Thomas Keneally's The Commonwealth of Thieves is reviewed this week in "The Telegraph" by Saul David: "It is an incredible tale, but one generally told from the perspective of the white settlers. Thomas Keneally redresses the balance by also recording the disastrous impact the settlement had on the Aborigines...This is a fascinating study of a unique social experiment. If Keneally relies a little too much on published sources, he more than makes up for it with the felicity of his prose and the broadness of his perspective. The penal colony might have been a success, he reminds us, but for the Aborigines it was a disaster."
Garry Disher continues his run in the US with a review of his novel, Snapshot, in Pennsylvania's "TimesLeader" ("classic police procedural - slogging, methodical investigation set against the backdrop of farm, forest and sea in peninsular Australia"), and one in "The Philadelphia Inquirer" ("The author...has packed this police procedural with the kind of detail that enthralls fans of the genre and with deftly sketched characters. The men are engrossing but largely despicable, the women tougher and for the most part good-natured.")
