All the Reviews

Finn Bell presents as a surprisingly pragmatic creature for all the challenges he is required to face in his every day existence.   Laconically hilarious plus unnervingly calm in a tight spot, is our Finn.  This is the strength of DEAD LEMONS, as the humour is presented shockingly side by side with all the heartbreaking details of the town’s murders.  The dark is balanced with the redemptive light that emanates from Finn finding his way back to what it is that makes the world turn – the complexities of human relationships.

DEAD LEMONS is an absorbing and disturbing window ... Read review

A new Pufferfish novel will always be a thing of joy - whiteboard lists or no whiteboard lists and BIG RED ROCK fits the bill perfectly. Of course you will need to have a love of self-deprecating wit that's so dry you'd swear it originated in Uluru rather than Hobart. You will need to like the bear-prodding style of investigation, that's actually covering up an acute ability to observe, retain and analyse the smallest drips of information. And in this outing, be prepared for some personal revelations - in that dry, understated, not bothered sort of style that Pufferfish is the ... Read review

Perhaps don't do what I'm doing and binge listen to these.

As much as I prefer something light, not necessarily requiring steely attention to catch the various nuances when I'm driving, I will admit there have been points where if I hear something about Agatha's middle age, bear-like eyes and good legs again I'll probably cause a major traffic incident. Having said that I don't mind these audio books as a companion for the constant kilometres or in the sewing room when I'm trying to fathom what goes where and how the hell are you supposed to achieve that! 

... Read review

Happily, we encounter here more of the same winning ingredients once again in THE GIRL WHO TAKES AN EYE FOR AN EYE. There is the resourceful and charming journalist Blomkvist, the enigmatic and bitingly intelligent hacker Lisbeth Salander, and another action based plot populated with frightening villains.  The relationship between the two mains is again reading gold (though we see less of it in this outing) and the dynamic between the two remains the strongest aspect of this now legacy series. 

Author David Lagercrantz confidently continues his commissioned task of ... Read review

BLACK BUTTERFLY is the third Secret Service novel featuring tall, dark, suave spy about town Lucifer Box. Although it will come as a bit of a shock to readers of these books to discover that Lucifer has gotten old, fast approaching retirement. Good grief! Old age comes to Lucifer Box ... who would have believed it could ever happen. Worse still, this is billed as the final of the Lucifer Box novels which is particularly sad for those readers who have come to love the overly energetic lovelife, spycraft and general man about towning of the great Lucifer Box.

But retirement ... Read review

I've spent a lot of time driving recently, and these really work as a background to the endless kilometres.

Having kind of liked the TV Agatha Raisin series, I thought trying one of these as an audiobook for one of the recent long drives would be worth a go. I personally prefer things on the lighter side when I should be concentrating on driving, and a change of options was required after having spent a lot of hours with Phryne Fisher.

Obviously the Agatha Raisin of the books is nothing much like the TV version - so if you're hoping for a direct match you may ... Read review

Back in the late 1970's Dave Warner released music that became part of the soundtrack of my life. When I discovered CITY OF LIGHT, MURDER IN THE FRAME, EXXXPRESSO and other books by him in the late 1990's / early 2000's I was more than a bit chuffed to think a musical hero was also a lover of crime fiction. And I bloody loved all of those books.

CITY OF LIGHT was Dave Warner's first book (from memory), it won the 1996 West Australian Premier's Award for best fiction, and it introduced a young police constable, and aspiring footballer Snowy Lane. In this book Lane is ... Read review

You have to admire any author who doesn't just create a profoundly unlikeable protagonist but then grants them full permission to be as ordinary a human being as they can possibly be. In SOLD, Blair Denholm's creation, Gary Braswell is the sort of bloke that you'd be forgiven for belting over the head with a shovel, after watching him dig his own grave any day. 

Comic in styling, SOLD is set on the Gold Coast in the sweltering heat of summer, where Braswell takes the not-so-big step from used car salesman to real estate, at about the same time that his gambling debts are ... Read review

Frequent readers of crime fiction tend to be over some plot element or standard form or another. It's hard to avoid getting a little jaded when a particular structure shows up time and time again - and in my case it's been serial killers for sometime now. Which does at least mean that it's a discomfortingly nice surprise when you come across an interesting twist on the tired old form.

Which, of course means, that you've taken a punt on something with a blurb that's guaranteed to be off-putting. For this reader there was something about the author's bio and the blurb of ... Read review