Book review: Resurrection Bay by Emma Viskic

“Resurrection Bay” is the debut novel by Emma Viskic. The Australian writer makes a decent attempt at penning own a police story complete with the elements that make it a thriller. A quick Google search will reveal that it is a first in the series starring personal investigator Caleb Zelic.

The book opens with a bang. From the first chapter itself it can be observed that coming pages will show an interesting premise. As expected from any thriller, the work checks all the right boxes. There is a protagonist, an antagonist, a supporting character, a love interest that gets caught in the middle, some twists here and there, and a scenic setting in an exotic location.

In the book, “Resurrection Bay” is a town in Australia. When any author describes a town, a city or any place in particular, the reader feels a connect with something similar that they may have travelled to or lived in, or experienced in any way. Here, as the story progresses the language describing the places and the geography is more relatable to someone who has experienced life in that part of the world. For readers from other parts of the world understanding the lay of the land become difficult. Thus, in spite of the genuine efforts of the writer, that connect remains elusive.

The characters are painted with a shade of gray. That is a genuine attempt on the part of the author. For some characters, their arc is designed really well. For others it is ad-hoc, to say the least. The relationships between different people is touched very briefly most of the time. This leaves the reader confused regarding why someone is acting in a particular way in a certain situation. In this regard, the humanizing touch between characters regarding their bond is missing.

As is the case with every first-time writer, there are some flaws in this work too.

The essence of a thriller lies in the author’s words painting an image in the readers’ mind. The readers should be able to feel one with the scene. Unfortunately, here the author seems to have written as per the scenes in her mind without any idea about how it comes across to the reader.

The main protagonist is deaf. This should inspire some level of connect between the reader and the lead character. However, the way the lead character is portrayed the readers are left to believe if everyone in the world speaks clearly without any accent, or that the protagonist is a prodigy when it comes to lip reading. Anyone who has worked with mute people knows that even the best lip readers can make errors with words and sounds that sound similar. In the story too there are some situations where a confusion is created because of the lip reading. Such instances are passed on as funny and tried to be described as cute. It is left to the reader to decide if those are both or neither.

The essence of any protagonist is only as strong as the antagonist. The plot teases about the antagonist throughout the novel. Some characters are already in black-and-white, while the stand of others becomes clear in the later part of the story. However, there is no showdown in the last part when the real antagonist is revealed. While it is not blink-and-miss, it is not a grand expose either.

Police dramas need an existing case on top of which the actual story is written. An underlying crime, an existing undercover operation, so on and so forth. The issue with such a premise is that those plots already have a lot of data points for the reader to remember. These plot points in the initial case form the background of Resurrection Bay. However, there is no balance between the points of initial case and the new one which is presented to the reader. In fact, it is quite possible to lose track of the story and get confused between the characters, especially if one is not familiar with the line of work of the police.

Overall, the book is decent read if one is in the mood for some light reading and wants to accompany it with a few beers. If some of the plot points are forgotten then it won’t make a significant impact in the reading. The author has shown promise with her first work and as the time progresses, it can be expected that her writing will ingrain more maturity.