Sorted on book title (not in series order)
Alan Turing develops a machine he calls Nautilus that can send messages back in time. He uses it to fix a disastrous D-Day that threatens to lengthen the war and see Hitler triumph. Seeing the power and potential, he decides that it can only be entrusted to family. For Alan this means his...Read more
It must be quite an experience for an author to start out on the long cycle of writing a book about crime and corruption in the financial system, and then, just as you complete the manuscript, have real life intercede in apropos fashion. As Neil A. White puts it on his website:...Read more
Back in the 1970's there was discussion, debate and disagreement about the likelihood of Croatian extremists operating in Australia, and whether or not there was any involvement by the Communist Yugoslavian Government. Tony Jones, ABC Journalist and Q&A host apparently raised this topic...Read more
The second novel in the Constable Sammi Willis series, THE TWISTED KNOT, has Sammi returning to work after a close shave with death in the first novel (which you don't have to have read to get this one, but it wouldn't hurt).
Life back at work isn't easy though, and she's...Read more
It’s not only the guilty who have something to hide.
When charity worker Cate and website designer Rory, a married couple in their thirties, return from their European holiday, they make a nightmare discovery. Their credit cards...Read more
Current readers of TWO DAYS will be greatly relieved to know that DRAINLAND (Book 1) was released in early August 2016 because this novella is the prequel and it would be very unfair if we had to wait for the full show.
Iain Ryan does a particularly good job when it comes to...Read more
UNBLESSED is the latest in the Jane Halifax series of books, featuring the TV series character of the same name. A forensic psychologist, Halifax has worked with all sorts of criminal types - from serial to opportunistic killers, and in the last book, herself, when she suffers from sudden...Read more
This unpredictable legal thriller is no courtroom drama and brims with action.
The first novel in this series,...Read more
Melbourne author Fiona Hardy has broken very different ground with her crime fiction debut Unbury the Dead.
Hardy is well-known in crime fiction circles as a Melbourne bookseller, crime fiction reviewer and, more...Read more
Cold-case detectives are everywhere these days, but the latest creation from Garry Disher, Alan Auhl, is not as straightforward as some might expect. Full review at ...Read more
There's absolutely nothing better in Australian Crime fiction than a short, sharp burst of Cliff Hardy in his prime. And THE UNDERTOW has all those elements that fans of the hard-boiled, down-trodden; put upon; unlucky in love; hard man; unflinching good guy - only slightly dodgy around...Read more
Based on a true story, set in the Victorian Goldfields in the 1860's, THE UNFORTUNATE VICTIM is part fiction, part reminder that life in those days, particularly for women, was not easy, pleasant or fair. When the body of young newly-wed Maggie Stuart is found in the home she shares with...Read more
The second novel in the Monsarrat series, THE UNMOURNED is set in Sydney, based around the Parramatta Female Factory - the epitome of appalling institutions in a line up that you'd think would be hard to lead.
The investigator in this series is ticket-of-leave recipient,...Read more
The fourth book in the Cormac Reilly series from Irish / Australian author Dervla McTiernan, has a series of strange deaths in bogs near Galway as the central focus, with a sideline in Reilly trying to find an Irishman missing in Paris, and some potential career changes for him and his...Read more
In 2005 Nicole Morris founded the Australian Missing Persons register, an internet resource to help find missing people in Australia.
http://www.australianmissingpersonsregister.com/ (your browser may come up with a...Read more
VANISHING POINT by Pat Flower was originally published in 1975, and re-released by Wakefield Press as part of their Crime Classics series in 1993. It is the first of three important thrillers written by this author before her suicide in 1978.
The Wakefield edition has an...Read more
One reader's darkly comic domestic noir is another reader's vegan sausage. Which is a really bad way of saying I just didn't get VILLIAN. Not for a moment, and try as I might I'm not even sure I can explain it adequately.
At the core it's a very "current day" idea - what would...Read more
With tongue firmly in cheek, and only because I live in the Pyrenees wine district, yes, well why on earth WOULD somebody kill for a Heathcote shiraz??? (Kidding!)
There's nothing better than books that are set in your own stomping grounds. Places that are very familiar,...Read more
Katherine Howell is rapidly becoming one of my stars of crime fiction writing in Australia. Part of what really works in Howell's books (and VIOLENT EXPOSURE is no exception) is the way that the viewpoint is slightly skewed from the common police, detective, investigator concentration. In...Read more
It's hard not to wonder what the line "Phyrne Fisher meets Underbelly in an arch, out-of-the-box debut historical crime caper" actually means. Turns out it's a bit the timeframe and environment, the character of Violet Kelly, and the situation she finds herself in.
Set in 1930'...Read more
Nobody could possibly call reading VODKA DOESN'T FREEZE a pleasure - it's an absolutely heartbreaking and very discomforting book. The author is a trauma psychologist who works with victims, and victims are very much the focus of VODKA DOESN'T FREEZE.
A young girl, victim of...Read more
Leah Giarratano is a trauma psychologist based in Sydney. Among her clients have been victims of sexual abuse and men serving sentences for child abuse. VODKA DOESN’T FREEZE is her first novel. I had the good fortune to hear Giarratano speak last year. She talked about the book being...Read more
VOODOO DOLL is the second book featuring Jill Jackson - the first, VODKA DOESN'T FREEZE is a worthy nominee on the Best First Crime Fiction novel list for 2008. VODKA DOESN'T FREEZE explored - very graphically - the impact of child abuse, VOODOO DOLL takes us into the violent world of the...Read more
Joss Preston-Jones, his wife Isobel, and their young daughter Charlie are spending the evening at the home of Isobel’s boss when they are caught up in a vicious home invasion. Terrorised by the machete wielding, balaclava clad gang, Joss is horrified when he recognises one of them, and...Read more
WAKE won the CWA Debut Dagger in 2019, and it's not at all hard to see why. Atmospheric and cleverly constructed, with a strong sense of place and realistic characters, WAKE has a plot that bring past trauma, grief, guilt and violence forward in a family, and community, to the consequences...Read more
Four children telling a lie to stay out of trouble and a man shot in the head in London 40 years later. Obviously there's some sort of connection as they are both elements of WATCH OUT FOR ME by Sylvia Johnson. What's always intriguing with these sorts of unlikely components, is how and...Read more
Clinical psychologist and best-selling author Leah Giarratano is known for exploring various criminal and/or psychological behaviours in all of her books, and in WATCH THE WORLD BURN, the fourth in the Sergeant Jill Jackson series, she's exploring family, along with extreme psychopathic...Read more
In this seventh novel in Michael Robotham’s Luiz/O’Loughlin series the sense of unease and anticipation builds from the opening lines. Marnie Logan, young, married, with two children, is struggling to survive since her husband Daniel simply vanished a couple of years earlier and it quickly...Read more
THE WAY IT IS NOW is another new character from Garry Disher, mining some familiar territory for him, in that we've got a cop who is struggling with his past, present and future. Even for a youngish man, Charlie Deravin has been a cop for years, and there's a lot of backstory to his life....Read more
Ever read a book that you know you should just absolutely love, and yet somehow you're not quite getting it. It's a bit like that feeling you get when you're invited to a party and show up in fancy dress only to realise that you'd muddled up the invitations.
The quote for the...Read more