Saturday, March 30, 2013:
ROLLICKING TIME WORTH THE WAIT
ROLL WITH IT
BY NICK PLACE, HARDIE GRANT BOOKS, RRP $24.95
It’s difficult to imagine a journalist taking 25 years to write a book . . . but that’s how long it took Nick Place to produce Roll With It. Luckily, the comedy crime-fiction novel was worth the wait. Nick is a former newspaper reporter who cut his teeth working the police round, where men are men and women are too. He got to know detectives, beat police and members of the Special Operations Group. So while it isn’t true crime by any means, genuine anecdotes are liberally sprinkled throughout.
Character development is great. People such as Stig and Wild Man are introduced early and by the end of the book the reader feels they know what makes them tick. As for the have-a-go hero, major crime cop Tony Laver, who gets busted down to the pushbike squad after shooting dead a dirt-bag crim, you must empathise with him. Any book that can get shoot-outs, taut flat stomachs, breasts that fill your dreams, losing your crim-killing virginity, a rapist freezing and falling over and characters such as Wasted Wes in the first few chapters is worth completing. This is it.
KM (Herald Sun Insight editor and chief police rounds journalist Keith Moor)
Verdict: roll with it
Nick Place: creative 