All the Reviews

Launched into listening to this on audio without really doing any blurb reading or background checking of any type. Basically grabbed it because we'd recently watched THE MAGPIE MURDERS which we'd loved, and, well it was there. 

One of those reinvention style novels, where the author has cast himself in the role of a "Watson" like character, although to equate Daniel Hawthorne with Sherlock Holmes might be a bit of a push. Still, there's nothing wrong with the development of a brilliant, eccentric, disgraced police detective as a character, and Horowitz seems quite a dab ... Read review

This audio series was recommended to me by an algorithm which I'm never 100% convinced about, but I'd finished all that was available in The Thursday Murder club series and was in the mood for something on the lighter side. Besides I'm increasingly a sucker for anything with women of a certain age getting on with things, refusing to buckle under to "societal expectations".  For some reason.

This series revolves around 77 year old Judith Potts, she of the, it turns out, decidedly odd past. A woman who now works as a crossword setter, lives in a fading old mansion on the ... Read review

I was so looking forward to THE YEAR OF THE LOCUST, and yet, somehow, it's arrival in my ebook queue came as a hell of a surprise. So, needless to say, everything else got swept aside and I settled in for what I hoped would be some days of engaging espionage thriller reading.

Which I got, and then some more, and then a whole lot of different stuff, and then a bit more of what was expected. What I'm trying to say in such a hamfisted way is there were bits of THE YEAR OF THE LOCUST that grabbed and did not let go, and then there were bits that simply did not work, and then ... Read review

One of those series that I plucked from a long list on Audible when looking for something new and fun to listen to. Sometimes the universe is very good to you.

A MAN WITH ONE OF THOSE FACES was such good fun with madcap action and activities, really engaging characters, and a mystery plot that lent itself well to listening. The narrator of this was also perfect, with an engaging accent and an excellent deployment of varied voices to always give you an idea about who is who in a busy, but not overcrowded cast listing.

The series revolves around Paul Mulchrone ... Read review

Part of a series of novels placing real life historical events in a modern setting, NOTORIOUS deals with one of England's past mysteries - the Princes in the Tower, and the enigma that was Richard III. The modern setting revolves around a world famous arty family, the Snows. Belle is a singer, her husband Teddy an acclaimed actor. Their 5 children live their lives in the shadow of their parents, but eldest daughter Emma has dreams of her own. She wants to be a writer, she wants a cat and she wants to forget her first love interest. 

The story revolves around the ... Read review

I'm not going to pretend that I didn't wonder if the dreaded "second book syndrome" would appear with Benjamin Stevenson's EVERYONE ON THIS TRAIN IS A SUSPECT.

This second novel in the series (not his body of work overall), features Ernest Cunningham, of EVERYONE IN MY FAMILY HAS KILLED SOMEONE fame, a book, which to be frank never really felt like it was going to leave the possibility of a follow up in its wake. Shortage of people after the accelerated body count being part of the problem, the other being the enclosed space cleverness which felt like it would be a more ... Read review

Set in France in the aftermath of the First World War, THE GREAT SWINDLE is loosely a crime novel, owing to the fraud perpetrated as part of the ongoing action. What it really is, is an exploration of the treatment of returned servicemen, the damage - physical and mental - that war leaves in it's wake, and the similar damage societal pressure causes.

In what turned out to be a massive book (I was reading an ebook version of it and didn't twig to the size until well into the story), Lemaitre introduces the reader to the three main characters on the battlefront - in an apt ... Read review

The collection of cases covered by Emily Webb's SUBURBAN TRUE CRIME go back to the 1940's, through to more recent times, covering a wide range of different murders and disappearances that have occurred in Australian suburban locations.

In the author acknowledgement at the front of the book she provides some context for this collection:

It's been several years since my books MURDER IN SUBURBIA and SUBURBAN NIGHTMARE were published in 2013 and 2016 respectively.

SUBURBAN TRUE CRIME features some cases that were included in

... Read review

I'm behind with this series, and heartily confused about the order in which to read them. But this fortuitous find in a neglected stack of purchased books, is blurbed as the "long-awaited sequel to 1222". Which I did really enjoy. It's also listed as the 9th Hanne Wilhelmsen novel, but I do remember at the time that I read 1222 (the 8th) it was the only one in translation I could get. Or something.

OFFLINE is an interesting undertaking for a number of reasons. Written after the 2011 terrorist attacks in Norway, the car bomb in Oslo, then the shooting of 69, mostly young ... Read review