All the Reviews

Set in the early 1980's, I HEAR THE SIRENS IN THE STREET is the second book in a trilogy built around Sean Duffy, a Catholic cop working in the reality of Carrickfergus, Northern Ireland in the middle of The Troubles. This is when neighbourhoods and towns are divided by religion and loyalty, when unemployment and community disaffection are soaring, and local cops check under their cars for bombs every single morning they head out for work.

It's a bit disconcerting to think that this is a timeframe that many of us know well, although it's now regarded as "the past" or ... Read review

GUNSHOT ROAD is the second Emily Tempest novel from Australian author Adrian Hyland.  Set in the outback of Australia, GUNSHOT ROAD has one of those magnificently authentic Australian voices that you just know comes from an author who knows his place, and his characters very very well.

Emily Tempest is a tricky woman.  She's one of those mouthy, stubborn, opinionated women who will do what she believes is right, no matter who or what says no.  She's going to stick to her case, she's going to support her people, she's going to follow her instinct - and everybody else, well ... Read review

BY ANY MEANS is the second book from NZ author Ben Sanders. Sanders is a fan of writers such as Michael Connelly and Lee Child, which I suspect you can probably tell from his style. Rapid fire, with an opening that will really make you sit up and take notice BY ANY MEANS has a number of intriguing elements to it. It's a complex, shifting plot which moves through viewpoints rapidly. It has a lone wolf style of central character in Sean Devereaux, who despite being a cop, basically plays a solo part in resolving not just the opening shooting of the book, but, it seems, just about ... Read review

Christchurch private investigator Theodore Tate is attending the exhumation of a man who died two years before. Suddenly bubbles appear on the surface of the small lake in the middle of the cemetery, and several bodies slowly rise to the surface.

When the exhumed coffin is opened, it does not contain the expected occupant. And as the identities of the lake bodies are established, their graves are dug up to reveal further unexpected corpses. Could this be the work of the Christchurch Carver who has been terrorising the city for the past two years, or is there another ... Read review

DI Steele deserves her own fan club.  It would have to be a club where swearing, drinking, smoking and fiddling with your bra strap were perfectly acceptable behaviours of course.  You've also got a ready made slogan as fans of the wonderful Logan McRae series from Scottish author Stuart MacBride will be aware.

BLIND EYE is the 5th book in this funny, gruesome, funny, ferocious, unflinching, funny series featuring DS Logan McRae and a passing parade of DIs and DCIs.  DI Steele makes a very high profile return in BLIND EYE, in fact she's in danger of completely stealing ... Read review

Marketed under the banner "incredible new literary thriller", CALL ME EVIE is the debut novel of New Zealand born, Melbourne based writer J.P. Pomare.

Opening in a manner guaranteed to make readers feel maximum discomfort, a young woman is in a bathroom, hacking at her long hair with a pair of small scissors when she's interrupted by an angry man, shouting and finishing the job roughly with a pair of hair clippers. She screams, he hits, neither of them clearly identified, the relationship and the power dynamic not explained. Gradually snippets of detail emerge, the pair ... Read review

A FEW RIGHT THINKING MEN introduces Rowland Sinclair to fans of Australian historical crime fiction.  Set in 1930's Sydney and Yass, A FEW RIGHT THINKING MEN takes a reader into a world where the affects of the Great Depression are being felt, and the tension between the Proto-Fascists and Communists in Australian society veers dangerously close to civil war.

Not that the central character of this novel, Rowland Sinclair, is feeling any of the Depression affects.  He is the youngest son of an extremely wealthy, influential farming family.  His oldest brother runs the farm ... Read review

Second in the Hal Challis series, Kittyhawk Down is an extremely busy book. Firstly there's the upper class sort of "gated" housing area, the farming area and the housing estates. There's a sinister South African living in one of those big gated houses. There's Monroe, the farmer, who is under increasing financial pressure and a bit of a hot head. There's a local busybody who spends his life reporting people to the relevant authorities and writing snippy letters to the local paper, earning himself the nickname of The Meddler. There's the unemployed, drug using sisters with their ... Read review

AMONGST THE DEAD is the third novel in Robert Gott's William Power series.  William is an "aspirational" but failed Shakespearean actor, turned Private Investigator who finds himself in very unusual circumstances in the Top End of Australia during World War II in AMONGST THE DEAD.

William and his brother Brian are called upon by Australian Military Intelligence to find out the truth behind the suspicious deaths in a crack, very secret squad.  William, of course, thinks, that they need him for his superior powers of detection, and because they are to be infiltrated into ... Read review