Karen Chisholm
Had a bit of a free-range around the Ned Kelly list while waiting for himself to finish one of the true crime entrants we got hold of recently ... which I'm looking forward to reading.
From the Blurb:
PI Harry Kenmare is a prehistoric private detective in an unfriendly modern world.
Karen Chisholm
Reading this one for http://newtownreviewofbooks.com.au and thinking a lot about the experiences of women from previous generations.
From the Blurb:
Inspired by the true events of an unsolved murder
Karen Chisholm
Lot's of things I should have been doing over the weekend, but I started this book and got nothing done.
From the Blurb:
Chief Prosecutor Sigurd Halvorsrud's wife is found dead in front of the fireplace in the family living room. The cause of death is instantly apparent - she has been brutally decapitated. Halvorsrud immediately falls under suspicion. Then a journalist at one of Oslo's largest newspapers is found beheaded. What links these two horrifically violent crimes?
Karen Chisholm
Quite a change of pace for me this one.
From the Blurb:
Summons to a bullet-riddled body in a Hell’s Kitchen apartment marks the start of a new case for consulting detectives Sherlock Holmes and Joan Watson. The victim is a subway train driver with a hidden stash of money and a strange Colombian connection, but why would someone kill him and leave a fortune behind?
The search for the truth will lead the sleuths deep into the hidden underground tunnels beneath New York City, where answers—and more bodies—may well await them...
Karen Chisholm
Something from the very different indeed pile. Swedish, noir, set in 1930.
From the Blurb:
An ultra-gritty piece of contemporary Swedish noir, set in a decrepit, highly atmospheric 1930s Stockholm that is a far cry from the modern, egalitarian capital city of today.
Karen Chisholm
Step away from the New Zealand and Australian piles at the moment for a f2f bookclub book.
From the Blurb:
Internationally acclaimed crime writer Jo Nesbø’s antihero police investigator, Harry Hole, is back: in a bone-chilling thriller that will take Hole to the brink of insanity.
Karen Chisholm
Eurovision weekend is always a good one in these parts, although having something good to read on the side helps. This debut is quite a find.
From the Blurb:
Music promoter Billy Lime is in trouble.
The tour of rock legends, The Pagan Virtue, is the biggest in music history. Their concerts in Australia should be a career highlight if Billy can keep the warring musicians off the drugs, out of the bars and on the stage.
When lead singer Jet Kelly is poisoned, Billy's world starts to crumble.
Karen Chisholm
I've been wandering around in the Ned Kelly Submission list a bit recently - will be returning back to the Best Crime list asap as there's a few books on it I've yet to read as well.
From the Blurb:
Karen Chisholm
Karen Chisholm
As I'm working my way through all 6 episodes of this - a combined mention :)
From the Blurb:
Lethal in Love is a steamy romantic suspense about an instinct-driven detective and a sexy, scoop-hungry reporter, both on the hunt for a sadistic killer.
Karen Chisholm
Packaged as a series of novellas (episodes), Lethal in Love is a romantic suspense police story with a serial killer hunt at it's heart.
From the Blurb:
Lethal in Love is a steamy romantic suspense about an instinct-driven detective and a sexy, scoop-hungry reporter, both on the hunt for a sadistic killer.
Karen Chisholm
I will admit this is one from the absolutely intrigued me pile - so it has jumped up a little, but I'm regarding it as a treat read.
From the Blurb:
Ethel Livesey was quite a gal.
Karen Chisholm
Very difficult subject matter.
From the Blurb:
The disappearance of Queensland schoolboy Daniel Morcombe was one of the most heartbreaking and confounding child abduction and murder cases of the century, spanning almost a decade prior to the eventual arrest of known pedophile Brett Peter Cowan, one of the original persons of interest.
The story of the police sting that resulted in his confession reads like crime fiction, featuring an elaborately staged fake crime gang run by a ‘Mr Big’ that lured Cowan in with the promise of a hefty payout.
Karen Chisholm
About this time of the year I start madly trying to catch up with the Ned Kelly longlists. The ongoing quest is to manage to read the whole list!
From the Blurb:
Dom Tolen craves a simple life. He keeps his head down at work, jogs off his midweek beers and busies himself with jigsaw puzzles. What riles him is his irksome twin, Donald. Separated from his wife and making his presence felt holed up in Dom’s spare room, Donald turns to pestering him to play a practical joke.
Karen Chisholm
Read over the long weekend - the latest in a series which is mystery focused, but rich with fascinating historical insight.
From the Blurb:
In the third instalment of the Le Fanu Mystery series, the intrepid superintendent is promoted to Inspector-General of Police in 1920s Madras, which proves to be more boring than he had envisaged.
Karen Chisholm
Final from a long weekend where a little more socialising than reading occurred.
From the Blurb:
The darkness felt tangible. Like it was pressing against my blind eyes … We were going to die here. Slowly, slowly.
Karen Chisholm
2nd from the long weekend's reading, and in New Zealand.
From the Blurb:
Karen Chisholm
A Novella length outing with Alex Morgan that is just the thing for some escapist reading, with a very good message.
From the Blurb:
How far will Alex Morgan go to repay the man who saved his life?
Friends are a luxury that agents of INTERPOL's blacks ops division cannot afford, but Alex Morgan wasn't always a spy.
When a former US Army Ranger who saved Morgan's life in Afghanistan reaches out, convinced that Morgan is the only person who can help him, Morgan springs into action.
Karen Chisholm
One from this weekend's reading stack.
From the Blurb:
Audrey is a psychopath and a serial killer residing in a coastal town in the rural far north of New Zealand.
Audrey discovers a drug cartel is using her Tiromoana Cabin Resort for cocaine trafficking. She appears to be helping the police when the drugs go missing and bodies start turning up, but is she?
“The Murder Trail” is the third book in the series: The Audrey Murders
Karen Chisholm
Next from a weekend spent getting stuck into the overdue reading list.
From the Blurb:
The summer of 1976 in Auckland, New Zealand.
There is a severe marijuana drought.
Two couples; a gynecologist and a physicist, together with a violinist and an actress meet by accident in a pub and help a Maori evade the police.
A group of Maori plans to deliver a truckload of cannabis to Auckland.
A Chinese family has harvested four greenhouses of enhanced sensimilla.
A criminal mastermind plots to start a drug war.
Karen Chisholm
The final one started over this past weekend - needing in particular a change of hemisphere although I wish now I'd read the first in the series.
From the Blurb:
Leo Junker is back in the snake pit — aka the homicide unit — after a murder case where he was the intended victim. Still abusing prescription drugs and battling his inner demons, he’s doing his best to appear fit for duty.
Karen Chisholm
2nd from the weekend's pile.
From the Blurb:
Melbourne is a city living in fear.
A sadistic killer is on the loose.
Policewomen are being targeted and the count stands at seven.
Detective Jake Miller and Criminal Psychologist Brodie Foxx head the task force.
As they race to find the killer, the body count continues to rise, leading them deep into a world of pure evil.
Will they succeed where all others have failed?
Or will the hunters become the hunted?
Will they pay the ultimate price?
Karen Chisholm
From the piles and piles of things I've got queued up at the moment.
From the Blurb:
Boom and Bust is a violent hard-boiled crime novel about a man forced into acts of desperation and depravity by debt. He is over-committed in the property market and is changing careers to have a crack as a real estate agent just as the Global Financial Crisis is about to hit. His timing couldn't be worse and the bodies are piling up around him as he tries to shoot his way out of trouble.
Karen Chisholm
Being a solo farmer for a week normally I dodge anything too "confrontational" in my reading matter - a) because it's usually impossible to get time to devote to something that's going to require concentration, and b) there's no point in scaring yourself witless if you don't have to (things have a tendency to go bump in the night around here). But this was a most unexpected experience, it was absolutely riveting, confrontational, difficult reading, but illuminating, moving.
Karen Chisholm
So having had my socks blown off by one New Zealand / Ngaio Marsh contender, the next book in the queue was intriguing, another most unusual slow burner of a read with all sorts of potential to go in all sorts of directions. That, needless to say, was the end of all but essential chores for the rest of the weekend.
From the Blurb:
Karen Chisholm
The March update is very late - it's been a tad busy hereabouts.
Read / To be Reviewed:
Karen Chisholm
I've been doing some very determined juggling recently as this is a book I've been very keen to read - particularly as the 2nd in the series is now also out. Wonderful sense of place.
From the Blurb:
Steve West, mining engineer and ex-footy star, just wants a dirty weekend in town, but he can't stop people telling him their secrets. When crusading Kara incites a breakout in the desert, Westie finds himself her reluctant accomplice. Soon he's got a runaway asylum seeker in tow, and all the world, it seems, on his tail.
Karen Chisholm
With a true story behind it, The Death Ray Debacle is set in New Zealand in the 1930's.
From the Blurb:
In June 1935 Takapuna inventor Victor Penny was attacked by foreign agents seeking what the newspapers dubbed a ‘death ray’. The government secretly shifted him to Somes Island in Wellington harbour to develop the weapon. The novel of this true story is told by Temporary Acting Detective Dan Delaney, seconded to Special Branch, forerunner of the Security Intelligence Service.
Karen Chisholm
I've been wanting to read this since it came out.
From the Blurb:
Kevin Rudd was given no warning, but even he lasted longer than Abbott. Julia Gillard had plenty of warnings, but even she lasted longer than Abbott.
Abbott ignored all the warnings, from beginning to end — the public ones, the private ones, from his friends, his colleagues, the media.
Karen Chisholm
Figured while I was doing a little "outside the box" reading then something cross genre would fit the bill.
From the Blurb:
The Fifth Column: the world’s most powerful and secretive organization. They run our militaries. They run our governments. They run our terrorist cells.
Recruited as a child, Sophia is a deniable operative for the Fifth Column. Like all operatives, Sophia’s DNA has been altered to augment her senses and her mind is splintered into programmed subsets.
Karen Chisholm
The final from the Easter reading pile.
From the Blurb:
The year is 1900, and photographer Beatrix Spencer has just opened her photographic studio in the bustling colonial metropolis of Sydney. But it is a turbulent time to start a new business. A deadly outbreak of bubonic plague is threatening the city, causing public panic, putting ships into quarantine and causing unrest on the wharves. The colony is preparing to send soldiers to the Boer War. Women are struggling to gain rights and recognition.
Karen Chisholm
Loved the opening of this - too much hollandaise is indeed a crime, hangover or no hangover.
From the Blurb:
One spring morning a woman is found dead in a Brunswick alley adorned with symbols of the occult. Catherine Kint, milliner, gin enthusiast and raconteur, has no reason to be involved until her friend is under investigation. Armed with her sharp wit, a crime scene background and a barman named Boris, Catherine walks into a world of new age prophecies, curses and money. Honestly, it would drive a girl to drink.
Karen Chisholm
Grant Nicol is originally from New Zealand but his fiction is set in Iceland, where he now lives. This is a bit more of a novella.
From the Blurb:
Everybody Makes Mistakes!
A mutilated body is found on a lonely street in Reykjavík.
Detective Grímur intends to see that justice is done.
Kjartan Jónsson vows that his daughter’s killer will be punished. And that the punishment will fit the crime.
Prime suspect Gunnar Atli desperately needs to prevent his own dark secrets from coming to light. And he’s not the only one.
Karen Chisholm
This year I've really made an attempt to keep up with debut Australian crime novels - although a few, as with this one, have dodged my faulty radar. Catching up now needless to say.
From the Blurb:
An astute novel about Australian racism — and about humanity prevailing over entrenched prejudice.
Karen Chisholm
Wanted something that's guaranteed to be a bit of fun - so this seemed perfect - being from a very good cosy series.
From the Blurb:
Six romance writers
Five secrets
Four poison pen letters
Three stolen manuscripts
Two undercover journalists
One over-complicated love life
Way too many teacups and tiny sandwiches
Karen Chisholm
Having been a huge fan of other forensic investigations of early Australian Crime Writers done by Lucy Sussex, I've been looking forward to this one immensely. Will be reviewed at http://www.newtownreviewofbooks.com.au(link is external)
From the Blurb:
Before there was Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, there was Fergus Hume’s The Mystery of a Hansom Cab—the biggest- and fastest-selling detective novel of the 1800s, and Australia’s first literary blockbuster.
Karen Chisholm
Used to think I'd be able to keep up with the local crime writing output. Didn't realise I was quite that delusional. This is one from last year that I blinked and missed.
From the Blurb:
When Dimitri Telegonus is promoted to the Serious Unsolved Crime Unit to investigate the disappearance of a beautiful blonde escort, he thinks he’s finally made the big time. He’d always wanted to do detective work; thought it was his destiny.
Karen Chisholm
I've been shuffling this book up the stack for a while now, and somehow it keeps not quite making it to the top. Which is so annoying, that sometimes you have to knock the whole teetering pile to the floor and read what you bloody well want to read.
From the Blurb:
Karen Chisholm
Dear reader, you may know of my love of Japanese crime fiction.
From the Blurb:
SIX FOUR.
THE NIGHTMARE NO PARENT COULD ENDURE.
THE CASE NO DETECTIVE COULD SOLVE.
THE TWIST NO READER COULD PREDICT.
For five days in January 1989, the parents of a seven-year-old Tokyo schoolgirl sat and listened to the demands of their daughter's kidnapper. They would never learn his identity. They would never see their daughter again.
Karen Chisholm
Look I can't explain why I'm reading it either.
From the Blurb:
A woman is attacked in strange circumstances on a midnight street in Valletta, Malta. An island country known for its history of early civilisations and military might is the backdrop for a series of distant relations and revelations as we follow Jack Sant; a Knight of Malta, on his quest to solve some of the country’s worst cold cases.
Karen Chisholm
This one has had me a little intrigued and a little uncomfortable as it's edged it's way to the top of the queue. Part romance, part detective story, investigating the perils and exhilaration of young love...
From the Blurb:
Karen Chisholm
Love a good thriller, so jumped at the chance to read this new offering from Pantera Press.
From the Blurb:
Stepan Volkov forfeited his future when he was paid to forget his past.
Forced to adapt, he ultimately became the world's most wanted killer... feared, vicious and brutal.
A tool of the Organizatsiya, a Russian crime syndicate that forged him into 'The Wolf', he's pursued by American spies and Australian agents, torn between his need to survive and his desire to be free.
Karen Chisholm
January, being a month in which we took a break from computers, meant a lot of reading and then a scrambling review catchup - which is still not caught up.
Read / To be Reviewed:
Girl Waits with Gun, Amy Stewart
Karen Chisholm
I've been wading around on the darker side for a while now, and this is very light, cosy stuff with a humorous side which kind of appealed over the weekend.
From the Blurb:
It was supposed to be the holiday of a lifetime ...
When Nell Forrest's life hits a speed bump (which is most definitely not a midlife crisis) a cruise around the Mediterranean seems like just the ticket.
Karen Chisholm
I did jump this up the queue. A lot. I just love short story collections, and there are some wonderful writers in this.
From the Blurb:
Is there really such a thing as an innocent person?
Teachers, cops, mothers, wives, everyone has their breaking point; that moment where it could go either way. From the prostitute with no way out, to the bitter author, and a cop who just wants his leave, the characters in this collection will baffle and bewilder you at every turn.
Karen Chisholm
When I was but a girl, my grandmother and I were a tad addicted to Ngaio Marsh, Agatha Christie and Dorothy L Sayers books and we read them all although often lamenting the lack of local crime books with local settings. How excited were we both to discover in the late 80's / early 90's that there were local women writing really good crime fiction. Jean Bedford was one of those discoveries and we hoovered up the Anna Southwood books with relish - often reading the same book at the same time so we could share long telephone calls about them.
Karen Chisholm
Been hearing lots and lots of whispers about how good this interesting approach to true crime is.
From the Blurb:
In 2004, the body of a young Perth woman was found on the grounds of a primary school. Her name was Rebecca Ryle. The killing would mystify investigators, lawyers, and psychologists - and profoundly rearrange the life of the victim's family.
Karen Chisholm
Due for release in early March so review will be published around then.
From the Blurb:
You don’t have to believe in ghosts for the dead to haunt you.
You don’t have to be a murderer to be guilty.
Within six months of Pen Sheppard starting university, three of her new friends are dead. Only Pen knows the reason why.
Karen Chisholm
From earlier in this week - something I've wanted to read for a while, so one of my "just because" reads for this month.
From the Blurb:
Called to a woman's refuge to take a routine witness statement, DI Marnie Rome instead walks in on an attempted murder.
Trying to uncover the truth from layers of secrets, Marnie finds herself confronting her own demons. Because she, of all people, knows that it can be those closest to us we should fear the most . . .
Karen Chisholm
The 2nd in the Harry Belltree trilogy and the book I finished this afternoon when I should have been working.
From the Blurb:
Detective Sergeant Harry Belltree, back on the job after a near-fatal confrontation with corrupt colleagues, has become a departmental embarrassment. The solution is a posting away from Sydney and a quiet life in Newcastle.
Karen Chisholm
This book, from India, has such a wonderful sense of place and culture, partially due to the "tone" of the writing, which is beautifully lyrical.
From the Blurb:
The mysterious and alluring Pramila, resident of Avantika Heights, is brutally murdered. Sudhir Das, the security guard from the Golden Red Security Agency, is caught red-handed.
In steps Sudhir's boss, young Orko Deb, the hesitant avenger.
His cautious sleuthing, all over Kolkata, throws up more questions than answers.
Who is Pramila?
Karen Chisholm
The 4th book in the excellent Cate Austin series, because I'm an absolute idiot, I've missed the 3rd. Now will have to restack the teetering stacks!
From the Blurb:
When Ellie goes missing on the first day of Schueberfouer, the police are dismissive, keen not to attract negative attention on one of Luxembourg’s most important events.
Karen Chisholm
Wanted a change of pace and something from the true stacks.
From the Blurb:
Ever since the First Fleet dropped anchor, Australia's ports have been a breeding ground for many of Australia's most notorious criminals, and a magnet for local and overseas crime syndicates.