Karen Chisholm
There is no way in this world that a Rowland Sinclair book is going to lurk long on the reading piles around here - started this one last night. Want a Chrysler Airflow already.
From the Blurb:
Book 8 in the Rowland Sinclair Mystery Series.
Set against the glamorous backdrop of the 1930s in Australia and overseas, A Dangerous Language is the latest in the much loved, award winning Rowland Sinclair Mysteries.
Karen Chisholm
I'm blatantly cherry picking from the piles now.
From the Blurb:
Terrorism, politics and betrayals collide in this unputdownable, fast-paced thriller from a highly recognisable political insider.
Karen Chisholm
This is one of those books that has been needling away, wanting to be read.
Karen Chisholm
Picking a few random self-published books from the Ned Kelly submissions in 2017 leds me to the third Inspector West book from SA author, Peter Mulraney.
From the Blurb:
Murder. Arson. Revenge.
Detective Inspector West investigates the grisly deaths of two elderly priests: one in a suspicious fire; the other obviously murdered.
The inspector is not the only one hunting the priest killer.
Karen Chisholm
From the recent reading piles I've been catching up with - strong first book in what's intended as an ongoing series.
From the Blurb:
London, 1863: Women in Waterloo are turning up dead, their sexual organs mutilated and removed. When another girl goes missing, fears grow that the killer may have claimed their latest victim.
The police are at a loss and so it falls to courtesan and professional detective, Heloise Chancey, to investigate.
Karen Chisholm
The bonus about being laid low by illness has definitely been the excellent books to read - this was one of them.
From the Blurb:
When eighteen-year-old Chloe Emery returns to her West London home she finds her mother missing, the house covered in blood. Everything points to murder, except for one thing: there’s no sign of the body.
Karen Chisholm
One from this year's Ned Kelly submission list, set around Warrnambool in Victoria.
From the Blurb:
After a medical mishap, Dr Vince Hanrahan crashes professionally and personally, is all but struck off, and the Medical Board kicks him all the way down the Princes Highway to be a rural GP. Supervised. On notice. He rents a dump, lives off takeaway, and plans to see out his time before regaining his rightful position on the specialist pedestal.
Karen Chisholm
This one has been sitting there on Mt TBR for a while now, just winking and asking to be read.
From the Blurb:
Welcome to the Misfit Mob…
It’s where Police Scotland dumps the officers it can’t get rid of, but wants to: the outcasts, the troublemakers, the compromised. Officers like DC Callum MacGregor, lumbered with all the boring go-nowhere cases. So when an ancient mummy turns up at the Oldcastle tip, it’s his job to find out which museum it’s been stolen from.
Karen Chisholm
Just in time for f2f bookclub reading.
From the Blurb:
Karen Chisholm
Bittersweet reading. On the one hand I've sort of been hoarding it a little, knowing that this will be the last ever Inspector Anders book, but on the other hand I've been keen to read it.
From the Blurb:
Inspector Anders of the Rome Police became a hero when he closed down an anarchist group years ago. But in the action he lost a leg - and his nerve. Since then, he's made his moral compromises. Now, battle-weary, he'll do one last job.
Karen Chisholm
In the days after the Awards Ceremony it's wonderful to watch the congratulations for much deserved winners rolling in.
Karen Chisholm
Fell over the first in the series via the Ned Kelly listings in recent years - particularly pleased to see a 2nd novel in the series now out.
From the Blurb:
Karen Chisholm
From last week's reading pile.
From the Blurb:
When a body is found buried near the desolate forest road of Kellers Way, Detective Melanie Carter must identify the victim if she is to have any chance of finding the killer. That's no easy task with fragmentary evidence from a crime committed years earlier and a conspiracy of silence from anyone who might have information.
Karen Chisholm
From the weekend's pile - really liked the earlier one in this series.
From the Blurb:
Wisecracking social worker Stella Hardy returns, and this time she’s battling outlaw bikie gangs, corrupt cops, and a powerful hunger for pani puri.
On a stormy Halloween night, Stella gets a call from her best friend, Detective Phuong Nguyen. Phuong has a problem. Or rather her lover, Bruce Copeland, does.
Karen Chisholm
There’s fresh blood aplenty in the local crime writing ranks and the usual suspects were nowhere to be found as the 2017 Ngaio Marsh Awards finalists were named on Monday.
Karen Chisholm
The Australian Crime Writers Association today announced the shortlists for the 2017 Ned Kelly Awards for the best in Australian crime writing.
Karen Chisholm
Second from this weekend's reading pile.
From the Blurb:
A fast-paced international thriller by top Melbourne author of fiction and non-fiction, Roland Perry. This is a sequel to Perry’s first book titled The Honourable Assassin (2015) in a new series of thrillers that incorporate actual events, criminal organisations and key figures in the underworld of Asia as they play out globally, involving international law enforcement and intelligence operations.
Karen Chisholm
Started this one last night.
From the Blurb:
Neve Ayres has always been so careful. Since her mother’s death when Neve was seven, she’s learned to look after herself and to keep her cards close. But now her deliberately constructed world has collapsed: her partner’s left her when she was eight months pregnant. And so, alone with her newborn son, she’s retreated to her cliff-top holiday house in coastal Flinders.
There, another child comes into her life.
Karen Chisholm
Really enjoyed the first of this series, Through a Camel's Eye.
Bobby lay curled like a seahorse, like a puppy… red marks round his throat… facing Swan Island.
The local senior constable, Chris Blackie and his deputy Anthea Merritt, expect the murder investigation to be handled by Geelong-based detectives from the Criminal Investigation Unit. But they’re blind-sided by the interest personnel from the secret military training base on Swan Island take in the case, strongly suspecting that the Detective Inspector may be taking direction from them.
Karen Chisholm
A slight change of setting - moving to Tokyo and a book by an American Professor of Literature and author resident in Tokyo.
From the Blurb:
Detective Hiroshi Shimizu investigates white collar crime in Tokyo. He’s lost his girlfriend and still dreams of his time studying in America, but with a stable job, his own office and a half-empty apartment, he’s settled in.
Karen Chisholm
I did some housekeeping over the weekend. The sort where you sweep all the books off the pile to be read and pluck out one that you really want to read. I did restack the pile again and promise I'm doing some catching up with badly overdue review books. But it was nice to get some tidying up done :)
From the Blurb:
Deaf since early childhood, Caleb Zelic is used to meeting life head-on. Now, he’s struggling just to get through the day. His best mate is dead, his ex-wife, Kat, is avoiding him, and nightmares haunt his waking hours.
Karen Chisholm
One from the should have read this ages ago pile.
From the Blurb:
To her clients and colleagues, Iris is a therapist in a city psychology practice. But to the police and fire services, she is the Fire Lady – a profiler of arsonists.
After a troubled young man burns down her office, Iris just wants a quiet life. But her peace is shattered when a bomb goes off at a local school. Called in to help, Iris meets James, delusional and dangerous, and Chuck, a lone investigator tracking a serial arsonist he calls Zorro.
Karen Chisholm
Whilst not "strictly" crime fiction this is a fascinating intertwining tale that had me up way past when I should have nodded off last night.
From the Blurb:
When Madeleine d’Leon conjures Ned McGinnity as the hero in her latest crime novel, she makes him a serious writer simply because the irony of a protagonist who’d never lower himself to read the story in which he stars, amuses her.
When Ned McGinnity creates Madeleine d’Leon, she is his literary device, a writer of detective ction who is herself a mystery to be unravelled.
Karen Chisholm
The second novel out of New Zealand I've been able to read that explores the after-affects of crime. Let's hope this is not just a glitch in the continuum as both of these novels now have been thought-provoking and challenging.
From the Blurb:
Karen Chisholm
Had a bit of a break from work last week so I'm behind with posting these. This was one of those books that I have been looking forward to, set in a part of the world that's not a million miles from home - then and now.
From the Blurb:
In the long, hot summer of 1989, Ben and Fab are best friends.
Karen Chisholm
Another from last week's reading - to be reviewed at http://www.newtownreviewofbooks.com
From the Blurb:
A hot summer. A shocking murder. A town of secrets, waiting to explode. A brooding, suspenseful and explosive debut that will grip you from the first page to the last.
Karen Chisholm
The best part about playing catchup is getting to read some very good examples of different sub-genres.
From the Blurb:
Karen Chisholm
This has been languishing on the pile for Way. Too. Long.
From the Blurb:
One year on and Pufferfish - aka Detective Inspector Franz Heineken - remains haunted by his failure to apprehend the killer of a young Hobart woman. Every time he sees a merchant vessel leaving the city's port he thinks of Angie, because that's how her murderer escaped. And that merchant seaman may still be coming and going with impunity, waiting for another opportunity.
Karen Chisholm
Started reading this one from the badly neglected to be read pile last night.
From the Blurb:
Political journalist Nick Hunter suddenly loses his memory. He can't find his wallet, his computer password or even his name. When it comes to women it's even more confusing. Does he have a lover or a wife?
Karen Chisholm
Re-started this late on Sunday, the first in the Dan Forrester series.
From the Blurb:
Dan Forrester, piecing his life back together after the tragic death of his son, is approached in a supermarket by a woman who tells him everything he remembers about his life - and his son - is a lie.
Grace Reavey, stricken by grief, is accosted at her mother's funeral. The threat is simple: pay the staggering sum her mother allegedly owed, or lose everything.
Karen Chisholm
Late in mentioning this one, particularly as I've been reading and re-reading it a couple of times now.
From the Blurb:
Murder, political intrigue, bent cops and the fate of a nation - a thriller set in the murky underworld of 1951 New Zealand.
A man overboard, a murder and a lot of loose ends ...
In Auckland 1951 the workers and the government are heading for bloody confrontation and the waterfront is the frontline. But this is a war with more than two sides and nothing is what it seems.
Karen Chisholm
Was extremely fortunate to read this over the weekend. Beautifully written story about not just the trial but the legal mind behind so much that we take for granted (and should be grateful for) in this country.
From the Blurb:
One of the most shocking murder trials in Australia's legal history, and the tribulations of the man who conducted it
Karen Chisholm
Another from the greatly overdue pile.
From the Blurb:
A chance encounter in a fish-’n’-chip shop set Brendan Murray on the trail of a mystery. Had a gay man been secretly murdered on HMAS Australia during the Second World War?
The veteran he spoke to was certain. ‘I knew about it,’ he said. ‘We all did.’
But was the story true? If so, who was the dead man? And why was it so hard to find out?
Karen Chisholm
Second from the weekend's reading pile - this time about detector dog Elsie, written by her handler Steve Kelleher.
From the Blurb:
Karen Chisholm
The final from this weekend's reading pile.
From the Blurb:
Meet BADNE$$. He's the enigmatic, impulsive, exasperating, destructive, big-hearted Aussie outlaw who stole millions of dollars in daring bank robberies and became a folk hero as big as Ned Kelly when he masterminded two spectacular prison breaks in the space of six weeks.
Karen Chisholm
From over the weekend's reading pile - one about the Calabrian Mafia in Australia and the largest haul of ecstasy in the world.
From the Blurb:
Bestselling writer and organised-crime expert Keith Moor takes us behind the headlines of the world's biggest seizure of ecstasy to expose a sophisticated mafia network in Australia.
Karen Chisholm
Read this over the weekend in time for next week's f2f bookclub gathering (which is a change recently - I'm started and finished the book!)
From the Blurb:
Narrator Don Tillman 39, Melbourne genetics prof and Gregory Peck lookalike, sets a 16-page questionnaire The Wife Project to find a non-smoker, non-drinker ideal match. But Rosie and her Father Project supersede. The spontaneous always-late smoker-drinker wants to find her biological father. She resets his clock, throws off his schedule, and turns his life topsy-turvy.
Karen Chisholm
Another from the weekend's reading - particularly interesting as this is something I'd not known a lot about beforehand.
From the Blurb:
A gritty and compelling account of an elite police group, the Middle Eastern Organised Crime Squad (MEOCS).
Karen Chisholm
One from a long weekend pretty much spent reading.
From the Blurb:
The powerful true story of the first police officer to lift the lid on police corruption in Queensland and what then happened to him.
'Wherever there is power and money, there is always the risk of corruption. But everyone has a choice: to become involved or to take a stand against it.'
Colin Dillon is an extraordinary man. He was the first Indigenous policeman in Australia. But that is actually a very small part of his story.
Karen Chisholm
From the recent reading list.
From the Blurb:
'A - Assume nothing. B - Believe nothing. C - Check everything.' Ron Iddles
In an incredible twenty-five year career as a homicide detective, Ron Iddles' conviction rate was 99%. Yet that only partly explains why Iddles is known to cops and crims alike as 'The Great Man'.
Karen Chisholm
This is quite the doorstopper so I may be gone for sometime.
From the Blurb:
Ellen Kelly was born during the troubles in Ireland. When she arrived in Melbourne in 1841 aged nine, British convict ships were still dumping their unhappy cargo in what was then known as the colony of New South Wales. When she died at the age of 91 in 1923, having outlived seven of her 12 children, motor cars plied the highway near her bush home north of Melbourne, and Australia was a modern sovereign nation.
Karen Chisholm
Tue, 27/06/2017 - 12:30pm
Event Information(link is external)
Venue Shangri-La Hotel 176 Cumberland Street Sydney (Australia)
Cost $85 Dymocks Literary Luncheon Members / $100 non-members (Includes a two course meal and all beverages)
Bookings book https://www.trybooking.com/book/event?eid=2741222(link is external) or call 02 9449436
Karen Chisholm
11th July, 2017 at 12.30pm
Shangri-La Hotel 176 Cumberland Street, Sydney (Australia)
$85 Dymocks Literary Lunch Members / $100 Non-Members (includes a two course meal and all beverages)
Bookings: 02 9449 4366 / https://www.trybooking.com/book/event?eid=274507(link is external)
Karen Chisholm
A new series from Ned Kelly winning author Alan Carter, this time set in New Zealand.
From the Blurb:
Nick Chester is working as a sergeant for the Havelock police in the Marlborough Sound, at the top of New Zealand’s South Island. If the river isn’t flooded and the land hasn’t slipped, it’s paradise. Unless you are also hiding from a ruthless man with a grudge, in which case, remote beauty has its own kind of danger. In the last couple of weeks, two local boys have vanished. Their bodies are found, but the Pied Piper is still at large.
Karen Chisholm
Catching up on some recently read books - this is historical romance / crime fiction from New Zealander Author, Jude Knight.
From the Blurb:
Prue's job is to uncover secrets, but she hides a few of her own. When she is framed for murder and cast into Newgate, her one-time lover comes to her rescue. Will revealing what she knows help in their hunt for blackmailers, traitors, and murderers? Or threaten all she holds dear?
Karen Chisholm
Read this one last week and spent most of the time reading it laughing.
From the Blurb:
"Him: But he did buy you a castle.
Her: That's okay I can build my own castle out of the fucks I no longer give."
Meet Eva Destruction, the only thing quicker than her mouth is her talent for getting into trouble. It’s true she’s always had an eye for a bad boy but when she falls for billionaire super-villain Harry Lancing, it seems that even Eva may have bitten off more than she can chew.
Karen Chisholm
Another from the weekend's reading - thriller set in Columbia, written with a human rights perspective.
From the Blurb:
When Luzma’s brother Jair unwittingly uncovers the plan by Colombia’s most notorious drug cartel to smuggle an unprecedented cocaine shipment into the US, it puts their family in grave danger.
Karen Chisholm
This is a long book so I've been reading it alongside others for a while now.
From the Blurb:
This non-fiction book explores the true story of H Division, the punishment division within Pentridge Prison, Melbourne, that operated from 1958-1994, which was responsible for cultivating criminals who committed horrific crimes upon their release.
Karen Chisholm
I read this recently.
From the Blurb:
A false accusation. A brutal murder. Can Ngaire find a killer before he finds her?
Ngaire Blakes is trying to put her life back together. The ex-cop resigned from the police after a vicious assault left her battling PTSD. Dragged into a murder investigation, she’s shocked to discover that all the evidence points to her.
Karen Chisholm
Started reading this legal based thriller over the weekend.
From the Blurb:
When feisty lawyer Sasha Stace secures the acquittal of a sleazy politician charged with rape, it’s one legal victory too many. Disillusioned, she looks to the High Court bench for more fulfillment. But before she can become a judge, there’s one more criminal defense – a trial with complications, a trial like no other.
Karen Chisholm
Another from the weekend's reading pile - which wasn't that big unfortunately this time around, bit busy and then next weekend's Eurovision so other than hiding from the media on Sunday before the telecast - will be too flat out cooking :)
From the Blurb:
A funny, disturbing, and deeply affecting novel of power, corruption, and innocence in colonial Africa, by the author of Terms & Conditions.
Karen Chisholm
From the stack of books recently read.
From the Blurb:
It is almost two years since wildfires ravaged the tiny town of Bullock, and Melbourne journalist, Georgie Harvey, is on assignment in the recovering town to write a feature story on the anniversary of the tragedy.
In nearby Daylesford, police officer, John Franklin, is investigating a spree of vandalism and burglaries, while champing to trade his uniform for the plain clothes of a detective.
Karen Chisholm
Picked this one up recently - billed as comic farce.
From the Blurb:
A desolate valley.
A missing mathematician.
A glamorous and beguiling council bureaucrat with a hidden past.
A cryptic map leading to an impossible labyrinth.
An ancient conspiracy; an ancient evil.
A housing development without proper planning permission.
All leading to the most mysterious mystery of all.
Karen Chisholm
First from the last weekend's reading.
From the Blurb:
A cryptic message left next to a charred corpse in the middle of Reykjavík leaves police worried they have a gang war on their hands.
Across town Detective Grímur Karlsson investigates a missing girl from a nice suburban family and gets far too close to the truth for his own good.
It becomes clear the two cases are connected and Karlsson doggedly pursues the trail that leads from junkies on the seedy streets of Reykjavík all the way to the very top of Icelandic society.