Sorted on book title (not in series order)
James Patterson has been working with a number of crime writers recently, producing these co-authored books, so it's hard not to read each one playing a sort of "who wrote what" game in your head. Candice Fox, as Australian's all know, is the author of a brilliant series of crime fiction...Read more
Every now and then a book sneaks into my reading pile that absolutely and utterly defies this reader's ability to describe it, the affect it had, and the experience of reading it. A NEW NAME FOR THE COLOUR BLUE was simply amazing. Beautiful, moving, haunting, fragile and deceptive: actually...Read more
Australian author Shane Maloney wields the pen like no other writer imaginable, stripping each social veneer away in such a terribly effective fashion that we cringe as we recognize the creatures dwelling beneath. The Murray Whelan novels, of which NICE TRY is number three, are bitingly...Read more
Recently busted back down to the rank of Constable, Mick Goodenough is the newest cop in town. Once a detective always a detective though, and it’s impossible for the experienced investigator not to speak up when it appears that his new colleagues are ignoring the sinister signs of an...Read more
Fast paced, heaps of action, a lot of lurking baddies, a flawed hero and comparisons with the work of Tom Clancy and Matthew Reilly are going to be coming in droves.
NO FREE MAN is the debut thriller from ex-RAAF member Graham Potts, taking it's protagonist, Stepan Volkov...Read more
NO GOOD DEED is a very welcome Australian crime fiction book, written by one of the leading local writers in Katherine Kovacic, set in the stinking hot outback, featuring Rena - a 60something retired geologist on a trip through the area that is partly fulfillment of a long standing plan,...Read more
Harris Derwent has run the full gamut of disappointment and loss in his nineteen years and is not sure if he’ll ever find the means to turn things around. Running from one disaster to the next, it takes a bullet to slow him down and even the circumstances in which Harris came to be injured...Read more
A thriller that features surfing and a special operative anti-terrorism order, based on Eastern mysticism, is not exactly "expected territory" even with the best will in the world. Which makes NO MAN'S LAND by Australian author Roland Fishman an interesting prospect.
For...Read more
It is just possible that a book about a middle aged, female, technical writer working for a software company might, just, perhaps be set in a world that feels more than a little bit comfortable (sans daughter of course). I will admit that when NO SAFE PLACE arrived I was more than a little...Read more
NO TIME TO LOSE is Matt Baak's debut novel, set in the high-tech, high octane world of bank robberies in the current day. Which are considerably less about fronting the bank waving a gun around, and more the very high-tech way in which time locks, centralised security, and automatic systems...Read more
Four Pufferfish novels were never ever going to be enough for dedicated fans of this wonderful, quirky Police Procedural from Tasmanian based author David Owen. There was always a real sense of disappointment that Owen didn't appear to have been given the opportunity to publish more of...Read more
It's hard not to have certain expectations of crime fiction when it's written by a former Victorian Assistant Police Commissioner, as unreasonable or unfair as that may seem.
The first expectation is that the plot should have a strong sense of realism about it. NO WITNESS, NO...Read more
NORFOLK tells a story that has particular resonance in Australia at present - asylum seekers arriving by boat. The substance of the story is covered by the blurb, but in essence, desperate people quickly overwhelm the idyllic community, and government responses are heavy handed enough to...Read more
A murderer is identified by a team of oxen. A dead man rises from a watery grave to indict his killer. A phantom hearse gliding through Melbourne’s slums foretells violent death. A seamstress turns detective to avenge her friend’s homicide. A locked-tent mystery. ...Read more
Between 1865 and 1910 Mary Fortune wrote over 500 crime stories, set in the Victorian goldfields, Melbourne and the outback. Published initially in newspapers and the like, they form the first detective fiction series written by a woman, although she was published under a series of pseudonyms hiding both her real identity and her gender from the wider world.Read more
There must be such a delicate balancing act involved when you're writing crime fiction about some of the worst possible crimes. In NOW YOU SEE ME Bedford has tackled the question of child abuse and child murder, and she's opted, bravely to do that in a most unusual manner.
The...Read more
Morally flexible best mates and private investigators Alice and Teddy pride themselves on fixing every kind of mess imaginable, no questions asked. So, when they're tasked with locating the recently-stolen ashes of long-dead celebrity tennis player Ashley “Perry” Perrineau, it should be a...Read more
The morally flexible PI team of Alice and Teddy are back in a perfectly bonkers scenario in Fiona Hardy’s new novel Old Games.
Alice and Teddy, introduced to readers in the excellent...Read more
As I was reading this book I couldn't help but create a checklist of the things that make up seriously good crime fiction for me, and apply it as I went.
A sense of place that puts you right on the spot, without turning into a travelogue. Something that gives you a sense of...Read more
It would seem that there is a rich vein of corruption, vice and criminality to be mined in 1970's and 80's Perth, if the ongoing involvements of Frank Swann, disgraced cop, now private eye from the pen of local author David Whish-Wilson, are anything to go by.
OLD SCORES is the...Read more
Cosy mysteries are so far from my comfort zone we could be classified as sworn enemies. Which is not to say that some haven’t worked for this particular reader. But to be fair, those that have worked normally deploy a sly, dry sense of humour, a huge dollop of self-awareness and preferably...Read more
The author of ON CRINGILA HILL has worked as a high school principal for twenty years, and been involved in Aboriginal eduation for most of his adult life, becoming the inaugural chairperson of the Aboriginal Education Reference Group. Which did seem to make this, his first crime novel, an...Read more
When reading the true crime / memoir INFILTRATION by Colin McLaren, I heard him speak at the Melbourne Crime & Justice Festival. At the time he mentioned he was working on a fictional book, and I've been looking forward to that since finishing INFILTRATION.
Anybody who...Read more
Set in early settlement Western Australia, ON TRACK FOR MURDER, is an interesting look at the period, taking the main viewpoint as that of a young woman, recently arrived from England, carer for her younger, disabled brother; seeking reunion with their father, and their stepmother....Read more
Set in the heat, dust and community of the South Australian Mallee there is much that is visceral in ONE BOY MISSING. From the opening in which a young, vulnerable boy desperately tries to avoid a pursuer, to the character of DS Bart Moy who is back in Guilderton, possibly because his...Read more
On Halloween, a group of teenage students meet in the woods near Sally in the Wood, a road steeped in local lore and rumored to be haunted by the ghost of a murdered girl. By the end of the night, one student will be dead.
Teenagers from an...Read more
In BM Carroll’s latest crime novel, one family’s celebration turns to disaster as a teenager disappears amid a crowd of concert-goers. Full Review at Newtown Review of BooksRead more
ONLY DAUGHTER has two perspectives. The first is that of Bec Winter who disappeared in 2003 and the second is that of her current day doppleganger, a "homeless by choice" young woman. The imposter settles quickly into Bec's life with loving parents, two younger brothers and friends who have...Read more
Debut author Anna Snoekstra has taken on one of the more difficult challenges in writing fiction - creating an engaging, morally ambiguous central character, who sometimes borders on unlikeable. ONE DAUGHTER shows that an intriguing scenario helps, as does pace and the provision for some...Read more
Right from the opening pages ONLY KILLERS AND THIEVES is brutal. Transporting readers to colonial Australia, this is a book that will should make you ponder how we got to be where we are. In the main this is a story about brutal people, doing unspeakable things - to Indigenous people,...Read more