This listing shows posts that went onto AustCrimeFiction.org in the last 14 days. Sorted into post type groups - Blogs (Updates), Books, Reviews.
Nothing much changed last week so no post, but I've managed to get a few things ticked off in the last fortnight - mostly catching up on reviews which you can see on the All Reviews listing.
Shot by Shelley Burr (Netgalley)
The small town of Roberta on the Lake, Michigan is shaken to its core when a group of former high school baseball players are murdered one by one. One of the team members, Oscar, who has since moved back to his birth country of Australia, returns to his blended family with his sister Clementine to mourn the loss of his best friend, Jack—the first murder victim, beaten to death in his private study with his own baseball bat, Definitely a crime of passion—and definitely someone Jack considered a friend, as only friends were invited inside his study.
Saigon, 1968, on the eve of Tet. The Vietnamese New Year draws near, and the city waits, restless and uneasy, the air thick with rumours of ceasefire and the taste of betrayal.
Smith has served his time in the secret world – an Australian case officer grown weary of the lies that pass for intelligence, and the loyalties that dissolve at first suspicion. When a colleague is murdered and leaves behind a single word in a blood-stained notebook, Smith finds himself drawn back into the game he thought he’d abandoned.
Child protection worker Dana Gibson is called to attend a fatal shooting at the pub in Helidon where a bikie gang war has exploded. Seventeen-year-old Savannah and her younger sister, Maddie, have been caught in the crossfire, and the rural town finds itself divided between two cultures – the commune on the edge of town where Savannah's family live and an outlaw motorcycle gang.
Tara has only been half-alive since her best friend Ally disappeared decades ago. When her past reappears, Tara is forced to revisit places and secrets she would do anything to forget.
Tara has come a long way from the world in which she grew up. She routinely conceals her past, until a deepening new relationship weakens her defences. A shocking confrontation follows, unearthing how powerfully she is still haunted by the disappearance of her best friend Ally, who left high school one day and never returned.
‘I’m a seventy-three-year-old woman, Tristan; I am practically invisible. I’m exactly the sort of person you need to pull off this caper. Oh my God, I can’t believe I just used the word “caper” in a sentence referring to myself!’
Tristan Barclay, art historian, minor TV celebrity and Belvedere Tours leader, is reluctantly embarking on his final tour of European art and culture. But this will be no ordinary excursion to see the old masters – Tristan is secretly planning a ‘grand gesture’ of his own, one that will shock the world.
A popular young girl disappears without a trace, her skeletal remains discovered three years later in the ashes of a burned-out house. There's a suspect and compelling circumstantial evidence of his guilt, but no concrete proof. When he isn't indicted, he returns to mock the girl's family. And this isn't the first time he's been suspected of the murder of a young girl; nearly twenty years ago he was tried and released due to lack of evidence. Chief Inspector Kusanagi of the Homicide Division of the Tokyo Police worked both cases.
When a man is discovered dead by poisoning in his empty home his beautiful wife, Ayane, immediately falls under suspicion. All clues point to Ayane being the logical suspect, but how could she have committed the crime when she was hundreds of miles away?
As Tokyo police detective Kusanagi tries to unpick a seemingly unrelated sequence of events he finds himself falling for Ayane. When his judgement becomes dangerously clouded his assistant must call on an old friend for help; it will take a genius to unravel the most spectacular web of deceit they have ever faced...
When a man's body is discovered at the base of some cliffs in the small resort town of Hari Cove, the police at first suspect a tragic accident, a misstep that cost the man his life. However, when the victim is found to have been a former policeman and that the cause of death was actually carbon monoxide poisoning, they begin a murder investigation.
Have you ever been curious about how people live when nobody is watching? Have you wondered whether there's more going on than meets the eye?
In the final week before a federal election, political adviser Francis McGuire is tasked with one job: launching the Opposition’s flagship health policy.
Every detail is in place.
Until the party’s ruthless campaign strategist decides to sabotage it.
When his plan backfires, Francis is made the scapegoat. Publicly shamed and hunted by the press, she flees to a small town on Western Australia’s south coast — the same place she escaped after her father’s fatal car accident years earlier.
Sometimes the dead will not stay dead.
It’s Halloween, and a killer long thought dead has suddenly reappeared, setting both the Dublin criminal underworld and the Gardaí on edge. Smiling Johnny Gildea–the textbook definition of a charming monster–is back and intent on settling old scores, chief amongst them the death of his baby brother.
Bunny McGarry has to find him, and fast, before Gildea takes out the person he holds Bunny’s partner and best friend, Pamela Cassidy.
There's something almost mesmeric about A BEAUTIFUL FAMILY. A seemingly gentle story about a summer vacation in the mid 1980s, sunbaked, old fashioned, quiet, New Zealand based, told through the eyes of 10 year old Alix. It's a time of Walkman's, Dolly Magazine, cassette tapes, crosswords and jigsaw puzzles. Although there's an air of simplicity and innocence about all of this (and nostalgia for those of us who were there at the time), there's also something bubbling along under the surface.
This is, mostly, the story of "super spy" Mark Wolfe, and the family circumstances that take him from the job behind the "HR" desk he's been relegated to, to a dangerous mission of his own undertaking in war-torn Afghanistan. Why? The powers that be have recruited his daughter as a spy, sent her off on a mission of her own, and then, as she goes missing, supposedly from an aid project she's working on, declare she's turned, a double agent, untrustworthy, a danger to national security.