Yes it has been a long time. Let’s not talk about it.
The news is that Tiger Stone has been long-listed for a Sisters in Crime Davitt award. I found out a couple of weeks ago and at first I thought it was a hoax but once I’d read the whole email it looked legit (no spelling mistakes, no sob story about money tied up in a distant dead relative’s bank account). It was all pretty exciting, especially because the press release mentioned Trixie Belden, one of my all time crime fighting heroes.
But I got the news on the same day I found out that Jane Taylor had been killed in a car accident so it didn’t feel right to be happy. Jane was an Indonesian teaching colleague in Bendigo. She was lots of people’s hero. She had no patience for apathy or anything half-arsed and she defended her students, her colleagues and the study of Indonesian to the hilt. At her funeral the church was so packed that I only just made it inside the door. Her school photo smiled down at us from the screen above the pulpit: strawberry blonde like Trixie Belden without the curls but but just as fierce.
