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THE daughter of Holocaust survivors, Melbourne operative April Taub hunts Nazi war criminals in Yvonne Fein's April Fool (Hodder, 362pp, $17.95). But even if the bed-wetter till the age of 10 could assuage her guilt at being alive by spilling German blood with Australian-made bullets until it turned the Yarra vermilion, it would never be enough for her parents. "Germans you are going to kill? Do us a favour!" she hears them saying.
But her family of Melbourne garment manufacturers, fabric makers and yarn-spinners has equipped April for an undercover life in search of vengeance, using clothes as armour and spirit as clothes, and expressing violently the profound rage they endlessly suppress beneath a taciturn surface. Great premise for an original crime novel, but for all the witty and compassionate asides about life in Jewish Melbourne, April Fool is...