All the Reviews

BLUE BLOOD (aka CALL ME PRINCESS) is the debut novel in the Detective Louise Rick series from Danish writer Sara Blaedel. Blaedel is a million copy best-selling author, voted Denmark's most popular novelist three times since 2007, and an international success story.

BLUE BLOOD reads like a traditional police procedural, focused on who perpetrated the crime, and not a lot on why. The initial crime, the vicious beating and rape of a young woman, quickly becomes even more worrying with the sadly preventable death of a second victim, but it does provide the focus - an ... Read review

The third novel in the Paris Homicide Series, THE CITY OF BLOOD sees Chief of Police Nico Sirsky trying to solve a 30 year old murder, whilst his mother is desperately ill in hospital.

Readers of either of the earlier two novels will know that Sirsky is one of those wonderful grumpy, rumpled sorts of cops, who had a chequered love life, now resolved as his relationship with one of the specialist that solved his own health problems moves into something more permanent.

The investigation at the centre of THE CITY OF BLOOD's an odd one. Thirty years ago artist Samual ... Read review

You have just got to love a book that has an opening scene that takes you deep into the Vietnam jungle, right into the conflict and deep into the complicated politics of the war.

Or at least that's what it could have been like.

Some things are just never what they seem and Alby is now working as a still photographer whilst serving a suspension from the "day job" - photographer and spy with a covert Australian government department. He is never going to get on with the bureaucracy. The problem is that the movie he is working on is based on the life of a dead ... Read review

THRILL CITY has arrived. The fourth Simone Kirsch book from Australian writer Leigh Redhead has been much anticipated by fans of this fantastic, Melbourne-based, stripper turned Private Investigator series.

Mind you, it's not just Simone that I was pleased to see back, but Chloe, Sean, Alex, Curtis, all the other strippers, the bars and the way that the streetscape comes alive. When bestselling crime author Nick Austin pays Simone to let him follow her on a few jobs - to get the feel of how a female PI works - that leads to a writers festival, a crime panel, a couple of ... Read review

CINDERELLA GIRL is the second Conny Sjøberg book from Swedish author Carin Gerhardsen, the English title of the first book being THE GINGERBREAD HOUSE. Having missed that one when it came out in the middle of 2013, there's some catching up required.

It did seem to take a very long time for anything much to happen here. A lot of time is spent introducing the reader to two teenage sisters, living with their alcoholic mother, in less than satisfactory circumstances. Borderline neglected, these two girls are very used to looking after themselves, and some of their methods are ... Read review

There are a precious few Paddy Richardson books tucked within the stacks of unread novels around here - sort of like secreted Easter eggs, to be unearthed and devoured when required. Needing something that would be reliably good recently, TRACES OF RED was just the thing as Paddy Richardson is a particularly talented writer of psychological thrillers. Even if a twist can be seen coming, there's an emotional wallop that comes with it to keep the reader engaged. When the twist isn't so obvious, it still comes with a side serve of something to really make you think. And everyone of her ... Read review

Gary Kemble's first book SKIN DEEP was shortlisted for the 2016 Ned Kelly Award for a very good reason. It was a hands on, in your face, blood, guts and glory paranormal crime mashup with a quintessentially Australian bloke central character that worked incredibly well. So well that a reader would be excused for wondering where Harry Hendrick could be taken next. Straight into the web of a dominatrix with an overwhelming ability to manipulate her clients wasn't quite what I was expecting. 

Yet again, in BAD BLOOD, we have something that just shouldn't work for this reader ... Read review

Follow up to PROMISE, DEAD GIRL SING again takes Richards out into the field, away from his retirement, all in the defence of somebody he feels he owes.

Triggered by a phone call from Ida, a girl he never expected to hear from again (even though he left that phone on / charged / ready), Richards is suddenly not just responsible for the life of a missing girl, but also a dead cop and two dead girls. Somehow in the middle of the notorious schoolies week on the Gold Coast, in the middle of that seething mass of hormones, alcohol and crazy that descends every year, Richards ... Read review

I've been meaning to read this book for a while now - the subject being doctor's who kill. It's a smallish book that summarises a number of medical murders - including the best known from recent times - Dr Harold Shipman in the UK. But it doesn't just concentrate on Shipman. The book also looks at the cases such as the Australian experience with Deep Sleep Therapy at Chelmsford; Dr William Palmer who poisoned people for the insurance money; Dr Marcel Petiot in 1944 Occupied Paris; Dr Radovan Karadizic the psychiatrist who led the genocide in the Bosnian war and a number of other ... Read review