All the Reviews

Why was Melbourne so fascinated by the Wales-King murders. For the longest time, reporters went absolutely berserk, almost stalking the family for pictures and quotations. From the time the Margaret Wales-King and her husband Paul King went missing, the rumour mill went into overdrive and every utterance of anyone even remotely connected with the case was plastered all over the pages of every newspaper in town.

The reason I wanted to read this book is to see if Hilary Bonney answered this question, and ultimately, she asked the same question. As the author states in the ... Read review

When your protagonist is a member of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and her partner is a trained drug-sniffer cat (yes, I said cat), you know the book isn’t going to be heavy on the gritty realism.  NO SUSPICIOUS CIRCUMSTANCES is pure fluff so you do have to suspend disbelief to an extent.  However, D.J. lurches from crisis to crisis, often endangering her life. Another day, another body.  Yet one more attempt on her life.  It all becomes extremely repetitious and predictable.

As the suspects are killed off, there is no reason given for their deaths. We have no idea if ... Read review

Mel Stenning has been a victim most of her life. Adopted by very conventional parents, she rebelled (but hated herself for doing it), getting into all sorts of situations and ultimately ending up in Australia, pregnant with no chance of having anything to do with her daughter Poppy's father. Returning to England she's a single mother, working for a living, finding it hard to cope, when she meets Simon. Never really convinced that Simon loves her, and constantly obsessed that he's remained involved with his last girlfriend Rosa, Mel is pregnant again. When Simon proposes, they marry ... Read review

THE SHAPE OF WATER is the first in Camilleri's series of books featuring Inspector Salvo Montalbano. Set in Vigata, a fictional seacoast town in southern Sicily, The Shape of Water finds Montalbano investigating the death of a local influential in the very insalubrious surrounds of "The Pasture".

The Pasture, once a goat grazing site is now the place to pick up a drug deal or a prostitute. Montalbano is already a bit suspicious about Luparello's death but when pressure starts being applied by a politician, a judge and a bishop he digs his heels in and insists that an ... Read review

VISIBILITY is the fourth book from Boris Starling. It is set in 1952 in London in the middle of one of the last great, lingering pea-souper fogs.

VISIBILITY could be a reference to the fog which is all pervading and dictates all of the action and events in this post-war thriller. When biochemist Max Stensness is found drowned in early in the evening, in the middle of the fog, Herbert Smith, ex-MI5 and now member of Scotland Yard's Murder Squad gets the case because it's probably going to be an uninteresting one, and the rest of the murder squad are very unwelcoming and ... Read review

Originally published in 1970, this title was reprinted in 1991 by Weldon Publishing.

From the book: "When a famous, but hated, movie producer seems to have been killed by the very film technique he claimed to have invented, journalist Peter Cardiman turns detective. The tightly woven plot, against a glamorous Canberra background, moves to a brilliant conclusion".

I guess the "glamorous Canberra background" should have stuck up a warning flag - since WHEN has Canberra been glamorous (tongue in cheek comment obviously - snippy comments will be sent straight to ... Read review

Angela Savage won the Victorian Premiers Literary Award for Best Unpublished Manuscript by Emerging Author in 2004 for this book, then called Thai Died.

Jayne Keeney is an expat Australian woman who, in order to avoid a predictable life, left Australia and started teaching English in Thailand. Whilst helping out a student by doing some surveillance on a cheating partner she discovers she has quite a flair for detecting, and that there is a demand for this type of service. She gives up teaching and sticks to working as a private detective in Bangkok doing a good trade in ... Read review

Taking up from DEADFOLK (a debut with a punch if there ever was one), FAGS AND LAGER finds out just how far Royston Blake, head doorman at Hoppers and self-confessed hard man of Mangel, will go for free stack of tinnies and fags.

It seems it's a fair way, as long as you don't mind that Blake does everything his own way (even though he's singing the theme tune from Minder - you just can't help thinking a karaoke version of My Way would be better).

Mangel is a grim little town full of grim little individuals and Blake rules (or at least he thinks he does). ... Read review

This was published some considerable time ago, but for some reason in the last few weeks I've been drawn towards some True Crime books. This was a particularly harrowing read, all about the events of Hoddle Street in 1987 - told as short snippets from the viewpoint of many of the people involved - the dead, the injured and the police desperate to get the manic situation under control. I think it was that method of telling the story that made it all the more stark. Excellent book to give you a true feeling for how the unimaginable and unexpected affects everyone.Read review