All the Reviews

This was one of those fortuitous pickups in the Audio section of the library's BorrowBox app. Probably based on the reference to Magpie Murders in the blurb, which was a TV series I thoroughly enjoyed. It might also be because of the description of the main protagonist:

Meet Agatha Dorn, cantankerous archivist, grammar pedant, gin afficionado and murder mystery addict. When she discovers a lost manuscript by Gladden Green, the Empress of Golden Age detective fiction, Agatha's life takes an unexpected twist. She becomes an overnight sensation, basking in

... Read review

Listened to the audio of this one, read by Casey Withoos, it's a rehash of a number of Australian cold cases, many of which will be instantly recognisable to local listeners / readers. Where this outing varies a little is in the way the author, Mallett, discusses the cases from a forensic anthropologist / criminologist viewpoint, which did provide some interesting insights.Read review

Far away and long ago, when dragons still existed and the only arcade game was ping-pong in black and white, a wizard cautiously entered a smoky tavern in the evil, ancient, foggy city of Morpork...

A truly unmissable, beautifully illustrated collection of unearthed stories from the pen of Sir Terry Pratchett: award-winning and bestselling author, and creator of the phenomenally successful Discworld series.

I was so intrigued when I saw that this selection of short stories was published in October 2023, but, as usual ... Read review

Sherryl Clark is an author with a keen eye for a fascinating central female character, and Lou Alcott is one out of the box. A Melbourne based Private Investigator with a prominent organised crime figure for a grandfather, she's a disillusioned ex-cop with a major attitude when it comes to domestic violence perpetrators.

Starting out as a PI in a job facilitated by her grandfather, she finds herself in a small office with a boss who is impressively competent and a full time tech-expert who is very good at what he does. Assigned a couple of cases up front, one of them is a ... Read review

Don't be put off by LIARS by James O'Loghlin. It's a biggish book at 464 pages, but it fills that size admirably. Engaging, addictive, and intriguing, it's small town setting is used to build a complex story, with personalities, connections, backgrounds and people that are anything but.

Set in the fictional location of Bullford Point, a seaside town on the NSW Central Coast that seems very real. Quaint and slow paced, it's facing big changes with a major real estate development planned, and tension between incomers and long-term residents; and those long-term residents ... Read review

Another one of those periodical restarts of a favourite series, some of which actually get off the ground, some of which linger in the piles of unread books, mostly due to lack of time / organisation (which I'm working on).

THE BAT is the first of the Harry Hole series, which is now up to 13 books in total, a few of the later ones I've not had a chance to read yet. Released originally in 1997 I vaguely remember my first reading of THE BAT, some time after that, and was startled to find a Scandinavian writer setting a book in Australia. At the time I also remember it ... Read review

FALLEN ANGEL was released in 2019. I hate how behind I'm getting with my all time favourite authors, Chris(topher) Brookmyre being very unfairly on that accidental list. His take on people being people, particularly when some of them are flat out horrible people, is always drily delivered, pitch perfectly scathing, funny and flinch-inducingly pointed.

In the case of this novel you've got a couple of family groups, English well to do's with their own villas around a shared pool in Portugal. In 2002 Max Temple is a famous scientist, known for his take-down of a delusional ... Read review

DEATH OF A COUNTESS is set in May, 1957, London. In the aftermath of WWII, a group of friends are gathering for a party. Displaced people, they survived the worst of Hitler's concentration camps, so this party is a chance for them to celebrate their liberty, as well as to reconnect with their pasts and their culture. The second in the Midnight Heroes series, featuring Detective Andrew Perry, this is an historical novel that can be read as a standalone.

The tagline of the novel spells it out "Post-war London should have been safe. It wasn't", and one of the attendees at ... Read review

Watched Sam Neill's appearance on the ABC's version of "The Assembly" at the same time that I read this most unexpected, delightful, memorable memoir from a man who does tongue in cheek really well, but can never quite hide the humanity, kindness and thoughtfulness of the true self. An unusual sort of timeline in that it does take you down some of the expected pathways of memoir - childhood, growing up in various countries, the move to New Zealand, his family life, his acting career, his love of wine and so on. Interwoven with that, is unsurprisingly, the cancer diagnosis he now deals ... Read review