds out his dark and comical ‘Dirty Work Trilogy’ in fine style and joins the growing number of Australian authors having a tilt at the wide world of self publishing.
‘Dirty Work’ is a hard-boiled detective parody played out on our South Australian doorsteps and in the middle of our contemporary suburban culture, without ridicule but with a wry familiarity of our local quirkiness.
The ’Dirty Work’ collection unfolds a tale of woe for its ‘hero’, Detective Pete Young. It is, a melange of murder, mystery and dirty deeds, accidental death and frustrated revenge, dark humour and ironic snatching of pathetic defeat from the jaws of phyrric victory. And it is a ‘grin-spinner’ – wordplay, puns and parody and inventive situations abound as the story unrolls, sometimes along two or three parallel lines but all with a central theme: there’s dirty work afoot and all around!
Dirty Work, book number 1 in the series, sees the story’s main protagonist – Detective Pete Young – the youngest and arguably brightest detective on the SA police force – initially charged with the task uncovering some mysterious deaths and disappearances of inhabitants in an across-the-border town before being recalled to SA attend to ‘more serious’ matters ‘down south’ of his home city: dirty work is being done down there above and below ground. Greedy developers mingle with failing church leaders and independent musicians (a band with big ambitions) who are getting blindsided by apparent ‘miracles’, loyalties are stretched and trashed. Dreams shattered. Hearts broken. Lives lost. The local fauna looks on with mild interest but it, too, has its own life and death struggles in play.
All of which leads to some serious situations – well, serious for some! More Dirty work stokes the fire till the cauldron cauldron of revenge simmers, boils over and then something smells bad. The body count can be tallied on snipped toes as plot after plot, attempted bank heists, kidnapping and ransom demands, sexy TV cooking show hosts, band break-ups and the whole-food munching hero are propelled from chaotic life to after-life in the name of humour.
Dirty Work Revisited sees Detective Pete ‘reborn’ with more work on his hands than the legendary Hercules and his impossible labours. Departed characters return and there is much confusion and many contusions in the here and after-life. Can Detective Pete see the end of the road? Can he even find the right road? Is he doomed to be forever missing it ‘by that much, Chief’?
In a departure from regular read-the-words style of book, Dirty Work appears to have a ‘voice’ with a narration style reminiscent of perhaps Roy & HG or Clarke & Dawe. If you are unfamiliar with these dryly laconic luminaries then the voice could be that of an acquaintance, a mate, spinning a gag-laced self-deprecating tale-of-woe over a few drinks. Once ’the voice’ is in play the story reels off in the mind like a movie which is not so surprising as Sody has won international awards for film making.
As a debut offering from Sody the Dirty Work Trilogy is a very good effort; the three-part yarn is coherent, inventive and highly irreverent and keeps us on our toes with the smiles and surprises coming right till the very end. Musical puns abound and Sody has not spared anything sacred — cows, crows creepy-crawlies or creeps. The humour is dark — brutal, yet comical — dry and witty, and funny. Not necessarily LOL funny but it keeps the grin firmly fixed in place even when things get messy.
With new and brilliant comic-book cover art by NAHUM ZIERSCH, the series has been released as an optional bundle.
See: www.brettsody.com