The Fallout Garry Disher 1997

Dustjacket synopsis:
"The Fallout is Wyatt's sixth job, and it takes off where Port Vila Blues left him. On a boat with policewoman Liz Redding, and a fortune in stolen gems. He escapes, triggering a manhunt, but who exactly is hunting him?

"While others search for sunken treasure in Bass Strait and a stone-cold killer is sprung from gaol, Wyatt joins forces with his nephew to pull one of his trickiest robberies. In doing so he faces his most dangerous task yet - plumbing the depths within himself - and it may well prove fatal."

Quotes:
"Strong on detail and with that coldly detached understatement we are used to from Disher, although there are signs... that Wyatt may be more human and less callous than we thought." - J.R. Carroll
"In a murky world where the cops are robbers, old-style crim Wyatt positively shines. Clear taut writing - not a word wasted." - Marele Day
"For pure excitement and escapist entertainment it is hard to go past Garry Disher." - Canberra Times

First Paragraph

One hundred kilometres south-east of the city, the hold-up man called Wyatt brought a crippled yacht in from the storm-tossed seas of Bass Strait to the calmer waters of Westernport Bay, bringing to an end a seven-day voyage from Port Vila. It was 4.15, almost dawn. Just five hours earlier, the bent police inspector called Springett had been washed overboard. Wyatt's only other passenger, the woman who had arrested Springett in Port Vila, was asleep on her bunk. Wyatt furled the torn sails and switched to the auxiliary diesel. The yacht burbled quietly between the red and green markers, following the channel to the little jetty on the Hastings foreshore. Liz Redding didn't stir, not even when Wyatt dropped anchor, bundled his clothing inside a waterproof jacket and slipped over the side and away. She was too tired, too warm, too lost to the grains of Mogadon he'd fed her for that.

Wyatt dragged himself shivering from the water and wiped himself down with a handtowel from the yacht. He dressed rapidly in the shelter of a concrete retaining wall, occasionally poking his head above it, looking for fishermen, patrol cars, insomniacs. There were street lights behind a screen of foreshore trees; shire offices ghastly white in the sodium lamps; rows of slumbering small houses; a swimming poll and kiosk; a hut on the jetty that sold fish; and, to his left, a stiff forest of drydocked yacht masts behind a cyclone security fence.

What he wanted was a car.

From the Allen and Unwin paperback edition, 1997.

Note:
This is number 6 in the Wyatt series of novels.

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Last modified: November 16, 2006.