A beguiling philosophical journey in the guise of a crime novel

CRIME
The Afterlife of Harry Playford
Steven Carroll
Fourth Estate, $34.99

Maybe sometimes you can judge a book by its cover. The design for The Afterlife of Harry Playford features a man who could have walked right off the set of the 1949 British noir film The Third Man, starring Orson Wells as the eponymous hero. Except this man isn’t on the streets of Vienna. He’s framed by a sandy beach, a turquoise ocean, a sparkling lighthouse and a cobalt blue sky. It’s an odd juxtaposition.

Page one, and we meet Sam, a painter, whose commercial poster of this scene (minus the man) captioned Australia: Land of Tomorrow, has been used to lure post-war European migrants across the waves. Migrants like Detective Sergeant Stephen Minter who now finds himself, somewhat bemused, in the seaside town of Queenscliff in Victoria in 1951.

Such a move was foreshadowed in the previous, equally elegant crime novel by Carroll, Death of a Foreign Gentleman. Here Stephen first spotted the poster when working a different case in Cambridge and has since persuaded his code-breaking partner Bridget to come with him to the very place it depicts. She’s now working at a local army base for the nascent ASIO.

While Death of a Foreign Gentleman was a homage to Graeme Greene’s Brighton Rock, The Afterlife of Harry Playford might well be a homage to The Third Man for which Greene wrote the screenplay initially as a novella. But that’s not all. There are also some subtle references to the existential philosophy of Jean Paul Sartre. But fear not. This is not a heavy book. On the contrary, there’s a lightness of touch that belies the seriousness of the themes.

While painting on the beach Sam notices (without paying much attention), a man undress, arrange his clothes neatly in a pile and swim out into the bay. Hours pass and the man does not return. A concerned passer-by with his dog reports the pile of clothes to the local police station. Not much more is thought about this until a concerned Mrs Playford reports her husband missing.

Detective Sergeant Minter then starts to ask questions since the missing man is a well-known government minister. Sensibly he begins with the wife whose vague and dreamy demeanour he suspects conceals a “very sharp mind”. The missing Harry, he discovers, was prone to inexplicable disappearances. Mrs Playford then suggests with surprising equanimity that Stephen try Harry’s mistress Caroline, who lectures in French literature and also holidays in Queenscliff. Caroline denies any knowledge of Harry’s whereabouts and then tells Stephen how she once sat next to Orson Welles in Vienna at a cafe. She’s also reading Iris Murdoch on Sartre. Sidenote: the women in Carroll’s crime novels are usually intelligent and admirable. The men, perhaps less so.

Harry, as it emerges, was not only a talented politician but also “the man who would be king” given that the country is currently being managed by “a big fat clown with a talent for eyebrows”, as the passer-by with the dog tells Harry. And that’s really it for the plot. What happened to Harry? Where did he go? Has he drowned? But perhaps more importantly, who was Harry?

Questions of identity, coincidence and the randomness of life haunt this beautifully written book. A quick survey of the many comments about the award-winning Carroll’s prose style include the following adjectives: mesmerising, hypnotic, measured, lyrical, poetic, rhythmic and poised. All true.

Sometimes a word or phrase can be used like an incantation. This happens on the very first page as Sam the artist contemplates the Rip, the narrow entrance to Port Phillip Bay “where the sea rushes in and rushes out through that same small breach in the land’s defences, a mile or so across, every day and every night”.

It’s a sight that prompts the reflective Sam to meditate on the meaninglessness of time itself. Brigid thinks Sam looks a bit like an actor. Typically, Carroll leaves the reader to guess who this might be. Erroll Flynn?

So pause, settle back and prepare for a beguiling philosophical journey through time and space in the guise of a crime novel. You will not be disappointed.

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