Sorted on book title (not in series order)
Australian author Emma Viskic depicts a community well used to living with constant tension, disappointment and outright hostility. It’s a unforgiving world for sure, and we are reading of people who are not living their best lives by a long shot. The summer heat and the threat of...Read more
“…last night’s dreams had slipped into waking hours again, plucking at his thoughts with their blood-stained fingers.”
With her first novel, Resurrection Bay, Emma Viskic not only announced herself as a novelist to watch she also created a lead character in Caleb Zelic...Read more
Housekeeping first - FIREPLAY (Jack Emery) 0.5 is the novella based prequel to THE FOUNDATION, but released after the first full-length novel came out. The action in FIREPLAY clears up some of the backstory in THE FOUNDATION, but it doesn't matter a jot what order you read them in....Read more
One glance at the blurb for this book will give you a pretty good feel for the style. Yep, another comedic female private detective crashing through life in a manner that can make a reader cry with laughter, or stick their hands up in the air begging for a good old fashioned police...Read more
The Orient Express instantly conjures up images of luxurious travel, fine dining, people dressed in their very best, quiet and attentive staff gliding unseen and unremarked through carriages, Inspector Hercule Poirot and 12. Always 12 people.
And so it is with FIVE FOUND DEAD...Read more
FLAMEKEEPER is the 5th book in the Peter Clancy series, and the first not to be set around the mean streets of Melbourne, within the context of The Truth Newspaper. A real-life sensationalist weekly paper that liked nothing better than personal scandal and a spot of stirring of the pot (...Read more
If you take absolutely nothing else from author Felicity Young's Cam Fraser series, then it should serve as a reminder of how important volunteer fire services are in rural communities Australia-wide. Young's background in her local service provides a real-life understanding of the embedded...Read more
Post 9-11 it's hard to think that there hasn't been speculation about the next shock and awe campaign. I bet nobody thought there'd be an Australian, rough and tumble ex-commercial pilot, come spy at the centre of it all. The theory that Michael McGuire proposes in his thriller FLIGHT RISK...Read more
Listening to the radio recently I heard Jane Clifton talking about the thought process behind FLUSH. The end of a long term drought in Melbourne, watching a river running fast, and thinking "What If...". What if a body flushed into the river? What if the cover up of a murder can be derailed...Read more
You really have to worry about Cliff Hardy. Every year he seems to dig himself a bigger, deeper more dramatic hole and he's not as young as he thinks he is.
Or so it seems from these books, but realistically Cliff is timeless. He has to be - don't try to do the maths of how...Read more
Being profoundly disinterested in all things AFL, I will admit that for a while I did think the possibility of a real life Centralian Galahs teams sounded quite feasible. As did the idea that drop kicks weren't just drongo's, but somehow something very undesirable in a game (okay so I had...Read more
It will not come as any surprise to readers of the Nell Forrest series that she's found another body. In a small town like Majic there's an astonishingly high murder rate, even though this unfortunate victim seems to have been in Forrest's backyard for a very long time. About the time that...Read more
FORBIDDEN FRUIT is the 5th book in the Corinna Chapman series by Australian author Kerry Greenwood (probably best known for her Phryne Fisher series). These books are set in modern day, inner Melbourne, are also on the cosier end of the scale. There are enough elements that coincide in...Read more
Grattan Street's Colonial Fiction project is an outstanding idea, with 4 titles now available (https://grattanstreetpress.com/capf/(link is external)...Read more
Everyone is saying this is one for fans of Jodi Picoult, which probably explains a lot of my reaction, because I'm not much of a fan of Picoult's books. I also suspect I may have overdosed on domestic noir of the "harried mother / useless father / tedious kids" variety. For that reason this...Read more
Sitting down to read THE FORSAKEN (late to the party as usual), wasn't at all sure what to expect. The blurb explains that for ten years, Logan Booth, served as a contract killer for the CIA, never knowing that was what he was doing. Finding out he wasn't a rogue hitman for a band of...Read more
First published by Penguin in 1989 THE FORTUNES OF MARY FORTUNE wasn't the easiest book to track down. In fact it took a lot of driving across the Goldfields region of Victoria to get my hands on a copy, which is somewhat appropriate given that the Central Goldfields is one of the...Read more
There's something deliciously intriguing about the machinations in the plot of THE FOUNDATION. Not for one moment would you like to let the major media barons and the undue and partisan influence they wield off the hook, but the idea that they might also be subject to the same sort of games...Read more
Short, sharp and to the point, FOUR DAYS delivers deepest and darkest noir in the unlikely setting of 1980’s Brisbane and Cairns. In the Sunshine State corruption is rife and nowhere more so than in the police force and the licensing department in particular.
Lone wolf...Read more
You wouldn't think reading crime fiction would leave you with a taste for wine, but here we are.
Set in the idyllic surrounds of the Mudgee (New South Wales) wine region, Oliver Wingfield has set himself up as a winemaker with a fine reputation for his wines, even if everyone...Read more
THE FOURTH REICH is the third in the Mitchell Parker series. FBI Agents, with a decided "Australian" feeling about their banter, Parker's team have a fair bit of history which might mean that starting out with the third book is not absolutely ideal. Not that it's not a very readable book in...Read more
FRACTURED is a thriller entry in the expanding local sub-genre of books that look very close to home. Set as close to home as possible, it's the story of Anna, her husband Tony and their baby son Jack.
Using the obvious device of two converging timelines, the lead up to Jack's...Read more
Sophie Phillips is a paramedic and her husband Chris is a cop. When Sophie and her paramedic partner are called to a premature labour case, the results of the early labour are tragic, and despite Sophie and Mick being very sure they have done the right thing, the baby's father - Boyd...Read more
Wow - what a great debut thriller - this was a real page turner for me the suspense was unrelenting.
Sophie Phillips is a paramedic in Sydney, Australia. Not only is her work high stress with a non-stop pace - but her home life is just as busy with a baby boy and policeman...Read more
Howell is a paramedic herself and writes with great credibility about Sophie’s working day. In fact, she writes so well about the working life of a paramedic that I found myself wishing that Howell had room in the plot for more of that aspect of Sophie’s life. I found it truly fascinating...Read more
The third book now in the Nick Chester series set in New Zealand, this is a police procedural that uses sense of place and great characters as it's starting point, drawing them into nicely twisty plots that rely heavily on location to give them that little extra something.
The...Read more
The third Cal Nyx novel, THE FREEZER, would possibly work as a standalone, but the connections between this and the second novel, THE QUARRY in particular, make the characters here make a lot more sense. Nyx and her partner, DI Liz Scobie, her...Read more
A spy thriller that's slightly different from the run of the mill "one man to save the world", there is much to like about THE FRENCHMAN.
For a start this is obviously a book written by an author who knows the reality of life as an intelligence service agent all too well. The...Read more
I have no idea how this happens, but here I was, reading FROMAGE by Sally Scott, and I suddenly realised... shoes again. Another heroine on the "slightly ditzy side" that's obsessed with shoes. It's so not my comfort zone, although I was looking for something on the lighter, silly side, and...Read more
FRONT PAGE NEWS is the debut novel from former Australian journalist Katie Rowney. From the lighter, intended as humour side of crime fiction, cadet journalist Stacey McCallaghan has her first job in the small country town of Toomey working on the local newspaper. Struggling with the grind...Read more