All the Reviews

“I step over the threshold. The day is drawing in and the room is shadowy, so it’s not until Mac snaps on the light that I see it. I almost trip over a coffee table in my rush to get to the fireplace or, more specifically, the painting hanging over the marble mantelpiece.

I stare for a moment then spin around and look at Mac. He’s closed the door but hasn’t advanced into the room and is standing there, arms folded, watching my reaction.”

Art dealer and I hesitate to say amateur sleuth Alex Clayton ... Read review

Anybody new to the Flaxborough Chronicles by British writer Colin Watson might not be aware of the author's body of work. Born in 1920, dying in 1983, Watson wrote twelve Flaxborough novels in total, renowned for their dry comic styling, set in the small fictional town of Flaxborough, widely believed to be based on Boston in Lincolnshire. Watson worked as a journalist in the area and the characters in his books are rumoured to be caricatures of people he met during his journalistic time.

There are two main people in the novels - Inspector Walter Purbight, a solid, good ... Read review

Sheerwater is an emotionally charged work of both hope and despair, beginnings and endings.  Calling this book a thriller won’t be doing it a disservice, but it may give the expectation to the reader that they are about to dive into a work of suspense with no lingering take-homes to mull over.  Sheerwater is a nuanced novel that illustrates how dangerously the pendulum swings when one person in a relationship decides that enough is enough.

On the run from her unstable partner, Ava is cajoling along her two young sons in the car as they head for the Victorian coastal town ... Read review

The third book in the Caleb Zelic series finds him working hard rebuilding his life and his business after the very heated ending of the previous novel, AND FIRE CAME DOWN. In the time since his on again / off again business partner Frankie has disappeared, but his ex-wife Kat, now pregnant with their child, is back. He's getting therapy for his problems (albeit frequently standing around in the Victoria Market), and he's reconnected with long time friends in the deaf community.

Newcomers to this series will find themselves having to sort through some rapid fire ... Read review

“They called us the “children of the forest,” we descendants of the people who had inhabited the woods of Calabrian massif for millennia, we who’d transformed it into a place of evil, we who’d given up the Aspromonte to conquer another world.”

“Convinced I was saving them, I led them to perdition.”

In the remote Aspromonte Mountains in southern Calabria, Italy three boys, Luciano, Luigi and the unnamed narrator, want to change the life they have. They’re peasants, they’re supposed to know their place, to know ... Read review

What is always surprising about cults is that they consistently manage to attract seemingly intelligent people who leave their ordered lives to join bizarre communities run by petty tyrants with delusions of grandeur.  What is sadly not surprising is that at the centre of cults there are often innocents, the children.

There’s a few plot devices or themes that can pop up in crime fiction which are not for everyone.  Cults might be one of those for you, as they usually are for me.  In the Clearing is based on a real-life cult, an Australian new age group known as ‘The ... Read review

Crime Fiction themes do have a tendency to come in waves, but the past having a direct impact on somebody's present and future is a particularly rich field when tilled well, and Jenny Quintana has done that with considerable skill in OUR DARK SECRET.

Based around the character of Elizabeth Constance Valentine, the storyline moves from Elizabeth's 70's childhood, an only child, awkward, shy, clever, tending towards a bit frumpy and overweight. She adored her father Ted (of the wandering eye) but had a more complicated relationship with her more uptight mother Phyllis, ... Read review

I'm still wallowing happily around in the audio versions of the Discworld series - working my way from the start to the end and loving every minute of it, despite it being mostly re-reading / re-listening. MOVING PICTURES is, not surprisingly, the story of Holy Wood come to the Discworld. A bit of an accident / come happy outcome on the part of the Alchemists and the film industry is born. As are stars, starlets, agents, theatre owners, and strange beings from another place. All coincide for yet another excellent outing in the mad world of the Disc.Read review

As popular fiction catches up with the fact that the home is where true horror lives, there’s a heck of a lot of authors writing about the dangers nested deep in our most intimate relationships.  My Perfect Wife depicts how many small acts of cruelty and control can incrementally cause such enormous amounts of damage.

Returning home to help out her parents who are in a bind, Heather Shaw is once again living in the humble house she grew up in, located next door to the Huxley mansion. As a teenager, sneaking over for swimming lessons from the 25 year old Lucas Huxley, ... Read review