All the Reviews

In this seventh novel in Michael Robotham’s Luiz/O’Loughlin series the sense of unease and anticipation builds from the opening lines. Marnie Logan, young, married, with two children, is struggling to survive since her husband Daniel simply vanished a couple of years earlier and it quickly becomes obvious that there's a lurking presence in her life that has been there for a long time:

Marnie Logan often feels like she's being watched. Nothing she can quite put her finger on – a whisper of breath on the back of her neck, or a shadow in the corner of her

... Read review

The third in the Winemaker Detective series, NIGHTMARE IN BURGUNDY takes our hero Benjamin Cooker away from his native Bordeaux to Burgundy, where he is being named Chevalier du Tastevin by the Knights of the order that are proud of their slogan 'Never whine, always wine!'.

Which will probably give you a little bit of an indication of the tone of this charming series, set deep in the world of French wine, and the intrigues that seem to pile up alongside it. In NIGHTMARE IN BURGUNDY this intrigue revolves mostly around a series of extremely erudite graffiti attacks which ... Read review

A review book obtained through Netgalley THE POOR MAN'S GUIDE TO SUICIDE was one of those "why not" book choices. The overview describes it as "a powerful, slashing, terrifying, hilarious, explosive, sarcastic, misanthropic and lyrical black comedy about losing your will to live — and possibly getting it back."

Most of which is going to be very subjective based on the reader's own experience as THE POOR MAN'S GUIDE TO SUICIDE is an interesting beast.

Laced with irony and heavy on the sarcasm, the tone of this book needs the reader to get to grips with those ... Read review

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