All the Reviews

There's nothing new about a central police character as damaged as the victims they are fighting for, and in many ways DI Helen Grace is one straight out of the mould. She's driven, single-minded, single and a devoted cop and good and supportive boss. She's not a woman who is just suffering from "women's issues" - she's a cop with a hard and complicated past, dealing with it in a manner that's sad and yet somehow unsurprising. This is a women who is beating herself up on a daily basis, and still operating as a good, hard-working, dedicated cop. Who is hunting one of the most bizarre ... Read review

As the blurb puts it "Scott Guy was a good man, a great dad, a salt-of-the-earth farmer who was gunned down at his front gate for no conceivable reason." "His death enthralled us, partly because it was so inexplicable, but also because there were no obvious suspects."

It's embarrassing that when a book like this comes along, you realise that for a case that gripped the nation of New Zealand, there's been little or no information about it in these parts. And that's particularly disappointing when you think of the forensic detail thrown at us from other parts of the world ... Read review

Brief but beautifully evocative, sparse yet hugely informative, THE THIEF is another example of Japanese noir sensibility. Told in first person, Nishimura is a pickpocket who targets the rich by preference. Working his highly skilled way through the crowds of Tokyo, he's an unrepentant thief, and a fragile man. Manipulated into a much bigger crime by the gangster Kizaki, Nishimura's life might be spiralling out of control, yet he is still able to reach out to a young boy. The relationship between the man and the boy is touching and poignant as he gives advice on the best way to steal ... Read review

In THE TRUTH WILL OUT, author Jane Isaac has created the beginnings of a classic British police procedural series. At the heart of the book is DCI Helen Lavery, a cop leading a team of murder investigators. She's a widow with two teenage sons, living in a shared caring arrangement with her own mother, balancing the difficulties of raising kids with a full-time demanding career. Because of that slightly different angle, Lavery as a widow, there's a slightly different feeling about the personal. The arrangement with her aging mother assisting with the raising of her grandkids, the loss ... Read review

Deserving Death is the seventh novel in the Ella Marconi series from ex-paramedic Australian author, Katherine Howell. This is a series that just keeps getting better and better. It’s not just solid plotting and good characters that make this novel work so well, there are also the dual perspectives of the police and the paramedics, both of whom look at a crime scene with different eyes. In Deserving Death the contrast is even more stark, as the victims themselves are emergency services personnel – found not just by other paramedics, ... Read review

Immediately you'd have to wonder what on earth this reader would be doing even attempting a book like THE ROOK - an urban fantasy thriller. With paranormal aspects, and spies, and something about world domination.

Although it starts out with a young woman waking in a London park with no memory, surrounded by dead bodies, wearing, what is allegedly, somebody elses body. Okay, so I thought crime fiction for the first couple of minutes, and then got a bit of a sinking feeling with the whole body thing, although a bit of a sense of humour from the outset certainly helped the ... Read review

Maths not being a strong point, I got myself tied up in knots reading THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN MIND. Perhaps it wasn't helped by not having read the earlier book in the series, but I could not, for the life of me, get the timeframes straight in my own mind.

Twenty-five years after Julia Rendel's father was killed at a CIA base in Laos, she asks Maier to investigate his murder. Not long after this Rendel is kidnapped and Maier is left in a country he doesn't seem to know a lot about, working with the scant information provided before Rendel's disappearance, searching for ... Read review

ONE STEP TOO FAR is one of those books that make you think you need a new "category". One that emphasises the number of clues that were there, right under your nose, that you missed because you were too busy turning pages.

Right from the outset everything about Emily (soon to be Cat) Coleman (that's changed as well) is more than a bit mysterious. It's not just that she's walked away from a marriage and child - that's been known to happen. It's the idea that she adores that child, loves her husband, and the family pet into the bargain, and despite the difficulties with her ... Read review

Having not read any of the Vin Cooper series this started out as an exercise in seeing if I could catch up in a hurry. So, for newcomers to the series as well, a few points. Cooper's an interesting character in an over-the-top military style thriller. Definitely a bit of an all-action hero with the physical prowess and durability of a tank, he's also got a touch of humour about him that somehow makes him slightly less hard-boiled than you'd expect. It did, however, leave this reader with a sneaking suspicion that there could be more than just Cooper's tongue firmly planted in his ... Read review