All the Reviews

Class Act, Ged Gillmore

Book two in the Bill Murdoch series, CLASS ACT follows up almost immediately from the action in the first outing, HEADLAND. This series, now up to three novels with the release of BASE NATURE in 2018, is well worth getting into.

Set in small-town, seaside New South Wales, based around reluctant Private Investigator, ex-bad boy, Bill Murdoch, the first book introduces him, his background and the events that bring him to small town life, the big house by the beach and the fancy car. It may be best if you start this series with the first book if possible, as the lead up to ... Read Review

Broken Silence, Helen Vivienne Fletcher

BROKEN SILENCE is the story of seventeen-year-old Kelsey, a kid who has had a lot to deal with in life. Confused and very vulnerable, she cared for her gravely ill mother until she had to go into care. Her remarried father has disappeared from her life, and Kelsey finds herself living in a scruffy flat with her brother Pete and a couple of his mates. She feels rejected by her father, in her brother's road, and she's hiding the physical signs of abuse that her boyfriend regularly doles out. Her life is a mess, and she's hurting, physically and emotionally.

The character of ... Read Review

Tess, Kirsten McDougall

A psychological suspense novel with touches of paranormal, TESS is a beautifully balanced, chilling, claustrophobic and clever novel. 

Set in small town New Zealand, at the turn of the millennium, TESS is, as the blurb puts it "a gothic love story about the ties that bind and tear a family apart." It's also a story of how rewarding an unlikely friendship can be, and about the power of connecting with the other. It's about reaching out to somebody for the sake of kindness, contact and being a human being in a world that sometimes seems committed to the other direction. ... Read Review

Painted, Kirsten McKenzie

Horror isn't a sub-genre I spend a lot of time reading, so PAINTED, being a mystery with a horror overlay, wasn't a book that came with much in the way of preconceptions or expectations. The premise is that when an extremely reclusive artist instructs a law firm on the manner in which is vast art collection is to be distributed after his death, it turns out that the original lawyer that Kubin was used to dealing with has also died, and the firm is now run by his arrogant, money-hungry, insensitive son. Who decides that the instructions from his client aren't worth bothering with, and ... Read Review

Hot Flush, Rosy Fenwicke

Comedic crime fiction has to be one of the hardest sub-genre's to pull off. Comedy is so subjective, and crime fiction often tackles tricky subject matter. Add to that a hefty supernatural component and HOT FLUSH is a book that's appealing to a specific sub-set of readers.

The central character here is the main voice, Euphemia Sage. She's a menopausal woman whose first hot-flush triggers a genetic switch that gives her supernatural powers. So the idea is that she gets super hearing ability post menopause, which then allows her to track down nefarious goings on.  ... Read Review

Agatha Raisin and the Wellspring of Death, M.C. Beaton

The reader of this site may recall that I had a flurry of listening to Agatha Raisin audio books a while ago, when seemingly trapped in never-ending long driving days. They were fun, repetitive sure, a bit on the bitchy side occasionally, and it turns out nothing like the TV series made of the same books. Which made for some amusement and confusion as THE WELLSPRING OF DEATH and THE WIZARD OF EVESHAM were aired on TV whilst I was listening to them in the car. Needless to say TV Agatha is nothing like book Agatha, and I kind of got to the stage where I preferred the TV version. Even ... Read Review

The Hidden Room, Stella Duffy

Stella Duffy was absent from the crime writing scene for a long time until THE HIDDEN ROOM was released in 2017. The book then made the shortlist for the 2018 Ngaio Marsh Awards, because, in a nutshell, Duffy knows how to develop strong, realistic characters, and weave them into a plot that's clever, well paced and intriguing.

Classified as "domestic noir", this is a story about things very close to home. In this case Laurie (born in China / adopted by a US family) spent her childhood in the American desert, her family members of a secretive cult. Years later, she and her ... Read Review

The Lost Taonga, Edmund Bohan

THE LOST TAONGA and A SUITABLE TIME FOR VENGEANCE by Edmund Bohan were both entered in the 2018 Ngaio Marsh Awards, with THE LOST TAONGA making it onto the longlist. Both these books are from Bohan's Inspector O'Rorke series (six and seven respectively), historical crime fiction set in New Zealand in the 1880's. Bohan's is known in his native land as an accomplished biographer and novelist, and singer, having published a range of historical non-fiction as well.

Needless to say in both these novels, the historical aspects are delivered in a comprehensive manner, delivering ... Read Review

Painting in the Shadows, Katherine Kovacic

Katherine Kovacic's Alex Clayton series (all two books of them so far...) could be used as a teaching tool for aspiring Australian crime novelists on achieving balance between personal backstory and plot, and how to craft a realistic strong female lead character, because they are both extremely good examples of that and much more. There's always been a bit of chatter about second novel syndrome and it's hard to ignore as there have been some amazing debuts followed up by something that's not as strong, confident or unsurprisingly as original, but PAINTING IN THE SHADOWS has none of ... Read Review