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Girl of the Mountains, Trish McCormack21/03/2026 - 4:47pmWhen they said write what you know, Trish McCormack got the memo. Growing up at the Franz Josef Glacier in New Zealand, and having worked in various national parks in NZ, her settings are always gloriously depicted. In this case Mt Cook is the central location, with two timelines wind through the story of Kath, her family, and her disappearance. The two timelines are 1946 - when a volatile Stella is hired as mountain guide, vowing never to return to the more expected domestic life of a woman. She roams the Southern Alps, alongside her mentor Philip and a troubled returned ... Read Review |
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Bang!, Taliyah Stone20/03/2026 - 2:59pmThe website of author Taliyah Stone has an interesting byline:
BANG! is the first entrant in a trilogy to be followed up by DIRTY! (to be released 3rd July, 2026) and TAKEN! (to be released late 2026). Set in the early 1980's in Perth, Western Australia, the opening novella (125 or so pages) tells the story of the murder of brothel madam Destiny ... Read Review |
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One True Word, Snæbjörn Arngrímsson20/03/2026 - 2:38pmThe author is well known in his native Iceland for translations, books for children, and as a publisher, but ONE TRUE WORD is his first thriller, and it's guaranteed to divide readers. The premise is, on the one hand, straight forward, in that after an increasing period of snarking at each other, Júlía and her husband Gíó head off on a small boat to an uninhabited, small island in the middle of a freezing fjord as part of a research trip that Júlía claims is absolutely vital for her current work assignment. She then abandons him there in the depths of the Icelandic winter ... Read Review |
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Dark Desert Road, Tim Ayliffe16/03/2026 - 2:57pmWe've been in sovereign citizen territory a lot in recent crime fiction releases, and DARK DESERT ROAD takes us back there again, although coming at it from the different viewpoints of identical twin sisters on alternative sides of the law. Kit McCarthy hasn't seen her sister Billie for over ten years. A childhood blighted by a dangerous and violent father, now imprisoned, and a family that disintegrated, Kit's a cop in NSW, dealing with a pain medication addicted mother, she's stayed away from her sister who seemingly happily followed their father into a life of crime. ... Read Review |
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The Shark, Emma Styles10/03/2026 - 7:08pmA serial killer is stalking the suburbs of Perth in Western Australia, targeting young girls and women, swimmers whose bodies are later found on the shoreline. Their deaths are gruesome, the police slow to react, leaving two young women - Raych and Carmen - with feelings of disempowerment, anger and vengeance, who find themselves in the position of taking matters into their own hands. It's important to note that this is not yet another serial killer novel - it's a story of two young women who have had enough. THE SHARK is a novel built on fury. The anger of young women ... Read Review |
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A Lesson in Dying, Ann Cleeves10/03/2026 - 3:14pmOne of those book series in audio format I've been borrowing from the library on and off now, A LESSON IN DYING is the first in the Inspector Simon Ramsay series, which is one of those quintessentially British, small town mystery, where the murders often have that slightly dotty sense about them (in this one a particularly nasty headmaster is hanged in the playground on the night of the school Hallowe'en party). Because it's been a while since I listened to this - think of this more as a note to self than a full review, but I really like this series. Ramsay is a great character, as ... Read Review |
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Shellybanks, Louise Milligan03/03/2026 - 10:00amFollowing up very closely behind Milligan's debut novel PHEASANT'S NEST, SHELLYBANKS features the same main character, journalist Kate Delaney, and many of the same themes - violence and abuse of women, the PTSD and long-term affects of that on victims, and those that love them. Whilst it's absolutely not necessary to have read the first book in the series, as there are plenty of throwbacks to the shocking and traumatising events in Delaney's life, it would also help to understand the depths of the PTSD and trauma she, and her much loved ... Read Review |
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Left Behind, Martine Kropkowski26/02/2026 - 1:57pmA mystery thriller that turns into an unresolved dystopian nightmare was not what I was expecting when I started LEFT BEHIND. Nor was it necessarily obviously where it was heading as the story of a camping trip to K'gari started out. Two couples, connected through Des and Luke's shared training as paramedics, Annabelle and Luke are married - and there are tensions. Des and Julianni are recently dating, and in the early stages of discovery and doubt. The tension between the married couple is palpable, right from the start of the story, although most of the ... Read Review |
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Dirt Trap, Michael Burge24/02/2026 - 2:01pmTwenty years have passed since the brutal death of James Brandt’s beloved cousin. Will an inquiry into gay hate-crimes offer any resolution? In 2021 journalist Michael Burge released his first novel Tank Water, a coming-of-age thriller that tackled the issue of homophobic violence, particularly from the late 1980s through to the 1990s. Protagonist James Brandt had left his hometown of Kippen in rural New South Wales as a very young man, only returning after years away when his cousin Tony was found dead under the local ... Read Review Newtown Review of Books |
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The Gambler, J.P. Pomare24/02/2026 - 10:00amAny new novel from J.P. Pomare needs to be approached with caution. You're going to have to make sure that you've cleared your calendar, stacked up the pre-made meals, and maybe set some alarms to remind you of the animal medication schedules and feeding rounds, because I can just about guarantee that the "well I don't know what's going on here" is rapidly going to suck you in and hang onto you until the final page. He's a deceptive writer, this man. Setting up a story in THE GAMBLER that started out almost gently, creating a few doubts that the planning mentioned above ... Read Review |
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Finders Keepers, Natalie Barelli20/02/2026 - 4:10pmAuthor Natalie Barelli's website has a tagline on it that says 'Psychological Thriller Author' and it lists 10 books written by her (another due out in 2026), although FINDERS KEEPERS is the first I've read. You can definitely see where the psychology comes into this as she's created a couple of main characters that seem to be in desperate need of psychological counselling at the very least. Rose (aka Iris) is a woman with so much baggage she's going to need a large trolley to keep it moving, and Emily is an author who is, it turns out, a disaster to be around. ... Read Review |
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The Menu of Happiness, Hisashi Kashiwai20/02/2026 - 1:13pmThis is now the third book in The Kamogawa Diner series which I think now has to be said is considerably more about the meals / food than it is about the investigation. The premise is simple, using an obscure advertisement in a Culinary Magazine, the father and daughter duo behind the Kamogawa Diner draw anyone to them that has a longing for food or a particular dish that they remember but now cannot access. He's the chef, she's the head of the detective agency although these days that's mostly her getting the details of the client's longing (craving), and leaving it to her father to ... Read Review |
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Weeping Angels, Riley Chance19/02/2026 - 4:17pm
Lauren Brown has a booming business on her hands - an agency that helps victims of family violence obtain protection orders - something notoriously difficult in a world that seems more comfortable in forcing women to prove guilt, then men to prove innocence, but Lauren's also no amateur. She obsessively guards her privacy, and her past, preferring her personal life ... Read Review |
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Surveillance, Riley Chance19/02/2026 - 4:06pmJournalist Grace Marks needs a good story, but she has no idea how good a story she's unearthing when she starts out investigating a surge in suburban minor crime. I mean who would put that much organisation into a series of minor crimes. Maybe a security company CEO, a company that offers some very new technology for people to use in thwarting the aforementioned sorts of minor crimes. Only the CEO of Erebus Optics turns out to be as suspicious of the owner of the American technology at the core of what his company offers, and despite the fact that Will Manilow's business ... Read Review |
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The Impossible Fortune, Richard Osman18/02/2026 - 3:48pmThe last thing this series needs is another review, and besides I've left this way too long and I'm relying on the notes I made at the time of reading. Well I say reading, but I listen to this series via audio books mostly because as much as I loved Leslie Manville's narration, I've come to really enjoy Fiona Shaw's work as well. THE IMPOSSIBLE FORTUNE is the fifth book in the series now, and unless you've been in a coma or doing some determined avoidance, most readers of crime fiction these days will have heard of Elizabeth, Joyce, Ron and Ibrahim. Whilst there is a ... Read Review |
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Running Amok, Paul E. Mullen11/02/2026 - 12:07pmI'm not sure what alerted me to the existence of this book, and I'm well aware of the exploitative and often sensationalised discussion around real-life lone killers, and have, in recent years been turned right off some true crime narratives because of it. The author of this work, Paul E Mullen however has the following bio:
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When the Deep Dark Bush Swallows You Whole, Geoff Parkes05/02/2026 - 11:33amWHEN THE DEEP DARK BUSH SWALLOWS YOU WHOLE is the first in the Ryan Bradley series (the second - THE FIRST LAW OF THE BUSH was released on 6/1/2026 prompting me to extract the digit and read this!), set in New Zealand's rugged and remote King Country, around the small town of Nashville. A community made up of people who have been there for generations, relying mostly on agriculture as the main economic driver, it's a quiet place, with the spectre of a series of disappearances of women hanging over it. Set in 1983, the ... Read Review |
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No One Was Supposed to Die at This Wedding, Catherine Mack04/02/2026 - 1:31pmI cannot explain it either. One look at the blurb of this and you'd think I'd be backing away at the fastest possible rate. A couple of chapters in and I was wondering what on earth I thought I was reading.Read Review |
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Wrongdoings, L A Joye04/02/2026 - 12:26pmAn historical mystery set in 1943 New Zealand, featuring soon to be retired DI John MacBride, WRONGDOINGS is a book that's centred, unsurprisingly given the timeframe, around the fallout from war. DI MacBride is a veteran of WWI service with the NZ Expeditionary Force, a man on the cusp of retirement, really suffering from severe burnout. The victim in this story, Marine Randolph Harrington, is a saxophonist in a visiting United States Marine jazz band, found murdered on the banks of the Oreti River. The investigation is a hard one, what with MacBride's only supporting ... Read Review |
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The Clock House Murders, Yukito Ayatsuji03/02/2026 - 3:44pmThe 4th book in the Bizarre House Murders (sometimes known as The House Murders) series by Japanese author Yukito Ayatsuji. A well known writer of Japanese detective and mystery fiction, he's an adherent to the classic rules of the genre, always incorporates reflective and poignant elements, and in this series has constructed a series of elaborate locked room settings (see below). In this outing the Clock House is a remote, custom built house with multiple wings (there's a floorplan to explain it all), commissioned by ... Read Review |