Characters and location but no spark

INFAMY<br><b>Lenny Bartulin</b><br><i>Allen and Unwin</i>
INFAMY<br><b>Lenny Bartulin</b><br><i>Allen and Unwin</i>
A sleazy outcrop of the British Empire, it owed its existence to having the superintendency of the poor wretches who peopled the penal colony there.

For any novelist with a fertile imagination, Van Diemen's Land presents the ideal locale for concocting a tale of savagery, perfidy, lust, derring-do and bravery. Lenny Bartulin certainly capitalises on the enticing background Hobart Town presents for an author of ability.

Characters range from custodians of the law with an eye to the main chance, the brutal leader of a band of escaped convicts, a brave young man specially enlisted from abroad to capture the outlaw, the original inhabitants of the land and, of course, a woman or two.

Bartulin's prose possesses a lushness that well serves his descriptions of the untamed areas, but the book's plot is decidedly threadbare, rendering a novel that showed promise into a story lacking spark.

- Clarke Isaacs is a former ODT chief of staff.

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