All the Reviews

"Mile after mile of bush. Gum trees standing straight and silent along the side of the road like ghosts sitting in judgement on the living: on him. It was amazing you could drive so far and see so few people. With each passing minute, the sun sunk lower, as if embarrassed by the outcome of the day. Light that had been pale, almost white when he set out, turned the colour of urine. My life is like this, Blake thought. I keep driving on in my car, removed. I don't get out and touch what's around me. Little by little, things get darker and you don't really know where you are any ... Read review

Swedish author John Ajvide Lindqvist takes us back, way back, to the teenage years when the world was just an open sky of endless opportunity.  In the capable hands of a best-selling horror writer, we know that this particular new world of discovery is shortly about to evolve into something truly frightening.  Lindqvist has inserted his aspiring teenage self into a narrative that will be somewhat recognizable to anyone who struck out on their own after school.  The poverty, the fickle friends, the grotty apartments, the dodgy jobs.   Most of us have been there, making all the usual ... Read review

And every favour has its price

Paid not in coin

But in flesh

Slice by slice

Sometimes a favourite novel by a much loved author isn’t their best, welcome to my latest Summer Favourites review, Peter Temple’s An Iron Rose. If you were to ask the question ‘which novel is Peter Temple’s best?’ then most would answer A Broken Shore or Truth. If I was to choose I’d say A Broken Shore, just, but neither are my favourite Temple, mine is his second novel An Iron Rose ... Read review

Sandra Pankhurst has led one hell of a life. From being adopted as a young child, awful childhood abuse by those adoptive parents, through to marriage, fatherhood and finally acknowledgement of alternative sexuality - firstly as a gay man / ultimately the realisation that she was transgender. Marriage breakdown led to life as a drug addict, drag queen, sex worker, gender transition, wife, severe health issues, and finally a highly successful business as a trauma cleaner. Pankhurst has not had, nor made, an easy path in life. Every time I've heard her interviewed, everything I've ever ... Read review

The second in the Cass Diamond series MISSING PIECES is set in far North Queensland, with Cass Diamond investigating connected cold case disappearances. In 1992, toddler Yasmin Munoz went missing from a picnic spot near Cairns. In 2012 local businessman and former mayor Andrew Todd dies, leaving directions in his will to search for the missing child, by now a young woman if she's still alive. Yasmin is the daughter of Todd and a local mixed race woman, who has since died. Once Diamond starts digging around she discovers there's another mysterious disappearance in the Todd family - the ... Read review

THE PROMISED LAND is the 13th Brock and Kolla police procedural from Barry Maitland. The first novel in the series, THE MARX SISTERS, was originally released in 1994, and here we are at the 13th outing, and Maitland is still writing as assured, elegant and entertaining a police procedural series as you'd want. Always with that little quirk that his designer / architect mind obviously identifies with most strongly - choice of location.

This time the location is Hampstead Heath, the case is the investigation of three brutal murders of women, and the quick identification of ... Read review

Stacked up in every corner of this house are piles of books that I should have read by now, with INVISIBLE WOMEN being one of them. As the sub-heading puts it: "Powerful and Disturbing Stories of Murdered Sex Workers". The tardiness was regretted even more once I finished the book.

A lot of the power behind these stories is down to the sheer numbers. The index lists 65 women's names - murdered or gone missing since 1970 (the book was published in 2016). To put that into perspective, 46 years, 65 women listed. God knows how many more died during that period, how many more ... Read review

A police investigation can seem like an interminably slow process and on no one does the passage of that time weigh more heavily than on those mourning the loss of a loved one. It’s a process not guaranteed a satisfactory result after years of waiting, and in the meantime, lives must be picked up with again and continued on with as best they can be.

Elijah Holcombe was a young married man in his mid-twenties who was blessed with both a loving family and friends who adored him.  His life and future from the outside may have looked bright however Elijah was troubled by ... Read review

In 1977 William McIlvanney released Laidlaw, a novel which is widely regarded as being the first Tartan Noir novel. Following his death in 2015 the award for the best Scottish crime book was renamed the McIlvanney Prize in his honour. This year the prize was awarded to William McIlvanney’s son Liam for his novel The Quaker which is loosely based upon the three Bible John murders in Glasgow in the late 60’s. Fans of Ian Rankin will recognise Bible John from the 8th Rebus novel Black and Blue.

After a Prologue and the first of three disturbing chapters telling the murders ... Read review