| Author | Finola Moorhead |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Crime novel |
| Publisher | Penguin Books |
Publication date | 1990 |
| Publication place | Australia |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 423 pp. |
| Awards | 1991 Victorian Premier's Prize for Fiction, winner |
| ISBN | 9781760875091 |
Still Murder is a 1990 novel by the Australian author Finola Moorhead. [1]
It was the winner of the 1991 Victorian Premier's Prize for Fiction. [2]
After a corpse is found by Sister Mary Ignatia under a marijuana crop in a public park, the case is taken over by Detective Senior Constable Margot Gorman. As the investigation progresses it becomes clear that this crime is part of a chain of such violent events that began with the rape of a young woman in Vietnam.
Reviewing the novel in The Age Kate Ahearne found that "what really sets Moorhead's novel apart is the way she has understood the age-old formula of corpse and killer, clues and motive, mystery and mystery-solver, not simply as a wheelbarrow for a set of thoughts on the nature of life, but as a metaphor for it." [3]
Gillian Whitlock in Southerly noted that the novel did not follow normal convetnions for this genre: "Still Murder proceeds not to resolution and the identification of the deviant individual, but to a diffusion of guilt and responsibility," and that "Moorhead goes much further in constructing a feminist reading position for her novel than authors of other contemporary feminist versions of the detective fiction." [4]
After the novel's initial publication by Penguin Books in 1990, [1] it was reprinted by the same company in 1991, [5] and then by Spinfex Press in Australia in 2002. [6]