All the Reviews

To be short and precise, I found this book absolutely fascinating. Insightful, informative, and clear eyed. Mandatory reading for anyone trying to work out what the hell is going on in this world.Read review

I've had this book in the queues for such a long time, one to dip in and out of at those moments when a bit of amusement was required, I thought. Until the day I wasn't dipping, and couldn't put it down.

Told very much in his own voice (I think there was a ghostwriter involved / not sure), this is a rollicking roam through the life, times, trials, triumphs and tribulations of the (to my ears at least) greatest band ever. Full of very funny one-liners and some utterly brutal honesty about a life that's been lived to the edges always.

There's plenty here for ... Read review

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, ... Read review

The Marshall Grade series is American noir of the minimalist, dark kind, bought to you by New Zealander Ben Sanders.

The first book AMERICAN BLOOD (reviewed at http://reviewingtheevidence.com/review.html?id=10540) introduced the central character of Marshall Grade. Grade is a classic lone wolf, vigilante machine, with no discernible soft spots and a past littered with dodgy characters. Hence his long list of enemies and a contract killer on his tail. Flushed out of hiding when somebody as close to being a ... Read review

Leena Lehtolainen is a Finnish author, best known for her series featuring Policewoman Maria Kallio. THE BODYGUARD is the first in a new trilogy, featuring bodyguard Hilja Ilveskero. According to her website:

"The underlying theme of the trilogy is a series of questions about identity and concealment. Who is each person really? What disguise is each person using? What does it mean to be family? What language does each person speak and understand, and what is each person’s secret language? Finnish is a good secret language—few people understand it — and Finland as a country ... Read review

Read for our f2fbookclub gathering - where the vast majority of us abandoned before the end. Lots of info dumps (which would appear to have come from its early days as a phd thesis), this provided a surprisingly flat, uninteresting portrait of the central character which just didn't ever engage this reader enough to want to continue through to the end. Abandoned around 2/3rds of the way in.Read review

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 ... Read review

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.Read review

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 ... Read review