AustCrimeFiction - All Posts

It Takes a Town ... to solve a Murder, Aoife Clifford

Karen — Thu, 18 Apr 2024 02:40:32 +0000

REVIEW

It Takes a Town ... to solve a Murder, Aoife Clifford

Reviewed By

Karen Chisholm

Thursday, April 18, 2024

In Aoife Clifford’s third novel, the death of a local celebrity brings two old schoolmates together to answer some troubling questions. Full Review at: Newtown Review of Books

Book Source Declaration

I received a copy of this book from the publisher or author.

BOOK DETAILS

BOOK INFORMATION

Author

Aoife Clifford

ISBN

9781761152733

Year of Publication

2024

BLURB

So many people had reason to hate her, but did anyone have reason to kill her?

Everyone dies famous in a country town, but glamorous Vanessa Walton was a shining star. A celebrity since a television commercial when she was a child, Vanessa is back on the front page for all the wrong reasons; after a terrible storm she has been found dead at the bottom of her stairs.

At first her death seems to be a simple accident, but anonymous letters are discovered that suggest otherwise – and when 16-year-old Jasmine Landridge claims it is murder, she suddenly disappears. As the police begin to investigate, secrets are exposed and friendships unravel.

What happens to a community when murders and abductions sit alongside petty workmates, teenage tribulations and longstanding friendships? It will take a town to solve this crime, but what will be broken in the effort to piece together the truth?

Tags

#crimefiction

Crime Fiction

Australia

It Takes A Town

Aoife Clifford

Review	It Takes a Town ... to solve a Murder, Aoife Clifford	Karen Chisholm	Thursday, April 18, 2024
Blog	Updates - Week Ending 2nd February, 2024	Karen Chisholm	Monday, January 15, 2024
Blog	Updates - Fortnight Ending 16th February	Karen Chisholm	Monday, January 15, 2024
Blog	Updates - Week Ending 23rd February	Karen Chisholm	Monday, January 15, 2024

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Yes

Sanctuary, Garry Disher

Karen — Thu, 11 Apr 2024 01:30:14 +0000

REVIEW

Sanctuary, Garry Disher

Reviewed By

Karen Chisholm

Thursday, April 11, 2024

A new crime novel by Garry Disher is always exciting. In Sanctuary, he introduces a new protagonist: a female lone wolf. Full Review at Newtown Review of Books

Book Source Declaration

I received a copy of this book from the publisher or author.

BOOK DETAILS

BOOK INFORMATION

Author

Garry Disher

ISBN

9781922790620

Year of Publication

2024

BLURB

Grace is a thief- a good one. She was taught by experts and she's been practising since she was a kid. She specialises in small, high-value items-stamps, watches-and she knows her Jaeger-LeCoultres from her Patek Philippes. But it's a solitary life, always watchful, always moving. It's not the life she wants.

Lying low after a run-in with an old associate, Grace walks into Erin Mandel's rural antiques shop and sees a chance for something different. A normal job. A place to call home.

But someone is looking for Erin. And someone's looking for Grace, too. And they are both, in their own ways, very dangerous men.

Tags

Review	Sanctuary, Garry Disher	Karen Chisholm	Thursday, April 11, 2024
Blog	Updates - Week Ending 12th April	Karen Chisholm	Monday, January 15, 2024
Blog	Updates - week ending 5th January 2024	Karen Chisholm	Tuesday, January 2, 2024
Blog	Updates - week ending 12th January 2024	Karen Chisholm	Tuesday, January 2, 2024

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Yes

The Mystery Writer, Sulari Gentill

Karen — Tue, 26 Mar 2024 04:34:16 +0000

REVIEW

The Mystery Writer, Sulari Gentill

Reviewed By

Karen Chisholm

Tuesday, March 26, 2024

In Sulari Gentill’s new novel, aspiring writer Theo and her brother Gus become embroiled in increasingly bizarre conspiracy theories. Full Review at Newtown Review of Books

BOOK DETAILS

BOOK INFORMATION

Author

Sulari Gentill

ISBN

9781761152238

Year of Publication

2024

BLURB

She needs to write the ending ... before she meets hers.

Theo has one dream – to become a bestselling author. Determined to make her mark in the literary world, she heads to the US on a whim to stay with her brother Gus and focus on her writing. But her plans take an unexpected turn when she befriends a famous author, Dan Murdoch, at a local bar – and then he turns up dead. Suddenly, Theo finds herself as the prime suspect.

As Theo grapples with the shocking turn of events, she realizes that Dan may not have been the person he seemed to be, and there is something sinister going on in the world of publishing. Desperate to clear her name and uncover the truth, Theo sets out on a quest to find out who killed Dan and why.

As she digs deeper, Theo uncovers a web of deceit, conspiracy, and hidden motives, with clues leading her to a shadowy online platform called The Shield. With her own life in danger, Theo must unravel the mystery before she becomes the next victim.

Tags

Review	The Mystery Writer, Sulari Gentill	Karen Chisholm	Tuesday, March 26, 2024
Blog	Updates - Week Ending 19th January 2024	Karen Chisholm	Monday, January 15, 2024
Blog	Updates - Week Ending 26th January 2024	Karen Chisholm	Monday, January 15, 2024
Blog	Updates - Week Ending 2nd February, 2024	Karen Chisholm	Monday, January 15, 2024
Blog	Updates - Week Ending 29th March	Karen Chisholm	Monday, January 15, 2024

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The Beacon, P.A. Thomas

Karen — Fri, 22 Mar 2024 02:25:22 +0000

REVIEW

The Beacon, P.A. Thomas

Reviewed By

Karen Chisholm

Friday, March 22, 2024

A disgraced son of a powerful Australian media tycoon, the traumatised daughter of a small town newspaper editor, coincidentally owned by the aforementioned tycoon. One is sent to "learn the ropes of journalism" / ie been kicked down the line, the other is in town after something sent her legal career into free fall. Then the local newspaper editor dies in a seeming shark attack and things get messy.

Byron Bay does have a reputation for being a laid back, holiday destination, pumped full of influencer types, and some serious money. So when Jack Harris is sent there to learn the ropes of running a small town newspaper, after being demoted as an executive in his father's multi-million dollar media network, it's not all hard work. After all, living in his father's exclusive mansion, with a couple of lifelong family retainers on hand is not exactly slumming it in the sticks. Although Jack finds Caitlin O'Shaughnessy very hard work indeed. His first day at the office, hungover and in no mood, finds Caitlin's father, and editor of The Beacon, Patrick, missing, and his very pissed off daughter on hand to make his life difficult. To be fair, she's got a pretty good line in making a lot of people's life difficult.

Character based crime fiction is always an interesting undertaking, and whilst Byron and it's environs, and some of the tensions that happen when an idyllic setting is populated by wealthy incomers, are part of the story in THE BEACON, this is very much character based storytelling. Which is fortunate, because these are two great characters, and the setup here is particularly interesting. It turns out that Patrick O'Shaughnessy had gone surfing and never returned. His body, minus one leg eventually shows up, looking for all the world like he's been the victim of a shark attack, until it doesn't look that way at all. In the meantime Caitlin and Jack have to try to find out what happened to her much loved, and admired widely, father, whilst also trying to stay one step ahead of a lot of unknowns, and not deck each other in the process.

Turns out there's a story that Patrick's been working on that has made him very twitchy, alarmed enough to take out a new life insurance policy which sets Jack to thinking, as does the state of Patrick's surfboard which doesn't shout shark attack as far as Jack's concerned. Luckily it turns out Jack is a pretty darn good investigative reporter, and he's got his own underworld connection (school friend Ricky). It's Ricky's connections and technical abilities, Jack's ability to annoy people into revelation, and Caitlin's knowledge of her father and everyone he was connected to that pull the whole thing together, and the way they remain as much in the dark as the reader as the hunt continues really works.

Thoroughly enjoyable and highly entertaining, THE BEACON is a largish book that hasn't succumbed to padding, repetition or large periods of downtime. There's potential here for the start of a very interesting new series - Jack Harris has all the makings of a very good investigative reporter, and Caitlin O'Shaughnessy would be a very able partner in pursuit.

Book Source Declaration

I received a copy of this book from the publisher or author.

BOOK DETAILS

BOOK INFORMATION

Author

P.A. Thomas

ISBN

9781760688622

Year of Publication

2024

BLURB

Jack Harris, the disgraced son of Australia’s most powerful business tycoon, has just been exiled to Byron Bay as a junior journalist at his father’s smallest regional newspaper, The Beacon. His arrival coincides with the disappearance of the newspaper’s editor, Patrick O’Shaughnessy, while out on his morning surf. When Patrick’s body is discovered in the ocean, with a severed leg, it appears certain that he’s fallen victim to a shark attack.

But when rumours emerge that Patrick was about to publish an explosive article – its subject unknown – Jack begins to suspect his death is not what it seems.

Although police aren’t buying his murder theory, Jack joins forces with Patrick’s daughter and investigates anyway, taking a sometimes less than lawful dive into the newspaperman’s past. Together they discover plenty of Byron locals with a motive to kill, including a bioholistic dentist with a secret, a naturist with an undisguised grudge, and even the mayor of Northern Rivers Shire. But has Jack bitten off more than he can chew?

Tags

Review	The Beacon, P.A. Thomas	Karen Chisholm	Friday, March 22, 2024
Blog	Updates - Week Ending 23rd February	Karen Chisholm	Monday, January 15, 2024
Blog	Updates - Week Ending 1st March	Karen Chisholm	Monday, January 15, 2024
Blog	Updates - Week Ending 8th March	Karen Chisholm	Monday, January 15, 2024
Blog	Updates - Week Ending 15th March	Karen Chisholm	Monday, January 15, 2024
Blog	Updates - Week Ending 22nd March	Karen Chisholm	Monday, January 15, 2024
Blog	End of Year 2023	Karen Chisholm	Tuesday, January 2, 2024

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The Day That Never Comes, Caimh McDonnell

Karen — Thu, 21 Mar 2024 03:11:42 +0000

REVIEW

The Day That Never Comes, Caimh McDonnell

Reviewed By

Karen Chisholm

Thursday, March 21, 2024

The second book in the Dublin Trilogy (which I'm is actually the 2nd published, but the 6th in the "trilogy", so between this and Adrian McKinty's trilogy which isn't, Ireland obviously does trilogies differently). Anyway, THE DAY THAT NEVER COMES, is also the name of a song by Metallica (or so I'm told), for whatever that's worth, but in the context of this book it's a line from a firey session in front of a crowd of really pissed off citizens of Dublin:

"When is the day when those who brought this country to its knees will be made to stand and face the people's wrath for their wrongdoings?"

Cheers.

"When is that day? I tell you, my friends; that is the day that never comes."

If you've not read the first book in the whatever sort of series this is (THE MAN WITH ONE OF THOSE FACES), then you might find yourself peddling a bit harder to work out who is who. Basically Paul Mulchrone and Brigit Conroy are two normal everyday people (except they're not really), who meet in a hospital when he's doing unpaid voluntary work to get up his dead aunt's nose, and she's a nurse. As a result of the elderly patient he's visiting, whilst pretending to be a family member, at her bequest, going even more doollally than he was, Paul and Brigit find themselves trying to solve a complicated case whilst falling for each other. Bunny McGarry, on the other hand, isn't falling for anything. He's a copper, a hurling coach and ... an entity. Oh boy is he an entity (and if you're listening to the audio of these books every single word he utters is a joy and a danger to safe driving). In this one, they've all combined to form a private detective agency (MCM Agency), only Paul and Brigit have split up personally, if not professionally, Paul's moved into the office with his new bestie Maggie, a german shepherd with an addiction to booze and an ability to pass wind that should go into the Guinness Book of Records by rights. Oh and Bunny's been forced out of the force, and dropped out of sight completely.

There is a plot in the middle of all this lunacy as well - which contributes it's own particular form of crazy. It's hot in Dublin, and tempers are frayed. The trial of three unscrupulous property developers is teetering on the brink, which is pissing off more people than the fact that somebody seems to have decided to start killing them. A bunch of activists have taken over the headquarters of a failed bank led by a very firebrand sort of priest, and there seems to be some mysterious organisation lurking around extracting a bit of very messy revenge on behalf of the ordinary people. None of which bothers Paul much at all - he's more worried about the future of MCM Agency, his relationship (that was) with Brigit, what he's going to do about Maggie and, in the corner of his brain left available, where the hell Bunny's got to.

When it comes to these books taxes and death are not the only inevitability's in life. There's also sheer and utter chaos and a lot of stuff going on.

The hunt for Bunny really does come down to Brigit, who despite being a nurse (whose on leave as a result of a little incident with a naked doctor and some handcuffs), turns out to be a top rate detective. She's also keen for anything to distract her from the compromising photos of Paul on a night out, and don't get her started on the godawfulness of men and the world in general. In the meantime, MCM have an actual PI job - finding out who Jerome Hartigan is having an affair with, surely it's a coincidence that Hartigan is one of those three property developers mentioned earlier?

All in all, a rollercoaster of a laugh out loud ride that's littered with insanity, persistence, did I mention insanity, and some seriously manic goings on. Still, they have Bunny's beloved 1980s Porsche, and then there's Maggie, and if Brigit won't forgive Paul, what the hell is going to happen next? LAST ORDERS is next up (publication order #4, Dublin Trilogy #7), and there's ANGELS IN THE MOONLIGHT (publication order #3, Dublin Trilogy #1).

BOOK DETAILS

BOOK INFORMATION

Author

Caimh McDonnell

Year of Publication

2017

Series

Dublin Trilogy

Book Number (in series)

BLURB

Remember those people that destroyed the economy and then cruised off on their yachts? Well guess what – someone is killing them.

Dublin is in the middle of a heat wave and tempers are running high. The Celtic Tiger is well and truly dead, activists have taken over the headquarters of a failed bank, the trial of three unscrupulous property developers teeters on the brink of collapse, and in the midst of all this, along comes a mysterious organisation hell-bent on exacting bloody vengeance in the name of the little guy.

Paul Mulchrone doesn’t care about any of this; he has problems of his own. His newly established detective agency is about to be DOA. One of his partners won’t talk to him for very good reasons and the other has seemingly disappeared off the face of the earth for no reason at all. Can he hold it together long enough to figure out what Bunny McGarry’s colourful past has to do with his present absence?

When the law and justice no longer mean the same thing, on which side will you stand?

Tags

The Day That Never Comes

Caimh McDonnell

Review	The Day That Never Comes, Caimh McDonnell	Karen Chisholm	Thursday, March 21, 2024
Blog	Updates - Week Ending 22nd March	Karen Chisholm	Monday, January 15, 2024

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Yes

Darkness Runs Deep, Claire McNeel

Karen — Thu, 21 Mar 2024 03:03:42 +0000

REVIEW

Darkness Runs Deep, Claire McNeel

Reviewed By

Karen Chisholm

Thursday, March 21, 2024

Growing up in any rural community in the 1970's meant a LOT of talk about football. The boys that played were always the hero's, the girls that watched never mentioned, except if they were connected to the tuck shop at the ground in some way. Or cleaning the change rooms, and the toilets, and running around driving football players here and there. (Well to be fair they still weren't much mentioned no matter how much of the actual work they did). Needless to say I have a deep, abiding, all consuming loathing of all things "aussie football", and the relentless cascade of bullshit that seems to be published about it isn't making that ease up, even after all these years.

Freely admit I should not have read DARKNESS RUNS DEEP, and to be perfectly honest I've no idea why I persevered. Perhaps because there were glimpses of a story underneath the football talk - one about small towns, and an horrific crime that remains unclear for way too long in this novel. The town of Gerandaroo is trapped by a moment in 1993, when a crime happened on New Year's Eve. Eight months later, Bess, returns home and finds herself dared into forming a women's footy team, after the men's team was banned from playing in 1993, along with the nearby town of Denby. Women start to show up (couldn't help but get a feeling of people emerging from cornfields...), but on the downside cue a lot of whinging blokes, banging on about women knowing their places, a lot of disapproving, some parental angst and a lot of noise about whatever it is that football means to people.

The football talk in this one is strong, and the way that the team is pulled together probably rings true, although to be fair, I should have chucked the whole thing once that team started to become the focus. It's not my thing. It induces nausea.

Around the edges of the football talk there's obviously been an horrendous crime committed in this town, it gets hinted at a lot, but frustratingly never seems to be fully explained. The point of the book really does seem to be exploring a lot of emotional issues - the hurt feelings and resentments, the sexual discrimination and blatant misogyny, and it's no surprise to discover that all the crap that was going down in the 70's and 80's continued into the 90's. Of course the story is also about the idea that sport can bring all the women of the town together, despite their differences, and in the face of some pretty pathetic carry on.

Whatever the past crime (and for me, this was brushed so thin I could see too much football palaver through it), the story here is about redemption and moving forward and the power of sport to bring people together. Which, after all these years, I'm sort of getting (thinking the Matilda's and the Aussie Women's Cricket Team), but then again, I don't. When it comes to small town carry on, all the hero worship, and all the "but he plays footy" forgiving of appalling behaviour, there's a hell of a lot more clearing of the decks, and a shitload of truth telling that needs to go on before I'd believe that for a nanosecond.

As always, whenever the vehicle is contentious, DARKNESS RUNS DEEP is going to be a YMMV read.

BOOK DETAILS

BOOK INFORMATION

Author

Clare McNeel

ISBN

9781761560521

Year of Publication

2024

BLURB

In the darkest hour, a blood-soaked teenager flees the rural Gerandaroo football oval. Eight months later, Bess, a young teacher, returns home to Gerandaroo. A childhood game of dare with her former best-friend forces Bess to form a women's footy team to play against Denby, a rival town. Bess reluctantly recruits players, but the team has to contend with hostile locals - including Beth's own father. Will this help the small community to come back together - or will it be the final thing that blows everything apart? As tensions in the town boil over, so too do resentments and secrets and violence that have been previously held tight and close. Darkly told and breathlessly compelling, Darkness Runs Deep is a striking new Australian crime novel about the best and worst of who we are.

Tags

Review	Darkness Runs Deep, Claire McNeel	Karen Chisholm	Thursday, March 21, 2024
Blog	Updates - Fortnight Ending 16th February	Karen Chisholm	Monday, January 15, 2024
Blog	Updates - Week Ending 29th March	Karen Chisholm	Monday, January 15, 2024

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Deep in the Forest, Erina Reddan

Karen — Wed, 20 Mar 2024 04:06:49 +0000

REVIEW

Deep in the Forest, Erina Reddan

Reviewed By

Karen Chisholm

Wednesday, March 20, 2024

As is the way of the world, there have been quite a few crime fiction books recently that delve into the world of cults, the people that get caught in them, and those trying to get them out. DEEP IN THE FOREST is a slightly different twist on that. It's the story of a small town outcast, who via some coincidental work connections, and the fact that she lives very near the community known as the Sanctuary, finds herself pulled too far into their world.

Charli Trenthan is an outsider in her hometown of Stone Lake, thanks mostly to the local police sergeant who really holds a grudge, setting out to make her life a misery as a result. Charli lives, with her memories, and her dog, alone in a large old house, on an isolated property outside town, where she is deeply mourning the death of her mother, killed by a hit and run driver. A renowned book binder, she's creating a significant anniversary book for the "Sanctuary" community, that sits on the edge of the same dense forest and lake that Charli's home backs onto. There are large parts of the house that she can't enter since her mother's death, but she's happy roaming the forest, until the time she discovers something shocking at the lake, and a cryptic message from a member of the Sanctuary community shatters the professional distance she's maintained up until then.

Ably, if not slightly haphazardly supported by her best friend Amra and her high-powered lawyer Aunt Gigi, Charlie is driven to discover the truth behind the community, perhaps not in small part, as a distraction to the ongoing mourning of her mother, and her desire to get away from a town that's been so unwelcoming, so antagonistic.

The antagonism of the locals is evident right from early in the book, as is Charli's internal struggle, which bordered on personal neglect. (On a personal note whilst not overtly cruel to dog Bojo, the seeming extension of that neglect did make me twitch... a lot). Given this is such a closed in, self-centred story, readers are really going to have to connect with this central character in a big way. Whilst there is a fair amount of threat and tension with DEEP IN THE FOREST, it's not going to take guesswork to figure out the main threads - the hit and run that killed Charli's mother, what's really going on within the Sanctuary, and who the ultimate bad guy is.

Alongside the somewhat obvious nature of the plot there's the considerably less easy to resolve Charli. An amateur detective by way of proximity and personal impetus, she's not the best judge of character, and seems infinitely capable of dithering whilst a metaphorical Rome burns down around her. There is a real possibility here that the author was trying to develop a character who is really struggling to process emotion and reality - sometimes that was clear, at other times she was just a bit too annoying. The characters of Aunt Gigi and Amra did provide some backbone, common sense and direction though, and their every entry into the narrative lifts what can sometimes be a frustrating reading experience.

Perhaps that's where DEEP IN THE FOREST differs substantially from the current run of "cult based" crime fiction. There's something slightly off about everything and everybody. Charli's the main narrator, and she's obviously suffering depression so her flawed choices and viewpoint are profoundly affected by that. Amra's kind but perhaps not all she seems, and Aunt Gigi's bold confidence threatened to take all respect and attention from everyone else. Whether or not that combination of slightly off, slightly dodgy, slightly weird, slightly NQR is going to work is going to come down firmly in YMMV territory.

Book Source Declaration

I received a copy of this book from the publisher or author.

BOOK DETAILS

BOOK INFORMATION

Author

Erina Reddan

ISBN

9780648748854

Year of Publication

2023

BLURB

What lies behind the gates of the Sanctuary?

'Urgent. Come tomorrow. Can't wait any longer.'

Charli Trenthan plans to leave her hometown of Stone Lake. But when she receives a cryptic message from a member of the Sanctuary, a conservative closed community nestled in the forest, she is determined to find answers.

A gruesome discovery soon lands Charli in hot water with the police, but how is the Sanctuary connected? As she digs deeper, dark secrets are uncovered and the fight to prove her innocence turns into a fight for her life.

A gripping thriller with a shocking conclusion that will leave you spellbound, Deep in the Forest raises questions about who we trust and why.

Tags

Review	Deep in the Forest, Erina Reddan	Karen Chisholm	Wednesday, March 20, 2024
Blog	Updates - Week Ending 22nd March	Karen Chisholm	Monday, January 15, 2024

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Home Before Night, J.P. Pomare

Karen — Mon, 18 Mar 2024 03:46:31 +0000

REVIEW

Home Before Night, J.P. Pomare

Reviewed By

Karen Chisholm

Monday, March 18, 2024

If you were a resident of Melbourne (or any larger city I suppose), the announcement of one of the many COVID lockdowns was a sudden jolt to the nervous system.

What JP Pomare has done, in HOME BEFORE NIGHT, is add an extra layer of complexity when Lou realises her son Samuel isn't going to make it home by the cut off time of 8pm, supposedly staying with his girlfriend instead. She's not handling that particularly well, having not been at all convinced by the girlfriend on initial meeting. But that turns to major concern when Samuel doesn't seem to be contactable - he's not answering his phone, there's no messages from him, he's gone completely off the radar. When Lou eventually discovers he's not with his girlfriend at all, he's not been seen by his father she, well, panics is probably the right word.

An author taking readers deep into the mind of somebody who, on the face of it, could be a bit of a worrying, over-protective single mum is one thing, but make that woman feel slightly (okay it gets to very) unhinged, very quickly and you've got a recipe for generating a lot of unease in a reader.

Lou is not an easy person to get in close and personal with, and the reader is given permission to find her as exasperating as her ex-husband does, although it turns out, via a series of conversations between the parents, that there are secrets that Lou and her ex-husband are keeping. There's also something very weird in the background of Samuel's new girlfriend, and the way in which he does eventually contact his mother, combined with the restrictions of lockdown and the heightened anxiety that so many people were forced to live their lives in during that period builds to create a very febrile environment.

More of a novella than anything else, I'm not sure if the Audible Original came first (hence the truncated length) or afterwards. Either way the shortened format created a rapid pace reveal of all sorts of weird goings on, in one hell of a hurry, all of which charged towards an ending that came out of left field. Until the field, and everything in it simply vanished. I can't say I was completely unconvinced by the journey, but there was a lot going on that landed on the reader from on-high, and some things that didn't quite gell including a frantic car journey into rural Victoria (what happened to the ring of steel or whatever it was called around Melbourne - granted it wasn't hard to dodge / but there didn't even seem to be an acknowledgement of how hard the five kilometre rule seemed to be policed). Either way the open threads and unexplored givens at the end may not be every reader's cup of tea, so be aware this is very much a YMMV sort of story.

Above all else, Pomare knows how to write tension, misdirection, pace and threat. HOME BEFORE NIGHT is focused so heavily on a woman who is obviously so damaged that it's hard for the reader not to think she's definitely part of the problem. Which leaves you wondering all the way along if Samuel's used the lockdown as a way to cut some very tightly wound strings between he and his mother. The resolution's in this author's novels are never quite that straight forward though, even in one that's truncated in length.

Book Source Declaration

I received a copy of this book from the publisher or author.

BOOK DETAILS

BOOK INFORMATION

Author

J.P. Pomare

ISBN

9780733649547

Year of Publication

2023

BLURB

As the third wave of the virus hits, all inhabitants of Melbourne are given until 8 pm to get to their homes. Wherever they are when the curfew begins, they must live for four weeks and stay within five kilometres of. When Lou's son, Samuel, doesn't arrive home by nightfall, she begins to panic.

He doesn't answer his phone. He doesn't message. His social media channels are inactive. Lou is out of her mind with worry, but she can't go to the police, because she has secrets of her own. Secrets that Samuel just can't find out about. Lou must find her son herself and bring him home.

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Review	Home Before Night, J.P. Pomare	Karen Chisholm	Monday, March 18, 2024
Blog	Updates - Week Ending 22nd March	Karen Chisholm	Monday, January 15, 2024

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Dirt Town, Hayley Scrivenor

Karen — Fri, 08 Mar 2024 05:44:59 +0000

REVIEW

Dirt Town, Hayley Scrivenor

Reviewed By

Karen Chisholm

Friday, March 8, 2024

An outstanding debut novel back in 2022 (good grief has it really taken this long to post this ...), it's very very hard to look past an Australian rural noir novel called DIRT TOWN. Sitting as I am at the moment in the middle of an Australian rural summer that's mostly putting up dust clouds and fire smoke everywhere you look.

Set in the sweltering (can identify) small Australian town of Durton, this place is referred to mostly as Dirt Town by the locals (and why wouldn't they). There's a particularly apt quote:

Dirt town. Dirt and hurt – that’s what others would remember about our town.

that kind of sums it up.

It's in Durton that twelve-year-old Esther Bianchi has gone missing. Esther was Ronnie's best friend, and they had left school together on a sweltering afternoon - only Esther didn't make it home and Ronnie did. As you'd imagine in a small town, a disappearance like this hits hard. Nobody can quite believe it has happened, nobody is quite sure who they can trust anymore, no-one is providing the slightest hints of what went on. Detective Sergeant Sarah Michaels might arrive with bucket loads of experience in dealing with the dregs of society, but she's never encountered anything like the effect that the eventual discovery of Esther's body has on a town and community this small, this insular, this connected.

What the reader is delivered in DIRT TOWN is a vivid sense of place and the people within it. The reader is given a very close, ringside seat to the collapse of this small community via multiple perspectives, and therefore attitudes. As the world around them seems to crumble, Esther's friends Ronnie and Lewis, Esther's mother Constance, and DS Michaels see, feel, and experience such a vivid, visceral range of emotions and reactions, whilst seeking answers to all sorts of questions. You can feel their reactions, confusion, pain, fright, and you see very clearly how suspicions mount and gossip takes hold. The author does a particularly good job at exposing the stresses and unsettling of these people, as they try to process the idea that there's a killer in their midst, but in an interesting twist, there's a few other things that people would rather keep under raps. These multiple stresses create a real opportunity for the author to explore the humanity of the situation, whilst also delivering a solid procedural novel, with a slow burn that's enthralling, deeply involving, and quite chilling.

As is often the case now with rural noir novels set in remote Australia, it's hot, it's dry, it's remote and it's very insular. These factors often can be delivered in a somewhat formulaic manner, but not in DIRT TOWN. Everything combines to create an intense, confronting, involving and surprisingly emotional novel.

DIRT TOWN was awarded an ABIA for General Fiction Book of the Year, the ILP John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger, and a Lambda Literary Award. Her next work, entitled GIRL FALLING is due out in the second half of 2024.

BOOK DETAILS

BOOK INFORMATION

Author

Hayley Scrivenor

ISBN

B09M3G5818

Year of Publication

2022

BLURB

My best friend wore her name, Esther, like a queen wearing her crown at a jaunty angle. We were twelve years old when she went missing.

On a sweltering Friday afternoon in Durton, best friends Ronnie and Esther leave school together. Esther never makes it home.

Ronnie's going to find her, she has a plan. Lewis will help. Their friend can't be gone, Ronnie won't believe it.

Detective Sergeant Sarah Michaels can believe it, she has seen what people are capable of. She knows more than anyone how, in a moment of weakness, a person can be driven to do something they never thought possible.

Lewis can believe it too. But he can't reveal what he saw that afternoon at the creek without exposing his own secret.

Five days later, Esther's buried body is discovered.

What do we owe the girl who isn't there?

Tags

Review	Dirt Town, Hayley Scrivenor	Karen Chisholm	Friday, March 8, 2024
Blog	Updates - Week Ending 8th March	Karen Chisholm	Monday, January 15, 2024

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Halfway House, Helen FitzGerald

Karen — Thu, 07 Mar 2024 01:01:48 +0000

REVIEW

Halfway House, Helen FitzGerald

Reviewed By

Karen Chisholm

Thursday, March 7, 2024

Helen FitzGerald is one of those authors who really knows how to write engaging and very offputting central characters that you care about, despite their obvious failings, flaws, and downright stupidity from time to time. As is the case in HALFWAY HOUSE where central character Lou O'Dowd is .. well ... quite something.

Infuriating, annoying and quite beguiling, she's part ingénue, part ruthless user, and oddly extremely sympathetic and relatable. Maybe it's the wide eyed devil may care"edness" of her lifestyle, maybe it's the sneaking suspicion that she's well aware of the fact that many of her choices are questionable and actually doesn't give a toss what anyone thinks, that make her, well forgiveable is one word for it I suppose.

I mean how else are you going to get on board with a girl who starts a relationship with an older, married man, and stays with the weirdness for the money. And how are you going to explain the utterly clear-eyed manner in which she turns from that life in Melbourne, to a job as a night worker in a halfway house for offenders in Edinburgh Scotland. Plumping to land in with a cousin that she's been less than kind to in the past, and almost seems to go out of her way to be horrible to, despite her hospitality and obvious desire to be friends. Oh and there's the sexual relationship that she leaps straight into - jetlagged and barely arrived.

Aside from the Halfway House residents, and we'll get to that in a second, Lou's cousin runs an open house for fellow thespians and Edinburgh Festival performers. Which means that the household is shapeshifting constantly, it's way too crowded, and you never quite know what or how is going to be there whenever Lou returns. Which she deals with. Just the same as she seems more than happy to launch herself into night shifts at the halfway house, despite the somewhat haphazard introduction, what feels like a very broad sweep introduction program, and a series of residents there that are ... well creepy, menacing and in one particular case, quite a stunning surprise for Lou.

Needless to say, there is a lot going on, and readers may find themselves wondering about Lou's sanity, everybody around her's sanity, and probably their own for sticking with this. But FitzGerald is one of those authors that seem to be able to pull off the utterly and inexplicably crazy, whilst making it seem, maybe not normal, but at least believable. I mean who hasn't flown halfway around the world, to work in an offenders house, on your own, at night, not really knowing what to do, where you are, who to call on if you're in trouble, and, how you're going to cope if it all goes tits up. Which, to be fair, is about the only predictable thing about this novel. It's going to go tits up, the question is really just how, who's behind the chaos and what Lou's going to do about it (I will admit to an uncomfortable sense of admiration at some the things she does when confronted with a really tricky situation in the house).

The other thing FitzGerald does incredibly well is write dark, sly humour in a way that gives you permission to laugh a lot - even when it's inappropriate - or is it really? I mean, if you're confronted with the stupid, impossible, creepy and threatening circumstances that Lou puts herself in, and you are doing all this sanity questioning, well sometimes you just have to laugh.

Book Source Declaration

I received a copy of this book from the publisher or author.

BOOK DETAILS

BOOK INFORMATION

Author

Helen Fitzgerald

ISBN

9781922863935

Year of Publication

2024

BLURB

Meet the roommates from hell

On her first shift at a halfway house for violent offenders in Edinburgh – the only job she could get – rebounding Australian expat Lou is taken hostage. For nine long hours, the only people who can help her are the residents. But who can Lou trust? The mum-and-dad-killer, the elderly legless rockstar paedophile, the stammering suicide chat room guy, or the Armani-suited conman?

Slick, darkly funny and nerve-janglingly tense, Halfway House is a breathtaking thriller and an unapologetic reminder: never corner a desperate woman.

Tags

Review	Halfway House, Helen FitzGerald	Karen Chisholm	Thursday, March 7, 2024
Blog	Updates - Week Ending 19th January 2024	Karen Chisholm	Monday, January 15, 2024
Blog	Updates - Fortnight Ending 16th February	Karen Chisholm	Monday, January 15, 2024
Blog	Updates - Week Ending 23rd February	Karen Chisholm	Monday, January 15, 2024
Blog	Updates - Week Ending 8th March	Karen Chisholm	Monday, January 15, 2024

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