The Slipping Place, is a murder mystery set in and around Hobart and on Mount Wellington. It is a dark and suspenseful and a meticulously constructed clue-puzzle.
The book is also rich with ideas.
“You draw a line”
The Slipping Place is concerned with violence in the domestic sphere and examines the way in which we draw lines between those we can protect and those we can’t.
The Web of Literature
It also centres around a bookshop and uses extensive quotation and allusion from nineteenth century literature. I am interested in the way our lives are embedded in and haunted by a vast, unknowable and sometimes bewildering body of interconnected literature, some familiar to us, some half-remembered, and the sense we have that there is a meaning that stays just out of reach.
The Mysteries of Life and Death
I am also interested in the deep mystery that surrounds our own mortality, the fact that we must all die, that this experience is essentially unavailable to us. This is connected with a sense of mystery that lies at the heart of living — that sense we sometimes have that there is something we are missing, some deeper level of meaning, a shadow that vanishes as we turn towards it.
So I hope The Slipping Place is a fair mystery. But I also want it to be much more. As the weeks go by I hope to explore some of these ideas in this blog.
JOANNA BAKER 