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The Dying Breed, Declan Hughes17/09/2008 - 1:25pmTHE DYING BREED is the third book in the Irish PI Ed Loy series from Declan Hughes, Ed being an Irishman who went home after living in the US for many years. A broken marriage and the tragic death of his young daughter are events that shaped him there, but his childhood in Ireland shaped him even more firmly, and a large number of the characters that he works with on a daily basis are connections from the past. But he's a PI (in a place where that's still a bit of a novelty) and he's ready for his next case (and pay cheque), so he takes on a very odd investigation in THE DYING BREED ... Read Review |
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Flawed, Jo Bannister15/09/2008 - 2:16pmFLAWED is the seventh in the Brodie Farrell, Daniel Hood and Jack Deacon books, although the blurb doesn't mention Daniel. As I've never read any of this series before, I was a little confused at the start as Daniel (who at that stage was a total unknown as far as I was concerned) takes centre stage in FLAWED, Jack Deacon is bit of a background character, and Brodie Farrell doesn't really get much focus until way later in the book. To add to the slight feeling of discombobulation, there was then a pretty steep learning curve to get to know who these three are and how they all fit ... Read Review |
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Inside Their Minds, Rochelle Jackson15/09/2008 - 11:48amOne of the strongest messages you get from a true crime book like INSIDE THEIR MINDS is that no matter how hard we try, no matter how much analysis goes on, there is something about so many of the more notorious criminals in our world that the rest of us will simply never fathom. Rochelle Jackson looks at some of the most notorious, mass murderer Martin Bryant, sex offender Karen Ellis, serial killer Ivan Milat, serial arsonist Peter Burgess, armed robber and serial escapee Brenden Abbott, child killer Kathleen Folbigg, murdered Matthew Wales and gangland killer Carl ... Read Review |
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Frantic, Katherine Howell (review by sally906)14/09/2008 - 1:52pmWow - what a great debut thriller - this was a real page turner for me the suspense was unrelenting. Sophie Phillips is a paramedic in Sydney, Australia. Not only is her work high stress with a non-stop pace - but her home life is just as busy with a baby boy and policeman husband, Chris The book opens right in the middle of the action - a bank robbery, the seventh in a series, has occurred and a guard is down. Sophie and her partner Mick are called to attend but are unable to save the guard. Almost immediately they are called to the emergency birth of a ... Read Review |
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A Florentine Death, Michele Giuttari12/09/2008 - 1:58pmMichele Giuttari is a real-life Italian policeman, head of the Squadra Mobile for around 8 years in his own right, so it's not too much of a stretch to believe that his central protagonist, Michele Ferrara, is more than a little autobiographical. The author has allowed his character to be slightly quirky, but undoubtedly he is the hero of the piece, and given the cases that Giutarri investigated, including the Monster of Florence, the reader has to assume that some of the events aren't that far from real life as well. As the bodies are found, seemingly pointlessly ... Read Review |
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Bankrupts and Bandits, Frederick Guilhaus12/09/2008 - 11:15amThere has been a slowly bubbling sub-genre of crime fiction based in the financial world that seems to have been going on for ages in Australia, and every now and then you'll fall across one of those books - normally in a second hand shop now. I can't remember where I spied BANKRUPTS AND BANDITS or even when for that matter, but it was sitting on my pile of unread local authors when I grabbed it the other day. I confess I'm not much interested in finance - high finance, bankruptcy, losing the business or anything else much to do with money (shocking isn't it) so I tend ... Read Review |
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Into the Darklands and Beyond, Nigel Latta11/09/2008 - 1:12pmNigel Latta did a session at the Crime & Justice Festival earlier this year, that to be brutally honest, we all ended up attending more by good luck than our own good judgement (the session we'd booked was cancelled) so we switched. I can't remember the last time I felt so lucky to switch to a session about subject matter that so isn't something you want to think about. Not only does Nigel Latta make you think - he makes you laugh - he makes you squirm uncomfortably - he makes you just a bit weepy at points. Mostly he makes you glad that there are people like him doing the ... Read Review |
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Pitcairn: Paradise Lost, Kathy Marks10/09/2008 - 12:00pmI confess that my knowledge of the history of Pitcairn was sketchy to say the least. I hope I knew slightly more of the history of the place than would have been gleaned from movies about the Bounty, but certainly I knew close enough to nothing about how the community was faring in the current day world, how it functioned for all those years, the nature of the life on Pitcairn, the difficulties in getting onto and off the island and so on. I remember reports of the child rape trials that were conducted at the time, but again, my knowledge was minimal, so this book came as an ... Read Review |
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As Darkness Falls, Bronwyn Parry09/09/2008 - 5:38pmA difficult setting, and a difficult task for the debut novelist. Bronwyn Parry does a fine job with bringing a small Australian bush town to life and this is the great strength of the read. You can taste the dust in the air and truly really picture everyone talking out the sides of their mouths (so thus to avoid the blowflies). Where it would be a stretch is in calling this a a crime novel, or even one of romantic suspense as there is no real mystery to solve or any pretense in constructing one. As a developing relationship drama it serves very well, and will draw the reader in ... Read Review |
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Execution Lullaby, Nigel Latta (review by sunniefromoz)09/09/2008 - 3:02pmNigel Latta is a clinical psychologist who specialises in assessing and treating sex offenders. It's dark place he has to visit on a regular basis and EXECUTION LULLABY reflects that. It's a compelling read if you have the stomach for it, with a very clever twist at the end. I found EXECUTION LULLABY unputdownableRead Review |
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The Murder Farm, Andrea Maria Schenkel09/09/2008 - 1:06pmTHE MURDER FARM was one of the books that I purposely read as I was seeing the author at a Melbourne Writers Festival session. I actually picked it up to take on the train in with me - a journey of just on an hour in total. I can't remember the last time I was tempted to stay on the train and keep reading because a book was so good, but this book definitely tempted me to do so. Based on true events, but with a different timeframe and a resolution (the true crime remains unsolved), THE MURDER FARM covers the brutal killing of an entire family. The family live on a small ... Read Review |
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Orpheus Rising, Colin Bateman09/09/2008 - 12:12pmORPHEUS RISING is a standalone from Colin Bateman, perhaps best known for his dark, comic previous offerings set mostly in Northern Island. Which this one isn't - it's set in the US, albeit with an Irish central character - Michael Ryan. Although you'd be hard pressed to remember he's supposed to be Irish, as the setting is 100% mid-Atlantic sort of nowhere particularly special. But then I'd imagine setting wasn't the whole point of ORPHEUS RISING, although I confess I'm not 100% sure what the point of the book was at all. Basically Michael is smitten when he meets ... Read Review |
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The Final Murder, Anne Holt19/08/2008 - 2:56pmAdam Stubo and Johanne Vik are a couple that met in an earlier book in this series by Scandinavian writer Anne Holt. Vik is a profiler with a prickly nature, and a complicated past. Stubo is a Police Superintendent with a gentler, kinder nature and a tragic background. Vik is hard to develop a personal liking for, Stubo's much easier. In THE FINAL MURDER their personal partnership has progressed a long way - the leave that Stubo is called back from is his paternity leave - Johanne has just given birth to their daughter. Stubo and Vik live together with her daughter from a first ... Read Review |
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Voodoo Doll, Leah Giarratano (review by Helen Lloyd)07/08/2008 - 2:07pmJoss Preston-Jones, his wife Isobel, and their young daughter Charlie are spending the evening at the home of Isobel’s boss when they are caught up in a vicious home invasion. Terrorised by the machete wielding, balaclava clad gang, Joss is horrified when he recognises one of them, and even worse he’s certain the moment of recognition was mutual. Joss has his own reasons for not telling the police of his suspicions, but he knows Henry Nguyen, nicknamed Cutter, will not rest until he has hunted down Joss and his family. This is just the most recent in a series of ... Read Review |
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The Build Up, Phillip Gwynne02/08/2008 - 4:16pmNailing my colours firmly to the aerial of the ute, I love a book that evokes a place and a people strongly. THE BUILD UP is set in and around Darwin in Australia's Northern Territory. A bit of a frontier town - they have a habit of referring to other states as "the shoe wearing states". Darwin's always been just that bit different from the rest of Australia - it's tropical, it's closer to Asia than to most other Australian capital cities, and it used to be a town where cultures intermingled comfortably (probably still is - it's been a long time between visits). Dusty' ... Read Review |
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The Ice Princess, Camilla Läckberg31/07/2008 - 8:12pmBilled, somewhat confusingly for me at least, as "the best selling thriller" from "Sweden's Agatha Christie", I was interested to read a quote from the author that said "When I write these stories, it is not the gory and macabre details that interest me; it is the psychology behind the crime. What makes a person commit the worst of all sins - taking another person's life." Now if there's one thing that I particularly like it's the exploration of the why behind crimes. THE ICE PRINCESS is set in the seaside town of Fjallbacka, a fishing village beset by the problems that ... Read Review |
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Blood From Stone, Frances Fyfield23/07/2008 - 2:21pmBLOOD FROM STONE was recently announced as the winner of the 2008 Duncan Lawrie Dagger, presented by the Crime Writers' Association in the UK. Reading a prize-winning novel for review always presents a slightly different set of questions to answer - the obvious one being why did it win? Frances Fyfield is the author of around 17 previous novels incidentally. BLOOD FROM STONE is essentially the story of Marianne Shearer; successful criminal barrister and defence counsel; wealthy and supposedly extremely self-assured - Marianne is not a conventionally attractive woman, ... Read Review |
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The Mystery of the Missing Masterpiece, Robin Bowles21/07/2008 - 1:54pmThe great thing about the Australian Crime Fiction scene these days is there is a book for just about every sort of reader. THE MYSTERY OF THE MISSING MASTERPIECE (and the earlier book THE CURSE OF THE GOLDEN YO-YO) are the sort of books that may appeal to people who like their crime on the lighter side, their romance on the slightly chaotic side, their humour on the overt side, and their clothes on the designer / name side. It won't hurt if you fancy those food porn style descriptions that make you drool into your toast and jam as well. In the MYSTERY OF THE MISSING ... Read Review |
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The Prophet Murders, Mehmet Murat Somer16/07/2008 - 3:22pmTHE PROPHET MURDERS is the first of six 'Hop-Ciki-Yaya' thrillers translated into English - written by engineer, banker and now management consultant Mehmet Murat Somer. The book introduces the reader to a central protagonist who is nothing, if not slightly unexpected. Our unnamed hero/heroine is referred to as abla throughout the book which means big sister (thanks to the handy little glossary included at the back of the book). He/she is a well-known identity in the transvestite sub-culture in Turkey. The reason for the dual references to this character is that he/she is ... Read Review |
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Soldier of Fortune, Edward Marston15/07/2008 - 1:49pmSOLDIER OF FORTUNE is the first book featuring Captain Daniel Rawson, although the author has written at least 40 other crime novels, in a range of different groups set in four distinct periods of history. This book opens with Daniel - the child - greeting his father on temporary leave from battle. Nathan is fighting to depose the King and put the Duke of Monmouth on the throne. The forces of the Duke lose and Nathan is put to death. Daniel and his Dutch mother flee England - to the safety of his mother's native land. Years later, as a young and dashing soldier, ... Read Review |