Book Summary and Reviews of Wyatt by Garry Disher

Wyatt by Garry Disher

Wyatt

by Garry Disher

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  • Published:
  • Aug 2011, 288 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

Garry Disher's cool, enigmatic anti-hero Wyatt has a job - a jewel heist. The kind Wyatt likes. Nothing extravagant, nothing greedy. Stake out the international courier, one Alain Le Page, hold up the goods in transit and get away fast.

Wyatt prefers to work alone, but this is Eddie Oberin's job. Eddie's very smart ex-wife Lydia has the inside information. Add Wyatt's planning genius and meticulous preparation, and what could possibly go wrong?

Plenty. And when you wrong Wyatt, you don't get to just walk away.

Taut plots, brilliant writing and relentless pace; plus an unforgettable cast, including the ever-elusive Wyatt himself: these are the hallmarks of Garry Disher's Wyatt series.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Starred Review. The spare, economical prose perfectly suits this tale of mad love and crimes gone wrong, which will remind many of Westlake's better Parker novels." - Publishers Weekly

"Disher brings to his writing a polished style that is gritty, bare, and yet flowing." - Fair Dinkum Crime

"Wyatt is what Wyatt does, and let's hope it's not too long before he does it all again." - Crimespace

"Disher's prose is as straightforward and effective as Wyatt himself. His narrative structure is less straightforward.... Wyatt is so compelling it simply has to be read in one sitting." - The Australian

This information about Wyatt was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Reader Reviews

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Cloggie Downunder

a brilliant read
Incredible as it may seem, I had never read any of Garry Disher’s Wyatt series, so I had no idea of the depth of reading pleasure in store for me when I started his latest offering, “Wyatt”.
Wyatt has been away; now he’s back. The plot begins with a planned jewel heist but takes many a twist and turn before the final page. Wyatt seems to be a crook with principles, but he doesn’t hesitate to kill if that’s what’s needed. And there are plenty of dead bodies strewn throughout this novel. The action is fast-paced and “the goods” change hands with dizzying frequency.
Disher is a master of description; this novel is full of realistic, down-to-earth, gutsy characters; the dialogue is razor-sharp. Wyatt’s theory about words: “The words had a job to do and were not to be squandered” could apply equally to Disher himself. He may be economical with them, but he certainly chooses the right ones and strings them together in a most satisfying order.
There are some delicious ironies: one set of thieves referring to the people who robbed them as “the thieves”; the robbing, at one stage, being done by a cop.
It is easy to see why this novel has won the Ned Kelly Award for Best Crime Fiction 2010. Readers will have difficulty putting it down. There was a 13 year hiatus between the last Wyatt novel and this one: let’s hope we don’t have to wait as long for the next one. This was my first Wyatt novel, but certainly not my last.

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Author Information

Garry Disher

Garry Disher is one of Australia's best-known novelists. He's published over 40 books in a range of genres, including crime, children's books, and Australian history. His Hal Challis crime series is also published in the US by Soho Crime. He lives on the Mornington Peninsula, south-east of Melbourne. You can visit him online at www.garrydisher.com.

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