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Underbelly 6: True Crime Stories, John Silvester and Andrew Rule02/10/2007 - 3:56pmI'm overdosing on the Underbelly series a bit at the moment, using them as fillers between some hefty Crime Fiction tomes, and why not. In Underbelly 6 the authors take you thought the disappearance of a wife, mother and ex-TV game show model, a bit about the stitch up of the Mickelberg brothers, the slow poisoning death of a husband in Bendigo, the inexplicable death of a policeman and a range of other snippets. The tongue in cheek style of the authors just appeals.Read Review |
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The Brotherhoods, Arthur Veno02/10/2007 - 3:21pmThis book is sub-titled "Inside the Outlaw Motorcycle Clubs" and it reads as written by somebody who has sort of got inside the Outlaw Motorcycle clubs but isn't really. The author is an academic who has made a reputation studying Outlaw Motorcyle Clubs and as an "official" observer of their activities. He has performed this role as "official" observer on a number of major motorcyle runs - reporting on both the bikies and police activities. Interesting as an observational report both from the point of view of the policing strategies used in various locations, and from the ... Read Review |
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Murder at the Fortnight, Steve J. Spears02/10/2007 - 2:51pmMURDER AT THE FORTNIGHT is set in the testing arena of the "theatre" and the arts. Showbiz commentator, Stella Pentangelli is returning from a bit of a "rest" as it's known in the trade, after a stella career as a showbusiness commentator and heavyweight. Inspector Ng is an investigator in the police, renowned for his different methods and for not paying the slightest bit of attention to all the whispering about his slightly bizarre methods. Steve J Spears is a renowned Australian playright, and in MURDER AT THE FORTNIGHT he's created a wonderfully eccentric, slightly ... Read Review |
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Sun and Shadow, Åke Edwardson02/10/2007 - 2:23pmErik Winter is the youngest chief inspector in Sweden. He's quite the snappy dresser, an intuitive if slightly moody cop, consumed with his job and with his very pregnant girlfriend. When his father has a massive heart attack in Spain, he is pulled away from his job to spend a little time with him before he dies. His time in Spain is very conflicted, a completely different culture and experience which his parents have embraced totally, away from his girlfriend and his job, he's lost and uncomfortable. When he returns, a particularly gruesome double murder, almost on his doorstep drags ... Read Review |
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Death in Dreamtime, S.H. Courtier02/10/2007 - 1:19pmDeath in Dreamtime was published by Wakefield Crime Classics in 1993. Originally published in 1959, S H Courtier is one of the classic crime fiction authors in Australia who is little known / commented on. Which is a pity. In Death in Dreamtime Jock Corless ends up at Ungimillia, home of The Alchera or Dream Time Land - a sort of "theme park" of Aboriginal mythology. He's travelled through to New South Wales in response to a very cryptic letter from his cousin who, as Jock arrives, is found dead on the road. Death in Dreamtime certainly reads like a novel ... Read Review |
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The Society Murders, Hilary Bonney02/10/2007 - 12:53pmWhy was Melbourne so fascinated by the Wales-King murders. For the longest time, reporters went absolutely berserk, almost stalking the family for pictures and quotations. From the time the Margaret Wales-King and her husband Paul King went missing, the rumour mill went into overdrive and every utterance of anyone even remotely connected with the case was plastered all over the pages of every newspaper in town. The reason I wanted to read this book is to see if Hilary Bonney answered this question, and ultimately, she asked the same question. As the author states in the ... Read Review |
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Colour Scheme, Ngaio Marsh02/10/2007 - 12:48pmI was prompted to re-read this after an absence of 3(cough) something years (good grief when did those years happen), by a discussion on 4 Mystery Addicts (the best online crime fiction discussion group that I've ever found). Colour Scheme is one of Ngaio Marsh's books actually set in her homeland of New Zealand and was, I think, originally released in 1953 or 1943. Despite the age of the book it still holds up pretty well. There's a lovely underlying sense of humour about it, a bit too much stuffed shirt middle class English twit in some of the characters maybe, but ... Read Review |
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No Suspicious Circumstances, The Mulgray Twins (review by sunniefromoz)02/10/2007 - 12:44pmWhen your protagonist is a member of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and her partner is a trained drug-sniffer cat (yes, I said cat), you know the book isn’t going to be heavy on the gritty realism. NO SUSPICIOUS CIRCUMSTANCES is pure fluff so you do have to suspend disbelief to an extent. However, D.J. lurches from crisis to crisis, often endangering her life. Another day, another body. Yet one more attempt on her life. It all becomes extremely repetitious and predictable. As the suspects are killed off, there is no reason given for their deaths. We have no idea if ... Read Review |
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Punishment, Anne Holt02/10/2007 - 12:41pmPUNISHMENT is the first in a newly translated, extremely successful series in Europe, featuring academic and former FBI profiler Johanne Vik and Detective Inspector Adam Stubo of the Oslo police. When 9 year old Emilie goes missing her father is worried but not frantic. She'd done this once before just after her mother died. This time, they don't find her. When a little boy disappears and ultimately is returned to his parents; dead, no obvious cause of death, and a handwritten note: You Got What You Deserved; Oslo starts to worry. Police Superintendent Adam ... Read Review |
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Hidden, Katy Gardner02/10/2007 - 12:05pmMel Stenning has been a victim most of her life. Adopted by very conventional parents, she rebelled (but hated herself for doing it), getting into all sorts of situations and ultimately ending up in Australia, pregnant with no chance of having anything to do with her daughter Poppy's father. Returning to England she's a single mother, working for a living, finding it hard to cope, when she meets Simon. Never really convinced that Simon loves her, and constantly obsessed that he's remained involved with his last girlfriend Rosa, Mel is pregnant again. When Simon proposes, they marry ... Read Review |
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The Coroner's Lunch, Colin Cotterill01/10/2007 - 6:36pmIn 1975, and in the middle of Laos' new communist regime's teething problems, septuagenarian surgeon Dr Siri Paiboun finds himself dragged back to work. This time as the chief coroner, a post he has absolutely no training for and little or no equipment, staff, forensic support or resources of any kind. When the wife of a Party leader dies suddenly and the bodies of three Vietnamese soldiers are discovered, seemingly tortured and thrown into a local reservoir, Siri uses a very strange combination of autopsy results and assistance from his friends (living and dead) to ... Read Review |
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The Shape of Water, Andrea Camilleri01/10/2007 - 5:03pmTHE SHAPE OF WATER is the first in Camilleri's series of books featuring Inspector Salvo Montalbano. Set in Vigata, a fictional seacoast town in southern Sicily, The Shape of Water finds Montalbano investigating the death of a local influential in the very insalubrious surrounds of "The Pasture". The Pasture, once a goat grazing site is now the place to pick up a drug deal or a prostitute. Montalbano is already a bit suspicious about Luparello's death but when pressure starts being applied by a politician, a judge and a bishop he digs his heels in and insists that an ... Read Review |
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The Raft, Alan Mills01/10/2007 - 4:59pmTHE RAFT was originally published in 2005 before the author's recent CITY OF ANIMALS. Lydia and Martin Napier have gone through personal tragedy, their once perfect lives have been turned upside down and they are now struggling with the news that Martin has just lost his long term job writing and drawing an ongoing comic strip. Lydia's boss offers them the use of his property in Far North Queensland as a chance to get away and decide what they will do. The arrive, with their small daughter Ami, in Cairns at the ... Read Review |
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Visibility, Boris Starling01/10/2007 - 4:48pmVISIBILITY is the fourth book from Boris Starling. It is set in 1952 in London in the middle of one of the last great, lingering pea-souper fogs. VISIBILITY could be a reference to the fog which is all pervading and dictates all of the action and events in this post-war thriller. When biochemist Max Stensness is found drowned in early in the evening, in the middle of the fog, Herbert Smith, ex-MI5 and now member of Scotland Yard's Murder Squad gets the case because it's probably going to be an uninteresting one, and the rest of the murder squad are very unwelcoming and ... Read Review |
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The Grave Tattoo, Val McDermid01/10/2007 - 4:47pmTHE GRAVE TATTOO is a standalone book from the prolific and well-known author of, amongst many others, The Wire In The Blood series. When a tattooed, 200-year-old body is uncovered in the peat bogs of the Lake District, local girl turned Wordsworth Scholar Jane Gresham is instantly reminded of a local legend about Fletcher Christian, the man who led the mutiny on the Bounty, said to have returned surreptitiously to England from Pitcairn Island. Returning to her childhood home she is on the trail of a connection between the Wordsworth and Christian families and is ... Read Review |
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Murder By Wash Of Light, Geoff De Fraga01/10/2007 - 4:30pmOriginally published in 1970, this title was reprinted in 1991 by Weldon Publishing. From the book: "When a famous, but hated, movie producer seems to have been killed by the very film technique he claimed to have invented, journalist Peter Cardiman turns detective. The tightly woven plot, against a glamorous Canberra background, moves to a brilliant conclusion". I guess the "glamorous Canberra background" should have stuck up a warning flag - since WHEN has Canberra been glamorous (tongue in cheek comment obviously - snippy comments will be sent straight to ... Read Review |
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Rubdown, Leigh Redhead01/10/2007 - 4:16pmSimone Kirsch is a Stripper (exotic dancer) turned Private Investigator working the fringe of Melbourne constantly, it would seem, in and around the sex industry. In RUBDOWN Simone and her new PI boss Tony are called in to look for the daughter of a well-known, respectable barrister. His daughter seems to have got caught up in drugs and the sex industry herself. When she commits suicide whilst Simone is supposedly watching her from outside the flat, things start to get a lot more complicated than Simone and Tony want. Simone's PI license is threatened and so is her life. ... Read Review |
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Behind the Night Bazaar, Angela Savage01/10/2007 - 3:46pmAngela Savage won the Victorian Premiers Literary Award for Best Unpublished Manuscript by Emerging Author in 2004 for this book, then called Thai Died. Jayne Keeney is an expat Australian woman who, in order to avoid a predictable life, left Australia and started teaching English in Thailand. Whilst helping out a student by doing some surveillance on a cheating partner she discovers she has quite a flair for detecting, and that there is a demand for this type of service. She gives up teaching and sticks to working as a private detective in Bangkok doing a good trade in ... Read Review |
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Night Bus, Giampiero Rigosi01/10/2007 - 3:29pmFrancesco is a bus driver and gambling addict. Leila is a hustler, picking up men in night clubs and robbing them. Francesco is having big problems with Bear, a debt collector who doesn't have that nickname for no reason. Leila gets more than she bargains for when she finds the key to a locker on a man she's in the process of robbing. Following that key to the associated locker finds Leila involved in something much bigger than she could have expected. Francesco and Leila find allies in each other as Leila unexpectedly turns up on Francesco's bus late one night and in big ... Read Review |
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Fags and Lager, Charlie Williams01/10/2007 - 3:22pmTaking up from DEADFOLK (a debut with a punch if there ever was one), FAGS AND LAGER finds out just how far Royston Blake, head doorman at Hoppers and self-confessed hard man of Mangel, will go for free stack of tinnies and fags. It seems it's a fair way, as long as you don't mind that Blake does everything his own way (even though he's singing the theme tune from Minder - you just can't help thinking a karaoke version of My Way would be better). Mangel is a grim little town full of grim little individuals and Blake rules (or at least he thinks he does). ... Read Review |