Joanna Jenkins brings her protagonist Ruth Dawson back to Sydney for the third book in her loosely connected series. Readers first met Ruth in How to Kill a Client when she was sent to Brisbane and had to deal with murder and skulduggery in the legal world. Ruth then took a break in the country, running a small solicitor’s office for a while in The Bluff, and once again found herself investigating a murder. So it comes as little surprise when Bad Neighbours opens that Ben, the homeless young man living in the shed of Ruth’s building, is found dead. Ruth suspects foul play, and given the colourful and dodgy collection of neighbours, it feels like those suspicions are well founded.
As with her earlier books, Jenkins starts Bad Neighbours with a death and then rewinds to an earlier point. Six months earlier, Ruth Dawson has returned in Sydney and is working for a large law firm. Her old friend Crack works for a major bank and has brought Ruth a juicy matter to work on. One of Ruth’s junior staff, Sybil, tells her of an apartment going in the building in which she is renting and Ruth, having fallen in love with the place buys it and moves in. That building, The Lumen, is a classic Kings Cross block with views of Sydney Harbour and an odd assortment of residents. They include Andrew and his trophy wife Silver who live in the renovated penthouse, faded pop star Zara who sublets a room to Sybil, strict head of the owners’ committee Stella, Lucas a reclusive computer game designer (and his dog) and elderly couple Lawrence and Humphrey. And in the shed out the back is Ben, a homeless young man who used to live in the building until his father died and their flat was sold out from under him to pay some debts (the flat is now used as an Airbnb much to chagrin of the residents).
After plenty of introductions and setting up of possible suspects, Jenkins finally comes back round to Ben’s death. Ruth feels that the police are not doing their job and cannot help but stick her nose in. Only very soon she finds herself implicated in the death which in turn impacts on her work, at which point she has to try and clear her name by finding the real killer, with the help of Sylvia and a couple of others including her son Jack. Amusingly, one of the reasons that Ruth has become of suspect is the number of murders she has been adjacent to in the previous couple of years.
While Ruth is central, Jenkins once again ranges her authorial point-of-view across a wide cast of side characters. In doing so, she fleshes out what could otherwise just have been a series of stereotypes. And she also brings the building, its inhabitants and its history to life.
When Jenkins moved her action to the country it felt like she was following the Australian crime trend of regional crime. So it is refreshing that in Bad Neighbours she brings the action back to a colourful and historied area of Sydney full of recognisable characters. But as with her other books Jenkins has some deeper issues to explore. She uses Bad Neighbours to expose some very Sydney (but actually universal) topics – the challenges of high-rise, cooperative living, renovation, property development and corruption.
Jenkins has covered a lot of ground in her Ruth Dawson series by varying its locations and concerns. But much like the local police, it starts to get suspicious when an ordinary citizen keeps coming up against murders which she then needs to solve. So while Bed Neighbours is just the latest in an enjoyable series (and is probably the best of the three) it may be stretching the friendship for Ruth to be involved in any more murders too soon.
Bad Neighbours by Joanna Jenkins
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