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Echo Lake, Joan Sauers

Karen — Tue, 26 Sep 2023 04:29:57 +0000

REVIEW

Echo Lake, Joan Sauers

Review Written By

Karen Chisholm

Tuesday, September 26, 2023

ECHO LAKE is the debut thriller from screenwriter, producer and author Joan Sauers. Set in the sleepy, scenic vista of the Southern Highlands of New South Wales, Rose McHugh has just moved to the area, as a result of a tumultuous divorce. This is an area she loved to visit when younger, and the little, slightly wonky cottage she's bought is just the sort of picturesque scene that she can imagine living out her days in, her faithful canine by her side.

The cover of this book has a few clues about the styling here - with one quote referring to it is a compulsive cosy, another calling it a pacy thriller. Neither mention the paranormal aspects that popup (has to be said pretty unexpectedly), although the media release did mention a haunting story line.

The whole thing revolves around the cottage that Rose has bought, the people that she meets in the local town, her relationships with her sister, her dog, friends she makes in town, and the discoveries that she makes in her garden. A very early chance encounter with a threatening man leads to some plumbing problems, leading to some digging, which ends up in the discovery of a roll of film buried in the garden, and from there, revealing information about the disappearance of a local woman. As the mysteries all start to build, Rose finds herself in investigator mode, using the standard methodology of women thrust into the role of accidental detective - a lot of talking to locals and a lot of wandering around. Although in this case, to be fair, Rose is dangerously close to being less investigator and more catalyst for chaos. As it would appear her beloved sister, back in Sydney, is firmly of the opinion is Rose's modus operandi in life.

She does seem to exhibit a comfortable relationship with thrashing about causing all sorts of "moments" - from instantly pissing off the local "thug", to embarrassing herself at parties, making friends with the local police detective (married / gorgeous) and his wife, through to stumbling on bodies, and encountering ghosts. None of which appear to have anywhere near as big an effect on Rose as you'd expect, although, to be fair, it's so cold in her cottage it could be she's got a huge dose of brain freeze for most of the story.

The author here is obviously going for that "woman of a certain age", "mistakes have been made", "slightly madcap" style, which combined with some excellent scene setting (screenwriter at work), did create something that was both utterly beguiling and madly annoying in ECHO LAKE. There were times in this novel where I was absolutely enthralled, and then there were times I wanted to pitch the blasted thing against a wall.

What worked - definitely sense of place. What didn't work was the stereotypical city people in a rural area shtick. What also worked was a reasonably good plot littered with some red herrings that didn't all pong. What didn't work was the twist, which came with a reek of dead fish you could see coming from the other side of the valley. What flat out didn't work was the paranormal aspect which was just so out of left field even a tendency to like the idea that old rural houses can be haunted, didn't give this reader enough of a reason to suppress a severe dose of eye-roll. What also didn't work was the meandering about, and the bush tracks that we wandered down, and, to be honest, a prologue that triggered so many bad memories of bangs in the night, negligees, candles and high-heeled slippers that I longed for the good old days of online book discussion groups and the pointed commentary that came with them.

BOOK DETAILS

BOOK INFORMATION

Author

Joan Sauers

ISBN

9781761067594

Year of Publication

2023

Series

Southern Highlands Mysteries

Book Number (in series)

BLURB

In the sleepy, scenic Southern Highlands of New South Wales, a beautiful young woman goes missing.

Six years later, recently divorced historian Rose McHugh leaves the city to start a new life in the Highlands and finds a roll of film buried in her back garden. On it are photos of the missing woman.

Against the advice of an enigmatic detective, she uses her powers of persuasion and her knack for deciphering clues to pursue the case. As Rose searches through tangled secrets and hidden places haunted by the past, she realises there is a killer at large.

As she makes new friends, and dangerous enemies, Rose closes in on a suspect—but will she solve the mystery too late to save herself?

Tags

#crimefiction

#auscrime

Australia

cosy

Thriller

Echo Lake

Joan Sauers

Review

Echo Lake, Joan Sauers

Karen Chisholm

Tuesday, September 26, 2023

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Poor People with Money, Dominic Hoey

Karen — Tue, 19 Sep 2023 01:08:23 +0000

REVIEW

Poor People with Money, Dominic Hoey

Review Written By

Karen Chisholm

Tuesday, September 19, 2023

Fast paced, heart-wrenching, darkly comic, Dominic Hoey’s new crime novel is dark and unrelenting. 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

Dominic Hoey

Year of Publication

2022

BLURB

Monday Woolridge is a fighter with a face covered in scars and life full of debt.

Her Avondale flat has no furniture, her father’s dead, her catatonic mother’s in an expensive nursing home and her kickboxing gym is going to Thailand.

Monday's shitty bartending job pays fifty cents over minimum wage, and she desperately needs another way to generate income.

Dealing drugs off the dark web with her flatmate JJ looks like it's working – until it really doesn’t, and the pair have to flee Tamaki Makaurau to escape the gangsters, the vampires and the ghosts of Monday’s past.

This is a pacy, heart-twisting, punch-in-the-guts, darkly comic novel that captures life on the poverty line in Aotearoa now.

Tags

#crimefiction

#yeahnoir

New Zealand

Poor People with Money

Dominic Hoey

Review	Poor People with Money, Dominic Hoey	Karen Chisholm	Tuesday, September 19, 2023
Blog	2023 Ngaio Marsh Longlist Announced	Karen Chisholm	Monday, July 3, 2023

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Lowbridge, Lucy Campbell

Karen — Thu, 14 Sep 2023 04:43:22 +0000

REVIEW

Lowbridge, Lucy Campbell

Review Written By

Karen Chisholm

Thursday, September 14, 2023

In 2018, Katherine Ashworth is struggling. The death of her daughter has precipitated a major falling apart, which she's self-medicating with sleeping pills and vodka. A move to the small town of her husband's childhood - Lowbridge - is the beginning of the fight for Katherine to regain a purpose to her life, and stop the self-destruction. That search for meaning, precipitated particularly by husband Jamie's threat to force her into rehab if she doesn't take immediate steps to straighten herself out, leads to a chance meeting at the local Historical Society, and her interest in the disappearance in 1987, of a 17 year old local girl Tess, who left the local shopping centre and simply vanished.

Despite the protestations in the blurb that it's taken an outsider to ask the right questions, the missing girl has not been far from many resident's minds, and the mystery about what happened to her, the subject of much ongoing gossip, and theorising.

There's a LOT going on in LOWBRIDGE, and some of it works better than other aspects, but overall, I came away from this novel with a sense of disappointment. The blurb promises much, in ground that's so furrowed now surely something good should be reliably sprouting. After all "small town, secrets, outsider stirs the pot" - done well, can give some sense of humanity, connection and reasons. Alas in this outing I got too many "what the" moments. Starting out with how long it took for anything much to happen, whilst there was a detailed exploration of just how broken Katherine was. Then suddenly we seemed to go from a profoundly damaged woman, addicted to pills and booze, to an engaged woman, interested in this old story in the blink of an eye, with no withdrawal symptoms or backsliding to speak of.

Once the narrative starts to tackle the old disappearance of Tess things get very convoluted with all sorts of "small town cliche's" given their moment in the sun. Fraught local politics, the stereotypical gender and class divides, suspicious locals lurking, people "who know something but aren't saying" and the lot. Turns out so many people know they know something, and so many others know that somebody else knows something, it's a minor miracle that somebody hadn't blurted the whole thing in the pub one night and everything had been done and dusted years ago. Especially as it was obviously heading towards an ending with little in the way of surprises or revelations. Unfortunately along the way the dialogue also didn't ring true and the amount of exposition did make me wonder if the author has some trust issues with readers.

On the upside, the switches between the two different timelines were clear and provided a good sense of time and place, particularly the 80's which were, well ... special ... in Australian country towns. In that context there is also a very clear feeling of how missing girls, or anyone that wasn't the football hero or the "good bloke", was mostly a bit on the unimportant side.

Book Source Declaration

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

BOOK DETAILS

BOOK INFORMATION

Author

Lucy Campbell

ISBN

9781761152061

Year of Publication

2023

BLURB

Where everybody knows everyone, how can somebody just disappear?
A missing girl. Decades of silence. A secret too big to bury.

1987: It’s late summer and a time of change when 17-year-old Tess Dawes leaves the local shopping centre in the sleepy town of Lowbridge and is never seen again.

Tess’s unsolved disappearance is never far from the town’s memory. There’s those who grew up with Tess, and never left. And those who know more than they’re saying…

It just takes an outsider to ask the right questions.

2018: Katherine Ashworth, shattered by the death of her daughter, moves to her husband’s hometown. Searching for a way to pick up the pieces of her life, she joins the local historical society and becomes obsessed with the three-decades-old mystery.

As Katherine digs into that summer of 1987, she stumbles upon the trail of a second girl who vanished when no one cared enough to see what was happening in plain sight.

Her trail could lead right to Katherine’s door.

In a town simmering with divisions and a cast of unforgettable characters, Lowbridge is a heart-wrenching mystery about the girls who are lost, the ones who are mourned and those who are forgotten.

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Lowbridge, Lucy Campbell

Karen Chisholm

Thursday, September 14, 2023

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Keep Her Sweet, Helen Fitzgerald

Karen — Wed, 13 Sep 2023 02:39:03 +0000

REVIEW

Keep Her Sweet, Helen Fitzgerald

Review Written By

Karen Chisholm

Wednesday, September 13, 2023

It must take real writing skill to create a novel around 3.5 of the most unpleasant, conflicted, dysfunctional and frequently flat out awful people you'd ever read about, and make it as compelling and downright fascinating as KEEP HER SWEET.

The premise is quite the undertaking. Parents Penny and Andeep Moloney-Singh (two of the most self-centred and delusional people you'd ever not want to meet), downsize to an inner city building in Ballarat with Penny wanting them to find themselves again, and turn their lives around (not sure Andeep was ever fully onboard with that particular project). This seemed to involve a rather chaotic combination of upcycling, foraging, contents sale parties, and whatever the hell was going on in over-blown, over-dramatic, easy to see why you'd get rapidly over her, Penny's head. Andeep is a "was a stand up comedian" trying to get his career back on track after a humdinger of a misspeak, but mostly he seems to dither around in the background getting on the reader's nerves.

Then there are daughters Asha (first-born) and Camille (second-born). Camille had lobbed into the parents house and life again (a house which is categorically not designed for 4 people to live in it, let alone 3.5 utter wastes of space like these), but she's unemployed, and, traumatised. Asha, is at home because the court case that ended up with her wearing an electronic tag said she had to have a supervised place of residence and, well here she is. Asha's in trouble for thumping the pastor of her church with a heavy metal coffee tamperer, causing injury and stitches. The same pastor she professes an undying love for, despite him being married, and well the church is one of those with a sect feeling about it, lots of speaking in tongues and loud intrusive praying (which Asha delights in continuing much to Camille's frustration). Asha's blocked from contacting the pastor, and she's ... how to understate this .... not handling it well. She's prone to explosive temper tantrums and after breaking her sister's nose (netball incident allegedly), a family therapist is called in to try to help what is most definitely a sinking ship. Sinking rapidly because Asha's violence and manipulation of Camille just continues to escalate. The question quickly becomes whether this is a family where all hands will be lost or is somebody going to get out of this with some dignity, and ability to breath, left.

Family therapist Joy has issues of her own. Her dentist husband has died, her daughter's a hopeless meth addict, she's selling the fancy family home on Wendouree Parade and buying a unit in Sebastopol (Ballarat aware people will instantly get the subtext - although there's plenty of context in the novel if you don't get the references). Despite her "talking it up" the move is mostly about paying for her daughter's rehab, and her bail, and more rehab, and on it goes. Meanwhile her sister would really like her to head to the UK for a holiday, an idea that seems like a really good one, until the money gets tighter, and the families she's working with get stranger.

Fitzgerald has managed, somehow, damned if I quite know how, to use this scenario to create a thriller that's both darkly funny and compulsive reading. Maybe part of the attraction is that this all seemed so real, there was so much in this novel that rang true. Blackly funny, this family are exactly the sort of neighbours that you'd desperately want to move away from, whilst simultaneously fighting the temptation to set up the deckchairs to spectate more comfortably.

I suspect some readers will find this not at all to their taste - maybe because of the unpleasant people, maybe because the scenario of deeply dysfunctional people in a deeply dysfunctional household is not a comfortable place to spend time. But there is heaps of dark humour here, and there's affection, and not everything is completely without hope. And the .5 of a Moloney-Singh that deserves better, does eventually find someone prepared to step in, when others are determined to care more about themselves and actively ignore the one person, who despite their own faults, and actions, really is a victim.

Book Source Declaration

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

BOOK DETAILS

BOOK INFORMATION

Author

Helen Fitzgerald

ISBN

9781922711755

Year of Publication

2022

BLURB

When Jen and Andeep downsize to a lovely bluestone house in Ballarat, they don't expect to be followed by their spatting twenty-something daughters, Asha and Camille. Soon the family is living on top of each other in a tiny house and tensions simmer. As the parents focus increasingly on themselves, the girls become isolated, argumentative and violent. When Asha injures Camille, a family therapist is called in, but she shrugs off the escalating violence as a classic case of sibling rivalry and the stress of the family move.

But this is no ordinary sibling rivalry. These sisters are too far gone for that ....

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Keep Her Sweet, Helen Fitzgerald

Karen Chisholm

Wednesday, September 13, 2023

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The Decagon House Murders, Yukito Ayatsuji

Karen — Tue, 12 Sep 2023 05:30:37 +0000

REVIEW

The Decagon House Murders, Yukito Ayatsuji

Review Written By

Karen Chisholm

Tuesday, September 12, 2023

Published in 1978, THE DECAGON HOUSE MURDERS is credited with launching the shinhonkaku movement, a return to Golden Age style plotting and clue provision for the reader to discover along the way. It's often described as a subgenre of the honkaku style - which can best be described as whodunit's rather than why or howdunits. The timeframe of the emergence of both of these styles is particularly interesting, with honkaku mostly considered to have been at its most prolific from the late 1880's to the mid 1950's and shinhonkaku styled novels prevalent from the late 1980s through to around 1997, although examples are still being published today. Perhaps as a result of those distinct timeframes, novels from the shinhonkaku period are normally seen as more interactive or lively, incorporating critical commentary of both itself and other works (or theories / methodologies) commonly deployed in Golden Age works, whereas honkaku is more traditional or conventional in style and execution.

Both of these subgenres of Japanese crime fiction have produced some outstanding and fascinating works, in which the elements described above are clearly visible, and beautifully executed. As is the case with THE DECAGON HOUSE MURDERS which is an absolute mainstay, referred to as "The Japanese Cult Classic Mystery".

The story revolves around a university mystery fan club, where the members adopt the names of famous fictional detectives (Agatha, Orczy, Van Dine, Leroux, Ellery, Carr and Poe), and indulge their interest in fictional and not so fictional murders by way of meetings, outings and conversation.

In this case, the lonely, deserted island of Tsunojima used to have two houses on it. One known as the Blue House, burnt to the ground, with four dead people in it - the owner of the island, his wife, and their staff. Not all of them were alive when the fire started though, and the gardener who should have been there as well hasn't been seen since that night. The Decagon House is still standing, called that because of the shape - inside and out, right down to the crockery and other items within the house. It's weird, but it also seems like a perfect destination for a group of crime-solving-minded young people. There's no power, limited facilities within the house, and a lot of secrets - both in the ruins of the Blue House, the Decagon House and strewn around the island. There is also no way off the island until the boat returns to pick them up - a week after they arrive, and no communication with the outside world.

Meanwhile, back on the mainland, a series of strange letters are leading to something, connected as they are to the island's dead owner, and his daughter. His daughter was a friend of the Mystery Club members, and she's dead as well - not as a result of the fire - and somebody is out for revenge. And nobody on the mainland knows that people on the island have started dying.

Astute followers of Golden Age fiction will instantly recognise that THE DECAGON HOUSE MURDERS was inspired by Agatha Christie's AND THEN THERE WERE NONE. It's cleverly done, with the homage clearly there, but not controlling the motivation, or potential killer's identity. As would be expected from the shinhonkaku style, this is a flat out puzzle, with plenty of clues distributed to allow readers to work alongside the club members as they try to solve the problem before they all die, or the searchers on the mainland to identify the threat and come to the rescue. There's even a finale with everyone in one room as the detective explains what happened and what the clues all were.

Of course this structure brings no particular surprises with it, especially if you're a reader of the Golden Age novels, but the interesting element for this reader was the strong sense of place and culture that it was delivered within. There's something very Japanese about the precision of the Decagon House, and the way that the house and its contents are minimalist, yet hiding much meaning and more. It's an interesting viewpoint to combine everything that happened on the island around the fatal fire, the family that was lost, the lingering doubts about what happened and the missing gardener and connect them via a complex web to some University students and their seemingly harmless club, a week on a deserted island, and the puzzle that they think they are there to solve. Then turning that into a much bigger game being played out around them.

BOOK DETAILS

BOOK INFORMATION

Author

Yukito Ayatsuji

ISBN

9781782276340

Year of Publication

2020

BLURB

The members of a university mystery club decide to visit an island which was the site of a grisly, unsolved multiple murder the year before. They’re looking forward to investigating the crime, putting their passion for solving mysteries to practical use, but before long there is a fresh murder, and soon the club-members realise they are being picked off one-by-one. The remaining amateur sleuths will have to use all of their murder-mystery expertise to find the killer before they end up dead too.

This is a playful, loving and fiendishly plotted homage to the best of golden age crime. It will delight any mystery fan looking to put their little grey cells to use.

Tags

#crimefiction

Crime Fiction

Japan

The Decagon House Murders

Yukio Ayatsuji

Review

The Decagon House Murders, Yukito Ayatsuji

Karen Chisholm

Tuesday, September 12, 2023

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Double Lives, Kate McCaffrey

Karen — Mon, 11 Sep 2023 02:39:59 +0000

REVIEW

Double Lives, Kate McCaffrey

Review Written By

Karen Chisholm

Monday, September 11, 2023

Harrowing and insightful, DOUBLE LIVES by Kate McCaffrey is a very topical exploration of issues around gender, identity, acceptance and truth. There is, for some readers, some confrontational and topical subject matter being addressed here, revolving as it does around the murder of transgender woman Casey Williams, her self-confessed killer (and love interest) Jonah Scott, and a radio station opting to use their story as the opening foray into an ongoing true crime serial.

After a Perth Radio station decides to air some sort of serial programme that would win back their flagging drive-time ratings, 'Strange Crime' by Amy Rhinehart is selected. What is not quite a traditional radio series, more a podcast, with listener input and immediate feedback, the series is made up of episodes covering aspects of Rhinehart and assistant Sarah's investigation into what seemed to all to be a done and dusted murder case. When Casey was found after her body had been concealed in a river, her boyfriend Jonah Scott immediately confessed. Choosing not to take the option of the legal defence of "transsexual panic" and never really explaining what happened or why he killed Casey, he went to jail for a maximum sentence and seemed resolute in his acceptance of guilt.

With echoes of a case from a decade ago, Rhinehart and her producers think there is something not quite right about all of this. The police investigation was perfunctory at best, their willingness to accept the offender at face value, has the feeling of convenience about it. There's something screaming "cover-up" about it, after all it's not like the police haven't been involved in exactly that sort of thing many many times before.

Scott was a member of a secretive religious community at the time, along with his father (the leader of the sect) and brothers. The sect had some very out their beliefs, and Casey's death was violent and confrontational. Is he really guilty or is he covering up for someone else, or is everyone covering up something bigger, and considerably more sinister?

McCaffrey has walked a careful line here with considerable aplomb. DOUBLE LIVES explores some very complex subjects for some - gender identity, extreme religious beliefs and complex family interactions are all part of the mix in this novel. As is the relationship that so many people have with true crime exposes, as the narrative switches between Rhinehart's investigative steps, and transcripts of the program as delivered over the airwaves.

The basic premise of DOUBLE LIVES is a tricky one though, and the questions around why Casey died, and what Scott claims are the reasons, may seem like the story of an open-and-shut murder case, with a confession, an offender in jail for life, and no sudden professions of innocence or extenuating circumstances. Into this an outsider steps, with their only knowledge of the case initially being written records, but via the medium of interviewing the victim's family, the perpetrator, and members of their family, they build a picture to ... what? It's the what or where DOUBLE LIVES is heading that will have readers transfixed and hopefully considering how unnecessarily complicated life can be when some choose control of others over acceptance.

Book Source Declaration

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

BOOK DETAILS

BOOK INFORMATION

Author

Kate McCaffrey

ISBN

9781760687564

Year of Publication

2022

BLURB

This established WA-based writer examines notions of truth, gender, identity and acceptance in a compelling novel about a cold-case podcast.

Truth is like a lens we apply to everything we see, it is malleable and transformative, we can bend it, mould it, shape it, vanish it. We do this to present the versions of ourselves we want the world to see, and to hide the versions we can't bear to reveal.

Newly returned to Western Australia, journalist Amy Rhinehart pitches a crime podcast to increase her radio station's ratings. Her idea: to use the listeners of the show as its co-creators, with live-time calls and suggestion boards. The case: Jonah Scott, charged and imprisoned for life for the murder of his girlfriend, transgender woman Casey Williams. Jonah went to great lengths to hide the body - but when arrested, confessed immediately and pleaded guilty, negating the need for a trial. Amy believes there is something darker at the heart of this case and sets about finding the truth, investigating a world of drugs, sex, gender identity and religious cults.

Threaded through the main narrative, the podcast transcripts represent a story-within-a-story, exploring the characters of Jonah and Casey and the relationship between them, interwoven with Amy's investigation into the cult run by Jonah's family and its potential involvement in Casey's murder.

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Double Lives, Kate McCaffrey

Karen Chisholm

Monday, September 11, 2023

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Blood Matters, Renee

Karen — Thu, 07 Sep 2023 02:15:47 +0000

REVIEW

Blood Matters, Renee

Review Written By

Karen Chisholm

Thursday, September 7, 2023

Steeped in a sense of culture, people and place, Blood Matters is crime fiction set at the heart of a family and community. 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

Renee

ISBN

9781988595627

Year of Publication

2022

BLURB

Puti Derrell likes running at midnight. During lockdown it was safe but now lockdown is over and Porohiwi doesn’t feel safe anymore – especially when she discovers her estranged grandfather has been murdered and left with a Judas mask on his face.

Puti’s already got a lot on her plate. She’s the new guardian of ten-year-old Bella Rose, who wants to be a private investigator when she grows up, and the new owner of a bookshop called Mainly Crime.

But when there’s a murder closer to home and another of the grandfather’s masks seems to be at the centre of it, Puti and Bella Rose are drawn into the investigation despite themselves. They discover that in matters of blood you often don’t get a choice.

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Review	Blood Matters, Renee	Karen Chisholm	Thursday, September 7, 2023
Blog	2023 Ngaio Marsh Longlist Announced	Karen Chisholm	Monday, July 3, 2023

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Problem Solved: True Stories from a Blind Private Eye

Karen — Wed, 06 Sep 2023 02:53:00 +0000

REVIEW

Problem Solved: True Stories from a Blind Private Eye

Review Written By

Karen Chisholm

Wednesday, September 6, 2023

Fans of crime fiction, raised on a diet of lone wolf PI's, limping the dark and rainy backstreets in pursuit of justice for the downtrodden, or retribution for wrongs that nobody else cares about, might find the tales in PROBLEM SOLVED a bit of a surprise. Most of the cases that PI Andrew Chambers and his team take on are insurance fraud, embezzlement, workplace harassment and corporate espionage. On the more unsavoury side there were cases involving very tacky unfaithful spouses, and a child prostitution ring that was just awful, but despite the international travel, and the surveillance, and working with talented teams of people - a lot of the cases he undertook during his long career were very different from the sorts of things you read about in fiction.

PROBLEM SOLVED is partially the story of Andrew Chambers own life, partially the story of how he got into, and remained, a successful private investigator, eventually stepping down to allow his son to take over, as his blindness became more of an issue. I hasten to add, Chambers didn't start out as a blind PI, his eyesight failed over many years as a result of a myriad of health concerns.

Of particular interest as well was the way he sought clarity on why he was given up for adoption at a very young age, and how he ended up both in Australia, married to his wife, and got into the private investigating business in the first place.

The style of writing in this book might take a little bit for readers to get used to - given the nature of what he's describing, the report writer in him means that everything is formal, dry, and a bit on the lacking emotion side. Once you get used to the idea that this is simply the way of the book and author, the tales he tells are fascinating - about both his own life, and the nature of corporate private investigation. I have to confess to still feeling a lot of affection for the battered and bruised lone wolf types, but realistically, tracking down insurance fraudsters and proving workplace harassment are (hopefully if you think about it) a lot more common than constantly searching for retribution for ignored wrongs.

Book Source Declaration

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

BOOK DETAILS

BOOK INFORMATION

Author

Andrew Chambers

ISBN

9781922765444

Year of Publication

2022

BLURB

Problem Solved is a true crime memoir following the life of Andrew Chambers, who at the end of his career was known as ''the blind private eye'. The book is based on true stories that reveal the clandestine, funny, and often confronting world of private investigations. Andrew worked in Australia and across the globe tackling varied and demanding jobs and shares stories about staking out unfaithful spouses, going undercover to investigate workplace harassment, investigating embezzlement, insurance fraud, cracking a South East Asian child prostitution ring and performing corporate espionage in the final days of Alan Bond’s career.

In a fateful twist, Andrew also confronts the lifelong mystery as to why his parents gave him up for adoption to discover the true nature of his beginnings. Problem Solved tells the story of Andrew’s struggle with blindness, and continued pursuit of his career where, surrounded by a strong team led by his son, Andrew repositioned himself as the blind private eye.

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Problem Solved: True Stories from a Blind Private Eye

Karen Chisholm

Wednesday, September 6, 2023

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Mole Creek, James Dunbar

Karen — Tue, 05 Sep 2023 03:39:17 +0000

REVIEW

Mole Creek, James Dunbar

Review Written By

Karen Chisholm

Tuesday, September 5, 2023

Pete McAuslan is Vietnam Vet, and retired police officer, now holed up in the family's remote cabin near the small Tasmanian town of Mole Creek, writing his memoir. His grandson Xander is a Sydney based journalist, and they are close. So close that the shock of the death of Pete, and the suicide note found with him, is profound, and worrying.

Xander drops everything at home and heads for Tasmania, and the cabin where he spent so much of his life with both his grandfather, full of questions. Even before he's met at the airport by local police, and taken to the scene where his grandfather's laptop is missing and there's something not quite right about everything. Not that the police seem to care - they think it's a straightforward case of suicide despite Xander's doubts, the missing computer, and subsequent threats and searches of his hotel room and belongings. Nevertheless, Xander persists. He knew his grandfather, although he didn't know all there was to know about his time in Vietnam, and it turns out the past is where a lot of the answers lie.

The story shifts timeframes between Xander's search for the truth in the present, and his grandfather's service in Vietnam. Along the way there are links that surface between the two times and the two countries, although Xander really struggles to understand how the secrets he starts to uncover all fit together, and why the threat is becoming more and more personal. Along the way, the police involvement also starts to become a little on the "odd" side.

Author James Dunbar is a journalist, television scriptwriter and travel writer, amongst other things, and there are clearly aspects of that background all through this novel. His previous fictional works (published under the pseudonym Jimmy Thomson) were caper novels - hugely good fun and quite madcap. MOLE CREEK, on the other hand, is his first foray into serious thriller and espionage territory, and whilst there are echoes of some of the pace, mysterious strangers, secrets and plot twists from the earlier novels, this is obviously a vastly different undertaking.

All of that has lead to a novel which is fast paced, with plenty of action, a sense of atmospheric place and a lot of intrigue and mystery, albeit slightly patchy in delivery. The scenes from Pete's past, back in Vietnam, are slow in progressing the story of what went on then, providing some context for the present, but perhaps not enough to make the threat seem ... immediately and completely plausible. The villains are evil, nasty, and profoundly threatening. Teetering on cartoonish unfortunately, which given the attempt at serious thriller territory, didn't land the punch they perhaps should have. Combine that with a lot of byways, subplots, people and events that were touched on, disappeared, sometimes returned, and this reader struggled to keep track of who / where / why with a sense of "what the" just a bit too often for absolute connection. All of which makes it sound like this wasn't a good story - which isn't accurate. The patches that were good, were really good, and the pace and action perfect within the context of a thriller. The mayhem had a very satisfying action series feel to it, with the trailer for the show forming as you flip the pages. If there's something here that intrigues though, readers will be able to power through the downsides, and, just as we all do for visual thrillers, happily ignore aspects of the ending that stretch credulity to snapping point.

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

BOOK DETAILS

BOOK INFORMATION

Author

James Dunbar

ISBN

9781760687984

Year of Publication

2023

BLURB

A hellish war. A deadly secret. Fifty years on, in a small Tasmanian town, the truth unfolds and the killing begins again …

Betrayal cannot be buried forever.

In the tiny Tasmanian town of Mole Creek, retired Australian cop and Vietnam veteran Pete McAuslan has retreated to his fishing cabin to write his memoirs. In Sydney, his grandson, journalist and trashy true crime author Xander, learns that Pete has taken his own life, begging forgiveness in a suicide note.

Arriving in Mole Creek in the aftermath of Pete’s death, Xander discovers that his grandfather’s laptop is missing. He begins to suspect that something is wrong, refusing to accept the facts as presented. With the local police not interested in investigating an apparently open-and-shut suicide, Xander sets about uncovering the truth of what happened to his grandfather.

In the process, he discovers long-buried secrets from Pete’s time serving in the Vietnam war: secrets that Pete has withheld from him and everyone else for fifty years; secrets that powerful people would prefer to stay buried. Ensnared in a web of betrayals that began a generation before, Xander finds himself on the hitlist of a clinically violent assassin. Now he must race to identify the connection between the seemingly unremarkable death of an old Australian soldier and the imminent reactivation of the most powerful and potentially destructive ‘sleeper’ in the history of espionage – before the truth catches up with him.

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Review

Mole Creek, James Dunbar

Karen Chisholm

Tuesday, September 5, 2023

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The Darkest Sin, D.V. Bishop

Karen — Mon, 04 Sep 2023 01:53:59 +0000

REVIEW

The Darkest Sin, D.V. Bishop

Review Written By

Karen Chisholm

Monday, September 4, 2023

Set in Florence in 1537, The Darkest Sin is the second novel featuring Cesare Aldo, an officer of the feared Otto di Guardia e Balia. 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

D.V. Bishop

ISBN

9781529038842

Year of Publication

2023

Series

Cesare Aldo

Book Number (in series)

BLURB

Florence. Spring, 1537.

When Cesare Aldo investigates a report of intruders at a convent in the Renaissance city’s northern quarter, he enters a community divided by bitter rivalries and harbouring dark secrets.

His case becomes far more complicated when a naked man’s body is found deep inside the convent, stabbed more than two dozen times. Unthinkable as it seems, all the evidence suggests one of the nuns must be the killer.

Meanwhile, Constable Carlo Strocchi finds human remains pulled from the Arno that belong to an officer of the law missing since winter. The dead man had many enemies, but who would dare kill an official of the city’s most feared criminal court?

As Aldo and Strocchi close in on the truth, identifying the killers will prove more treacherous than either of them could ever have imagined . . .

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Review	The Darkest Sin, D.V. Bishop	Karen Chisholm	Monday, September 4, 2023
Blog	2023 Ngaio Marsh Longlist Announced	Karen Chisholm	Monday, July 3, 2023

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