Murder and conspiracy in Byron Bay

Reviewed by: Little Demon by Michael Wilding Matilda Grogan Murder and conspiracy in Byron Bay Michael Wilding. Little Demon. North Melbourne: Arcadia, 2018. 259 pp. A$29.95. ISBN 978-1-925588-73-6 Byron Bay, on Australia's east coast, is a town populated by a curious cross-section of hippies, surfers, backpackers, and celebrities. Whether they come for the area's natural beauty, its relative seclusion from paparazzi, or its relaxed attitude to recreational drug use, the residents of Byron Shire inhabit a curious intersection of money and politics. Michael Wilding's Little Demon is set squarely within that intersection, blending humor, mystery, and conspiracy to create a detective novel with a twist. Little Demon is the sixth installment in a series of novels that follow research assistant and investigative reporter Keith Plant. In this incarnation, Plant is summoned to Byron Bay by onetime big-name music journalist Rock Richmond. Richmond's computer has been stolen and, with it, the draft of his "spiritual autobiography" (5) of the alternative communities of the far north coast of New South Wales. The case starts off fairly simply—Rock does not even particularly want Plant to track down the thief, only to put journalists on alert should the culprit attempt to publish Rock's research under his own name. Plant makes a few calls, then sits back to monitor the situation. His sense of calm is interrupted by the unexpected arrival of his friend Fullalove, who comes to stay "just till things blow over" (41)—what exactly it is that is blowing over, we never learn. But like all good detective novels, things soon begin to unravel. In this case, it is a tentacular spread of suspicion and conspiracy, a mysterious death and an ever-growing cast of characters, all of whom seem equally shady. There is Rock's wife Maggie, the high-flying drug defense barrister; "Uncle" Toby Oates, an aging academic like an "elderly vicar or a college chaplain, one of the dodgier ones with an earlier career in the military or continuing connections with the secret state" (131); Plant's drug dealer, Max; Rock's secret girlfriend Madimi (the titular "little demon"), and the former special forces commander and caravan-park owner Jake Illingworth. Above all else, Little Demon is propelled by dialogue. The characters—in particular, Plant and Fullalove—speak to one another in a distinctively Australian tone driven by inference and understatement. Plant and Fullalove do most of their cogitation while smoking marijuana at Plant's house. It can be difficult, therefore, to ascertain whether their ideas represent genius or wild speculation. Either way, their conjecture is deeply entertaining and builds a history of the alternative communities as survivalist projects directed by governments and militaries to prepare for the aftermath of nuclear fallout. They theorize CIA connections, secret arms caches, militias: [End Page 178] the operation of the secret state. Amid "the old, familiar, inevitable aura of paranoia" (121), they speculate as to why someone might have stolen Rock Richmond's manuscript. Fullalove seems sure that it goes right to the top: "the haves will always be organizing against the have-nots" (114), he says, while Plant is more skeptical. Their theoretical web grows alongside Plant's list of interviewees, but throughout much of the narrative, Little Demon reads like a game of Clue, with the sense that any one of these suspects might have been the culprit: Was it Jake, in the caravan park, with the rifle? Or Toby, in the lighthouse, with the pistol? Little Demon is certainly doing interesting things with the detective novel. In thinking about detective fiction, it is critical to consider what the outcome of the mystery says about the world in which the narrative takes place. Without giving too much away, it is safe to say that Little Demon takes place in a world full of gray areas; it is not a world in which one might put faith in institutions to restore what is right. In many ways, Plant is a classic investigator, a loner in retreat from the city, living out in a bush cabin: "He had no wish to go back into the past. He'd...