All the Reviews

Anybody thinking the cover of this novel with it's bright pink girly styling, means it's going to be on the light and fluffy side, might want to invest in some brown paper, cover the thing, and read it anyway. THE SUNDAY GIRL is not fluffy, girly fiction, even if the opening salvo makes you wonder about return on the brown paper investment. The central character of this tale, Taylor Bishop, is all millennium styled girl: over-sharing, over thinking, brittle and frequently coming across as daft as a brush. She is, in part, the daft idiotic woman of initial perception, but, as the tale ... Read review

GREENLIGHT works extremely well as an audio title as the conspiratorial way it has been written lends itself beautifully to that platform of intimacy.  In our ears it’s all quietly confessed secrets and the discovery of lies as we move around with producer Jack Quick in the shadows of a country town.  This is not necessarily a sleepy town.  This is wine country.

If you’ve ever stayed in an Australian wine region, you might feel that you recognize the (fictional) setting and some of the townsfolk who feature in GREENLIGHT.   Wine towns ride on the back of tourism, but the ... Read review

The interlaying narratives of this book relate the viewpoints of Sadie as a teen, Sadie as a new mother, daughter Amber as an adult, and also that of the film producer gradually losing faith in the value of her documentary subject.  You may find it hard to find anyone to relate to in this novel as there’s a lot of creepy characters here with healthy cases of arrested development.   

Not intending to compare this novel to the obvious (fairly recent) urban legend so judging (of course) THE TALL MAN entirely on what it has to offer as a modern work of crime fiction.   As ... Read review

Twenty years ago Cormac Reilly was a fresh faced, rookie cop, who thought he had been sent to a standard domestic problem. In a rundown old house that took forever to find, what he ended up discovering comes back to haunt him all these years later. Fifteen-year-old Maud Blake and her five-year-old brother Jack are in the house with the body of their alcoholic mother, dead from an apparent overdose. After taking the children straight to hospital Reilly discovers that Jack has been the victim of abuse, while Maud vanishes into the night. Twenty years on, Reilly's moved to Galway from ... Read review

Feeling very much like an advertisement for gourmet South Australia with a slightly incongruous crime fiction element (wouldn't that turn potential visitors off...) THE POPEYE MURDER by Sandra Winter-Dewhirst is the first Rebecca Keith mystery. An extremely cozy series, based around the life and times of Keith: editor of Taste, the food and wine liftout of Adelaide's daily newspaper, this is all about the food, the wine and the clothes. With some crime and the obligatory romance chucked in.

THE POPEYE MURDER doesn't seem to be taking itself too seriously, which is just as ... Read review

Back when we were all a quite a bit younger Carolyn Morwood had a couple of books out featuring Melbourne based, female, professional cricketer Marlo Shaw (AN UNCERTAIN DEATH and A SIMPLE DEATH). She followed that up more recently with the Eleanor Jones series, set around the time of World War I (DEATH AND THE SPANISH LADY and CYANIDE AND POPPIES). Her latest novel DIG TWO GRAVES has a more contemporary timeframe, and is set in Southern Spain around an artist's retreat / residency.

Leaning more towards the crimance sub-genre than the earlier books, DIG TWO GRAVES features ... Read review

Designed as a bit of filler behind the story of Esther the Wonder Pig this charming, slightly dotty little book is a) a fund raiser b) a bit more of the true details of life with a rather large pig in the house and c) immensely helpful for those of us with (non-house) pet pigs one of whom is inclined to get a bit "sharky" at certain times of the month. Points to Steve, Derek and all for being so open and honest, and so bloody brave (crazy?) with what they are doing at the Happily Ever Esther Sanctuary.Read review

Our beloved Uncle Stevie always has many wise things to share with us, his constant readers, and continues to faithfully inserts these pearls into the storytelling matrix of each new novel.  Sometimes they may be bashed directly into your psyche and at other times they may merely brush against you in passing but at whatever level of introduction, there will always be a direct appeal to his reader’s hearts at some point.  King writes ‘everyman’ like no other. 

King has an inexhaustible supply of wry observations to dole out via the mouths of his creations and you will find ... Read review

Reading true crime memoirs written by people you have to think of as career criminals can be a sobering undertaking. John Killick came to fame mostly because of the helicopter escape from Sydney's Silverwater prison aided by his then partner Lucy Dudko, but over many years Killick was well known to law enforcement agencies. He was a bank robber, a scam artist, a petty criminal, a bloody pest who became a violent offender. He's also a father, and a man who now openly admits he made some stupid mistakes in his life. Working now with young offenders in the criminal justice system, he's ... Read review