Commendable enough, but right from the start Gatz is a difficult character to empathise with, often in danger of becoming a fairly predictable persona whose emotional maturity ceased at the same time as the Vietnam War. Rather than being the standard tough-but-sensitive cop he veers instead towards being the cop who’s superficial, misogynistic and generally past it, also fairly standard.

The Stimson brothers are not likeable at all, but their characters are much more convincingly drawn in some ways, with their alcohol-oriented lifestyle, half-formed thinking and peculiar, instinctive loyalty to each other. Between them, Warren and Troy provide most of the really colourful, sinister and even humorous touches in the book.

The often very short, staccato sentences suit the living-on-the-edge negative mood of characters such as the Stimsons, but elsewhere this style tends to rob the reader of background colour and depth to the action. There is very little evocative description of Melbourne, unless this city is your particular stamping ground; names of roads and suburbs do not a sense of place make. Peter Corris and Marele Day do it for Sydney, Sue Grafton does it for California and Kerry Greenwood for Melbourne, but it doesn’t happen here.

The story appears to push against moral limits: when Gatz returns home after the Banana Alley shooting his wife, Lauren, is leaving to live with another woman. This news elicits horrified silences and vituperative remarks from male colleagues, and there’s an air of immaturity and schoolboy prurience whenever the boys get together.

To prove he isn’t past it, Gatz quickly initiates a relationship with the sister of a missing woman in another case he’s called upon to investigate. It’s a pathetic intrusion in the plot; sex, Serapax and the odd six-pack culminate in a particularly soggy scene towards the middle of the book.

The missing sister is presumed dead by Gatz and his new lover (there’s no evidence and likewise no grief) and at this stage an otherwise fairly decent plot begins to weaken at the expense of some urgent need to recount the detective’s ejaculatory activities. Sex may either add spice to a strong plot and interesting characters, or it may appear indulgent and gratuitous. There’s keen competition in the crime genre at the moment, and plenty of proof that laughable sex scenes are not what’s needed to keep readers turning the pages.

Similarly, another beast, coincidence, can work in two ways whenever it rears its head. It can be a neat lucky break for the dogged detective, or it can be a lazy way to push on towards the end of the book. The second case that Gatz is given comes complete with an astonishing connection between this murder and one he stumbled on in Saigon twenty years earlier.

Still, the pace is kept up throughout and the ending is dramatic, weaving the parts together deftly. It would be ok for one of those weekend evenings when you’re all out of Serapax and six-packs.