Whitcoulls Recommends: The Keeper and Bonfire of the Murdochs

The Keeper by Tana French, who is one of my all time favourite authors. This is the 3rd in a trilogy which began with The Searcher and then The Hunter but you can read this new one without needing to read the others (although they’re so good I would highly recommend it). Cal Hooper, the retired Chicago detective is back, with the village of Ardnakelty in crisis as a young woman is found dead just as a local big shot has plans for the town. Factions are rife, with many residents predicting housing developments, data farms or some other modern atrocity and Cal is caught up in a protest against plans which threaten their rural way of life. This is full of terrific characters, entirely believable themes, and some exceptional turns of phrase. 

Bonfire of the Murdochs by Gabriel Sherman. It was widely known that Rupert Murdoch favoured his son Lachlan as the heir to his empire, to the point where he attempted to remove Lachlan’s three siblings from the trust which had been in place for years, in order to anoint him as the rightful successor - and paid his children a billion dollars each to go quietly, but they rebelled and took the case to court. This is the story of one of the world’s wealthiest and most powerful families caught up in lawsuits, betrayals, and revenge. It has been described as being Shakespearian in its tragedy - a family ripped apart by the very man who created their empire. It makes for a fascinating read. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudkin
from News talks'b.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Joe McKenzie book manager. We're Gools joins us now, good morning.

Speaker 3 (00:17):
Good morning.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
What do you got for us today?

Speaker 3 (00:19):
My first book today is a novel by an Irish
writer called Tana French, who You Love I Do. She
is actually one of my favorite writers of all time.
She just has a way with her about understanding people
the nuance of local dialect. Her books are set in Ireland.
She's famous for a series of books she did which
we're known as the Dublin Murder Squad. This new one,

(00:41):
it's called The Keeper. It's the third in a trilogy.
And I will start by saying that if you've not
read the previous two books, it really doesn't matter, because
she's clever enough to fill in the gaps as you go.
But if you love a good book, then you should
hunt out The Searcher and The Hunter, which were the
first two in this trilogy, and they're all about a
retired Chicago detective called Cal Hooper who decides to leave

(01:03):
the States and move to what he thinks will be
a really nice, quiet life in a small village in
Western Ireland which China French has called Ardnakelty, and he
arrives in Ardna Calty and finds out that actually you
can have as much intrigue in a small village as
you can in a big city, maybe more even because
of course it's so local and personalized. And he befriends

(01:23):
a young girl and becomes a kind of father figure
to a young girl called Teresa, who is known as Trey.
And in this third book, a body is found, a
young woman has died, and it's originally decreed to be suicide,
but Trey is certain that a local big shop businessman
has plans to develop Ardna Clti into something completely different

(01:45):
from what the locals currently know it, as they think
that he's likely to bring in a big housing development
or a data farm or some other modern atrocity that
they simply don't want on their doorstep. And Trey starts
investigating this and col gets drawn into it, and it's
just brilliant.

Speaker 2 (02:01):
Oh, I'm very excited to have cal Hooper back, very
intrigued about the second book that you've got for us today,
Bonfire of the Murdochs by Gabriel Sherman.

Speaker 3 (02:09):
Which of course I imagine as a play on Tom Wolfe's
famous book Bonfire of the Vanities, works perfectly in this case.
And Gabriel Sherman. Some listeners may have watched a recent
movie called The Apprentice, which was about Donald Trump's early
days in real estate, his early beginnings in New York,
and that was written by Gabriel Sherman. He's a very

(02:31):
interesting guy. And I understand that one of the Murdoch children,
I am not sure which one, said to somebody that if
you liked Succession, then this Their lives are succession on steroids,
and anybody who's watched Succession hard to imagine that it
could be any I thought it.

Speaker 2 (02:49):
Was the other way around, didn't We thought the TV
show was the Murdocks on stee.

Speaker 3 (02:52):
This is extraordinary, and it's about the way that Murdoch
some years ago had set up a trust for his
children so that they would essentially have equal shares and
equal interests in the business. But over time he's decided
that Lachlin is his heir apparent, and in order to
make sure that Lachlan could take over the business and
protect it from what Trump said was his lefty liberal

(03:13):
other kids and make sure that the legacy in the
future of the Murdoch Empire was all about the conservative,
far right populism that he's been espousing for so many years.
He decided to dismantle the trust and in doing so,
each of the other kids were given over a billion
dollars each in order to walk away, and Lachlan then

(03:34):
would become the obvious successor. But the kids weren't taking
that lying down, and they started to slug it out
and it went to court in Las Vegas, and it's
absolutely fascinating. The Washington Post said about this book that
it's kind of a how to manual on how not
to manage your children, right.

Speaker 2 (03:52):
I was wondering where that was going to go. Yeah,
that sounds about right.

Speaker 3 (03:55):
It's really good.

Speaker 2 (03:56):
Thank you so much, Joan. Those two books, the first
one was The Keeper by Tana French and the second
one is Bonfire of the Murdocks by Gabriel Sherman. We'll
see you next week.

Speaker 1 (04:06):
Even For more from the Sunday session with Francesca Rudkin,
listen live to News Talks a B from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.