I believe that the first time I heard of Force nd Fraud being referenced was in the acknowledgements section of a novel by Kerry Greenwood, one of my faviourite Australian authors. When I sought mor einformation about the novel, I found that it is often regarded as Australia's first crime novel, with a female author no less. This was one of those instances where what the book represents was the key driver in me picking this one up to read.
Force and Fraud is the unravelling of a mystery surrounding the brutal murder of Angus McAlpin, a farm owner in rural Australia whose daughter Flora was forbidden by him to marry her love Herbert Lindsay. Suspicion, and eventually arrest for murder, naturally befall Herbet Lindsay and Flora engages her late father's agent Pierce Silverton to assist in proving Herbert's innocence. As the mystery unfolds, suspicion falls on several characters whose motives gradually emerge, until the truth of who killed McAlpin and why is eventually revealed (no spoilers, but it also wasn't a surprise).
I enjoyed the idea of Force and Fraud more than I enjoyed reading it.
That feels a little unfair because I so admite Force and Fraud and Ellen Davitt for what she achieved. A woman writing crime fiction in colonial Australia at a time when the genre itself didn't really exist in Australian writing yet. She set the foundation for much of what I now love to read. There is a rich tradition of detective fiction in Austalia now (think Kerry Greenwood, Sulari Gentill) and Ellen Davitt paved the way.
The novel itself, however, was harder work than I expected. I found myself skipping the occasional passage simply because it felt repetitive or slow. I wonder if that's partly because Force and Fraud was originally serialised in Australian Journal: A Weekly Journal of Australian Literature, Science and the Asrts (1865) before it was released as a novel. I've noticed something similar in another serialised works I read recently, North and South. Chapters often end with a dramatic hook to entice readers back for the next instalment which loses its impact when read as a whole work. They also tended to linger a little scenes or rcharacters reflections in a way that made the novel feel a little plodding at times, duiluting the momentum of the novel.
Nonetheless, I'm glad I read Force and Fraud. It offered me a fascinating glimpse into colonial Australia. It's so fascinating to me to imagine what life was like in times past and think about actual people living their daily reality in the same way that I do, but insuch different circumstances and surroundings. It's not a favourite but as a piece of Australian literary history it was worth the effort.
2/5 A bit of a miss for me, despite appreciating it as a piece of Australian litery history.
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