All the Reviews

The second fiction book from New Zealand writer, Gigi Fenster, A GOOD WINTER is a story of a group of women, after Lara moves to the city to be near her widowed, pregnant daughter. Sophie really starts to struggle after Michael is born, her grief compounded by post-natal depression. The city apartment block Lara has moved to was already home to Olga, and their friendship commences with the simplest of things - Olga's green fingers and Lara's uncanny ability to kill all sorts of pot plants, moving quickly to something closer when Sophie's crisis draws them together, as Olga steps in to ... Read review

Grazier Mathew Dunbar led a quiet life, working on his farm, helping out with the local poultry club, meeting up with the few very close friends he had. An adopted child, he'd had a tricky relationship with his parents, his father dying not improving things between Dunbar and his mother, despite her desperate wish to reconnect. All Dunbar seemed to really want was to find love and have a family of his own, which made him a prime target for the deeply flawed, dangerous and vicious Natasha Darcy. A woman with a litany of manipulative and cruel behaviour behind her, Mathew stuck with her ... Read review

The debut novel in a series featuring Cesare Aldo, former soldier, now an officer in the city's most feared criminal court, CITY OF VENGEANCE is set during the winter of 1536 in Florence, Italy. At that time Florence was a wealthy and influential city, ruled over by the Duke Alessandro de Medici - volatile and dangerous in his own right. When a prominent Jewish moneylender is murdered in his home Aldo is directed to solve the murder before the feast of Epiphany, in four days time. What the edict doesn't take into account is the plot that Aldo uncovers to overthrow de Medici. ... Read review

WAKING THE TIGER is set in 1939 Singapore. Dripping with sense of place and time, there's something vaguely reminiscent of Chandler's styling, and the excellent Inspector Le Fanu series by Brian Stoddart in the characterisation and plot.

Inspector Maximo Betancourt is working a new beat, that he never wanted. Following the disappearance of his own wife, everything has collapsed around him, including his career. Once a rising star of the Singapore CID, he's been relegated to the Marine Division, adjudicating dockyard disputes and conducting goods inspections.

... Read review

Queensland, 1976, the town of Royalton and exiled Detective Ray Windsor, sent to the dying town in the state's west, feels like an alien in his own country. Royalton is ruled by corruption, populated by despair and an overwhelming sense of hopelessness, something that Windsor instantly has an absolutely guttural reaction to - his police hierarchy is just awful, and the general lack of interest in the death of a couple of young girls shocking to a man who might be good with his fists, but he's a decent cop, in a difficult situation.

A lot of the elements that come into ... Read review

WAKE won the CWA Debut Dagger in 2019, and it's not at all hard to see why. Atmospheric and cleverly constructed, with a strong sense of place and realistic characters, WAKE has a plot that bring past trauma, grief, guilt and violence forward in a family, and community, to the consequences that play out in the present.

Mina McCreery was 9 when her twin sister Evelyn disappeared from the family farm in remote NSW. Nearly 20 years later, the fact that they never found any trace of her haunts Mina, who still lives on the farm.

Lane Holland is a private ... Read review

I've gotten a bit out of wack, but I think TO KILL A CONMAN is the third in the Quake City Investigations series (following on from SHOOTING MESSENGERS and THE POSSUM FUR PLOT). Either way it didn't matter, having read the first this one just flowed on, with central character PI Danny Ashford and the Quake City world. There's a map at the start of the novel to give you a flavour for this fictional place.

Comic, noir, cartoonish and really very engaging, the Quake City Investigations novels are an unusual combination of styles, featuring the aforementioned Danny Ashford ... Read review

DYING GRASS MOON is the 2nd book in the Hennessey Reed Mystery Series, following on from ONE FOR ANOTHER. Set in the early 1800's in Idaho in the USA, Hennessy Reed is a bordello madam, amateur sleuth, hidden mother, astounding woman and an absolute force to be reckoned with.

In this outing, a reclusive family has been shot dead, dumped on the outskirts of town in a murder that could be because of their religious / cult beliefs or it could simply be random. Encouraged by past success as an amateur sleuth, Reed sets off on a hunt for the murderer, right behind Raff Cooper ... Read review

The second George Manolis novel sees him flying from Australia to Greece on an extended holiday after a turbulent time. Recently divorced, mourning the death of his much loved father, Manolis returns to the place of his father's birth - the Prespes region which straddles the borders of Greece, Albania and North Macedonia (read the author's acknowledgements for more about this rather sensitive region and his approach) - and the tiny village of Glikonero. It's a chance to reconnect with his father through his homeland, and fulfil a promise to deliver an heirloom set of komboloi. It ... Read review