Review: Digging Up Dirt by Pamela Hart

What a lot of fun Digging Up Dirt turned out to be. The first novel in a brand new series, it tells the story of Poppy McGowan, a researcher for a children's television programme made by the ABC, who has just learned that bones have been found beneath her home, an old heritage home located bang in the centre of a posh Sydney suburb. And if that wasn't bad enough, she now has to put up with the fact that Dr Julienne Weaver, an old enemy, has been tasked with examining the bones. But the worst (or best) is yet to come, when Julienne is found murdered in Poppy's house. Everyone has a motive for wanting the nasty, manipulative Julienne dead, from the members of the ultra-right wing Australian Family Party (of which Julienne was a member,) to her ex-boyfriends and most important of all Poppy herself.

This was a fun read from start to finish. While I have absolutely no doubt that it will appeal to fans of Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, the author's ability to poke fun at politics and the misuse of religion in a way that is both amusing and in no way at all offensive truly shines. The Australian Family Party seem a lot like certain other political parties we've seen in Australia over the years. Anyone familiar with fundamentalist mega churches will immediately recognise the Radiant Joy Church and, hopefully, get a bit of a giggle out of it all like I did. On a more serious note, I absolutely loved teenage Patience and felt that the portrayal was quite true to life.

Overall, Digging Up Dirt is a lot of fun and a rollicking read as it tackles the ultimate taboo subjects--sex, death, religion and politics. 

Recommended.

This book counts toward my reading goal for the Aussie Author Challenge 2021

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Peppermint Patty: I Cried and Cried and Cried

Image
Unrequited love is a common theme in the Peanuts Comics and is one that I have previously explored on this blog. We know that Lucy loves Schroeder, Sally loves Linus and Charlie Brown has a crush on the unseen, unnamed and utterly unattainable Little Redhaired Girl. But perhaps the saddest unrequited love stories from the comic is that which ran in late June 1972. It was the series of strips where the usually self-confident Peppermint Patty came face-to-face with the Little Redhaired Girl with the intention of thumping her and then something surprising happened: Here we have a usually self-confident girl, who is funny, unashamedly herself and talented at sports reduced to tears by the realisation of who she is not and never can be. I really feel for her in this series of comic strips. She knows that Charlie Brown can never love her, when he is so hung up over a girl who represents a supposedly ideal feminine beauty. Fortunately Linus, the most spiritual member of the Pean
Read more

Charlie Brown, Lucy Van Pelt and the Football

Image
One of the longest, and arguably, most infuriating, running gags in Charles Schulz's otherwise brilliant Peanuts comic strip, is where Lucy promises to hold a football for Charlie Brown and then pulls it away at the last minute, causing Charlie Brown to fall flat on his back. A typical strip looks like this: Source: Go Comics The gag is one of the darker themes in the strip. It works on the concept that every year, Lucy promises to hold a football for Charlie Brown. Every year, Charlie Brown is initially filled with doubt but is eventually pushed on by a kind of optimism that perhaps, this time, Lucy might just let him kick it after all. As a metaphor for life, it is pretty simple. It talks of the moments when we choose to put our trust in people who have let us down only to be taken by surprise when they let us down, again. Lucy is, arguably, one of the crueller characters in the comic. Described as crabby by the other characters, she is often selfish, takes delight in wilfully hu
Read more

Phrases and Idioms: Tickets on Himself

To have tickets on himself: (Australian slang.) To be conceited or vain. To have an overinflated opinion of oneself.  He's got tickets on himself if he thinks that any woman would fall for that. I was thinking about this particular bit of Australian slang the other day, after my boss said, "He's got tickets on himself," to describe the actions of a particular individual. At the time, I smiled, knowing exactly what the boss meant. Later on, I started to ponder on this unusual phrase and wondered where it might have come from. A search on google helped me find the definition, but that was about all. There are no references to it being used in pop culture or literature (if you find one, let me know,) and at the time of writing this post, Tickets on Himself was not listed on Urban Dictionary. (I tried to add it, but the fuckers rejected my definition. They probably think I have tickets on myself or something for trying to add a relatively common piece of A
Read more