All the Reviews

The Orient Express instantly conjures up images of luxurious travel, fine dining, people dressed in their very best, quiet and attentive staff gliding unseen and unremarked through carriages, Inspector Hercule Poirot and 12. Always 12 people.

And so it is with FIVE FOUND DEAD in which one imagines author Sulari Gentill had an enormous amount of fun constructing a story that's partly a hat tip to Agatha Christie's well known novel, and the entire golden age of mystery writing.

In this outing the 12 are the "Bar Council", a group of passengers pulled together ... Read review

The promotional material pushes the connection, and it's hard not to get a vibe of THE SLAP from the blurb of this one  - young families, a tragedy at a bbq that implodes relationships, crumbles friendships and all, but fear not if you're feeling like this is another commentary on parenting, because I will confess that's kind of the worry I had going in as well, and not the feeling I had coming out the other side of Hannah Tunnicliffe's THE POOL.

The catalyst of this story is events at a bbq, nine years ago in Melbourne, after which prince of spin, life of the party, ... Read review

The first in a new series from NZ author Rosy Fenwicke, THE SECRET OF THE ANGEL WHO DIED AT MIDNIGHT is a police procedural novel introducing DSS Kate Sutton.

Set in a wine-growing region of New Zealand, the sense of place in this one is pretty strong, drawing on a small town, with tensions between the old residents and newcomers staying very close to home. The victim in this novel is the local GP, Dr Geoffrey Scott, a man who has taken over his father's practice, a well known figure in the small community in which he's lived his life, his wife being the incomer. Younger ... Read review

If you're looking for something that's wild, ranty, full to brim with nobody (including the good, bad, and slightly deluded) winning at anything, then GLASS BARBIE could be just the ticket.

It's a roller coaster ride alongside wild man, crackhead, Karl Copley. He of the big mouth and small brain, who somehow convinces an old mate, now a senior cop, Richie McMullan the two of them can rescue Copley's high school sweetheart Barbara Konstantinou (the Barbie from the title), who is being held for ransom by bikies. I mean why wouldn't a senior cop buy into a plan which doesn't ... Read review

Wellington, 1923, and a sixty-year-old woman hangs herself in a scullery; ten years later another woman ‘falls’ from the second floor of a Taranaki tobacconist; soon afterwards a young mother in Taumarunui slices the throat of her newborn with a cleaver.

What connects these women, and the short, pointed tales in FOX SPIRIT IN A DISTANT LAND is that all these women are part of the Chinese diaspora in New Zealand, and all the stories are inspired by real events. Murray has chosen to explore these stories of violent crimes, by and towards a ... Read review

This novel, soberingly based on a true story, is set in the 1830's in England, telling the story of a sensational divorce trial instigated by Frances Dickinson after years of enduring abuse and degradation at the hands of her appalling husband. 18 years old and wealthy when she married Lieutenant John Gells, she soon discovered there was much more to him. A cruel, violent, predatory man he subjected her to years of physical, sexual and mental abuse, spending her money with abandon, whilst preying on their staff, she was kept separate from everyone, hidden away on his family's Scottish ... Read review

The description of PEOPLE WITH NO CHARISMA starts out:

From the International Booker Prize–shortlisted author of What I’d Rather Not Think About comes a darkly humorous novel about multigenerational family dynamics and individuality in Dutch suburbia.

It's worth stating the bleeding obvious here - humour is a very subjective thing and what's hilarious for one reader will simply be dumbfounding for another. Or there will be readers, like this one, who spend a fair amount of time both amused and profoundly ... Read review

The dedication in CARVED IN BLOOD is to Mark Bennett (2nd April, 1950 - 20th October, 2024) and Bruce Bennett (20th March, 1953 - 1st February, 2025). Shine bright among the stars, big brothers.

In many ways, this sad dedication, coupled with the moving tribute in the novel's Acknowledgements describing how the great waka with its prow formed by the nine stars of Matariki, from which the navigator, threw out his net, to pick up the author's brothers expands on a theme that ran through the novel. Matariki is the Māori name for the Seven Sisters, or Pleiades star cluster, ... Read review

The second in the series, THE SUNBAKER is another one of those novels that could be read as a standalone, but add THE BEACON to your reading list anyway. For those that haven't yet had the pleasure, Jack Harris, disgraced son of a "major" media baron, was sidelined to the stable's least important paper - The Beacon - located in Byron Bay which turned into a happy career and personal move in the first novel. Caitlin is the lawyer daughter of the longtime, much admired editor of the paper, who met a very grisly end in that story, and she and ... Read review