All the Reviews

Wild Place, Christian White

"Why do good people do bad things?" is an interesting question, explored fully in WILD PLACE by Christian White.

Set in the heart of Australian suburbia, during the height of the summer of 1989, seventeen year old Tracie Reed vanished one night. Her parents in the middle of a fraught divorce, Tracie's behaviour had changed in the leadup and despite her mother's protestations to the contrary, police have basically dismissed her as a runaway. Part of the local neighbourhood watch, Tracie's high school English teacher, and neighbour, starts digging into her disappearance, ... Read review

Author:

Christian White

Dark Mode, Ashley Kalagian Blunt

This fierce, unflinching thriller asks timely questions about threatening behaviour. Why don’t we recognise it? Stop it? - Full Review at Newtown Review of Books.Read review

Author:

Ashley Kalagian Blunt

Crows Nest, Nikki Mottram

This latest offering of Australian rural noir contrasts urban and small-town sensibilities from the perspective of a child protection officer. Full review at Newtown Review of Books.

Author:

This Much is True, Miriam Margolyes

Sometime around 2012 we were lucky enough to catch Miriam Margolyes performing Dickens' Women at Her Majesty's Theatre in Ballarat. A one person show, with pianist, written by Margolyes and Sonia Fraser, she commanded the stage, effortlessly shifting through 23 different characters, based on or inspired by 21 women and 2 men in Dickens' novels. An admirer of Dickens work, at no stage did the performance shirk from the less savoury aspects of his life, his obsession with youthful beauty, his "odd" relationships with sister-in-law, and, in Margolyes' own words from an interview in The ... Read review

Author:

Miriam Margolyes

The Death of John Lacey, Ben Hobson

As I was reading this novel, I was finishing the autobiography THIS MUCH IS TRUE by Miriam Margolyes in audio form and I was struck by the coincidence of some of the things that she says most powerfully and pointedly, about dehumanisation, the utter and abject cruelty of "Empire" and the way that it empowered, and continues to empower, entrenched racism. Add to that the question from Songlines: the Power and Promise, edited by Margo Neale - "What do you need to know to prosper as a people for 65,000 years?" - and you have a review of THE DEATH OF JOHN LACEY.

Nobody, for ... Read review

Author:

The Cane, Maryrose Cuskelly

Maryrose Cuskelly's novel seems to have taken Arthur Conan Doyle’s maxim to heart: ‘When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’ Full Review at: Newtown Review of Books

Author:

Maryrose Cuskelly

The Honjin Murders, Seishi Yokomizo

First published in 1946, the story is set in the winter of 1937, in the Japanese village of Okamura. Steeped in both the culture and sensibility of the time, THE HONJIN MURDERS is a classic of Japanese crime fiction, a locked room murder in the style of the Golden Age of crime fiction worldwide.

The grand, and influential family Ichiyanagi, are preparing for the wedding of the eldest son. It should be an auspicious event, but there is disquiet. The bride is the daughter of a fruit farmer, a lower class than the groom's Honjin family. Honjin is the Japanese word for an ... Read review

Author:

Seishi Yokomizo

Murder in Williamstown, Kerry Greenwood

In the previous book in the long and much loved Phryne Fisher series, DEATH IN DAYLESFORD, author Kerry Greenwood felt it was time for the younger members of the Fisher household to do some investigating of their own. Not surprisingly Ruth, Jane and young Tinker turned out to quite the dab hands, and they continue their activities in number 22 in the series - MURDER IN WILLIAMSTOWN.

Whilst the murder, and Phryne's latest dalliance do centre around the Melbourne bayside suburb of Williamstown, there's also an investigation underway at the Blind Institute, courtesy of Ruth ... Read review

Author:

Kerry Greenwood

The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood

As a face to face bookclub read for a club made up on a lot of knowledgeable readers, male and female, a book couldn't come more highly recommended.Read review

Author:

Margaret Atwood

The Gallerist, Michael Levitt

Author of THE GALLERIST, Michael Levitt, is a surgeon and health bureaucrat with a considerable list of scientific articles, medical books targeted at the general public and chapters in medical textbooks to his name. He's also an art collector, and has written numerous articles about art and artwork for a range of publications. This is his first work of fiction.

The fictional Mark Lewis is an art lover and former surgeon, now running a small art gallery after the death of his much loved wife Sharon left him lost and grieving deeply. His investigative interest is tweaked ... Read review

Author:

Bulldozed, Niki Savva

Found the first book in this "trilogy" very enlightening (The Road to Ruin), couldn't come at the second book (Plots and Prayers) for love nor money. Possibly because of the timing, but mostly because I will declare up front I have zero time for Morrison and his ilk. So I picked this up a little on the "well this isn't going to go well" side of expectation. Couldn't have been more incorrect. I found this fascinating, very informative and worth the time taken to read it.Read review

Author:

No Friend But the Mountains, Behrouz Boochani

"What did you think?" asks Goodreads?

I think anybody who would condone a system like this is beyond understanding.

I think this man ending up in New Zealand was lucky for them, and him.
Read review

Author:

Behrouz Boochani

Wild Card, Simon Rowell

Will confess to being more than a bit pleased when WILD CARD, the second DS Zoe Mayer (and her service dog Harry) novel arrived. The initial outing - THE LONG GAME - had all the hallmarks of a long, and good series in the making, and the follow-up does nothing to dispel that belief.

Starting out in a very atmospheric location (if you ignore the dead body lying in burnt-out grassland beside the banks of the Murray River), Mayer, Harry and Charlie Shaw have arrived from Melbourne in response to the shooting death of Freddie Jones, a bikie from the other side of the river in ... Read review

Author:

Dead Girl Walking, Christopher Brookmyre

The 6th Jack Parlabane novel, listened to as part of my audio wander back through the series, this outing is post Jack stuffing everything up. He's lost his career, his marriage and, for once in his life, his mojo. Pulled into the investigation of a missing pop-star by the sister of his oldest (now dead) friend, he sort of finds a bit of the old Jack along the way.

This is possibly my least favourite of the Parlabane books for incredibly unfair reasons. Jack's in trouble, and he's lost a hell of a lot of the devil may care, sod you all attitude as a result, and that kind ... Read review

Author:

Christopher Brookmyre

The Russian Wife, Barry Maitland

My review of the last novel in the Brock & Kolla series, The Russian Wife by Barry Maitland was posted this morning at The Newtown Review of Books:

https://newtownreviewofbooks.com.au/barry-maitland-the-russian-wife-revi...

"The fourteenth instalment of Barry Maitland’s groundbreaking Brock and Kolla crime series is also the last."Read review

Author:

Attack of the Unsinkable Rubber Duck, Christopher Brookmyre

This audio book was part of my revisit of the entire Parlabane series so I was cheating a bit, having already done "all the emotions" over the opening line of the blurb.

I do get the idea of telegraphing the end of Jack and the whole Parlabane series was going to grab some attention. And I understand fully that being elected Rector of Kelvin University was a bit of a parting surprise. I can even get behind the idea that Parlabane going out in a blaze of psychic attention seeking was just the ticket for getting your average fan steamed up and in a take no prisoners mood. ... Read review

Author:

Christopher Brookmyre

Hell of a Thing, Michael Botur

The thing with Michael Botur's short story collection HELL OF A THING is that there is going to be something in here for all readers who like a bit of dark, unrelenting, beat you round the head and shoulders styled fiction.

There's sixteen stories in this collection, described in the blurb:

In Hell of a Thing, a cowardly father seeks a more exciting son; two lovers on a posh date dine on self-delusion; and an author turns his back on his past—until the past demands violent closure. We meet artistic terrorists, renegade daughters, an Uber
... Read review

Author:

1979, Val McDermid

The first in the Allie Burns series, 1979 was released in 2021 with the second, 1989 out in October 2022. It was the arrival of the second book that made me realise I hadn't read the the first - and then I realised I'm behind with the Karen Pirie novels (now a TV series into the bargain), and well, there are times when I worry that I'm not going to catch up with everything I want to read ever again.

But 1979, needless to say, is set in 1979, with journalist Allie Burns based in Glasgow and looking for the next big story that will make the boy's club at the paper she works ... Read review

Author:

Before You Knew My Name, Jacqueline Bublitz

In 2022 Jacqueline Bublitz's novel BEFORE YOU KNEW MY NAME won both the Best Novel and Best First Novel categories of the Ngaio Marsh awards. It was the first time this had occurred since the award was established in 2010, and there are some really good reasons for that.

There's also some reasons for the delay in posting this review, mostly because when something is this good, writing words about such excellent words is more than a bit daunting. It's taken a long while to decide whether or not I could say anything that was vaguely coherent, other than plead with as many ... Read review

Author:

Jacqueline Bublitz

Ngaio Marsh Entrant 2022

Ngaio Marsh Shortlist 2022

Ngaio Marsh Winner 2022

El Dorado, Dorothy Porter

I'll be perfectly honest - I circled El Dorado in the Readings tent at the Melbourne Writers festival for days. It's a contemporary Australian crime fiction thriller. It was long-listed for the 2007 Ned's and I'd promised myself to read the entire list of nominees this year. So why was I circling?

Well El Dorado is a verse novel - poetry and I admit I'm never convinced about reading poetry. Sure I love listening to some bush poetry, and I love to listen to some I guess you'd call them performance poets - ask everyone about dragging me away from Lem Sissay's performances at ... Read review

Author:

Pages