All the Reviews

Denny Day, the Life and Times of Australia's Greatest Lawman, Terry Smyth

It's been way too long for such this book to garner a mention hereabouts. Circumstances have intervened which means I've got notes, review documents, and bits and pieces of things that should have been done stacked up to the ceiling and am now going to really make an effort to get my act together.

DENNY DAY is an account of the lawman who, amongst other things in his life, tracked down the perpetrators of the Myall Creek Massacre which occurred on the 10th June 1838.

Details of Denny Day himself might be a tad on the sketchy side, but that is more than made ... Read Review

The Girl in Kellers Way, Megan Goldin

There's some disquiet about the place these days over the use of "Girl" in titles of books. We all know where it comes from and the marketing decisions that seem to be feeding it. Suffice to say it's a trend that makes me (an old old woman) a bit squeamish. Especially as neither Julie or Mel, the protagonists in Goldin's debut domestic noir - THE GIRL IN KELLERS WAY are girls.They are women dealing with a very real experience that confronts many women - the creepy, controlling behaviour of a man in their lives and violent death.

Told in two main narrative streams, THE ... Read Review

Call for the Dead, John Le Carre

Over the summer, along with reviewing new novels, I’m also planning to review some of my favourites starting with John Le Carre’s Call For The Dead. Although Le Carre is arguably the greatest spy novelist of all time his first two novels, Call For The Dead and A Murder Of Quality, fit more closely within the crime/mystery genre. It was only after the release of Le Carre’s third novel, The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, that he became known as a writer of espionage novels.

Call For The Dead was released in the same year as  ... Read Review

The Man Who Died, Antti Tuomainen

If they are giving out an award for the most unexpected crime fiction novel, then THE MAN WHO DIED would have to be an odds on favourite. 

Narrated by Jaakko Kaunismaa, this is the story of a Finnish mushroom entrepreneur, based in a small town, building a successful business after being made redundant in his last career. He has a beautiful home, a thriving business, faithful employees, a loving wife who cooks elaborate meals for him, and a perfect life. 

Until he finds they have mysterious competitors just around the corner, when a new mushroom export ... Read Review

Preservation, Jock Serong

"As he closed the door behind him, he imagined the man becoming inert without the human company that lit him. The eyes would go cold and dark and the voice would recede somewhere, into some silent depth beyond the reach of the virtuous. Or the sane.

In the space of ten minutes, the man in the bed had unnerved Joshua Grayling completely."

The wreck of the Sydney Cove in Bass Strait, the attempt by seventeen of the survivors to sail a longboat to Sydney only to be wrecked a second time and their desperate walk of survival to Sydney, with only three survivors, ... Read Review

Into the Fog, Sandi Wallace

Anybody who has spent any time in the Dandenong Ranges will know all about the pea-souper fogs that often accompany rain storms of almost biblical proportions. Add to that the dense, heavy canopy and undergrowth of the Mountain Ash rainforest up there and you're hard pressed to see your own feet on occasions, let alone find 3 missing kids who have disappeared from a police-run camp high up in the Hills. 

INTO THE FOG is the third Georgie Harvey, John Franklin mystery from Dandenong-ranges based Sandi Wallace, and she's used her local knowledge of the place to great effect ... Read Review

All the Hidden Truths, Claire Askew

ALL THE HIDDEN TRUTHS is an examination of the circumstances that result in one young man choosing to take the lives of his peers.  This is not a complicated novel to follow and the mounting of any soapboxes via the mouths of the characters is subtly done.  ALL THE HIDDEN TRUTHS does not rely upon graphic descriptions of the slayings but instead deep dives into the complexity of grief felt by blindsided communities when school shootings occur.   How do we find the reasons why, when there are no clues left behind? Why do we look elsewhere for blame, when it could only sensibly be laid ... Read Review

Fault Lines, Doug Johnstone

Imagine a very different Edinburgh, one where constant earthquakes, tremors and aftershocks are a regular part of life. This is the setting for Fault Lines which opens with Surtsey setting foot on Inch, a small island in the Firth of Forth which was formed after a volcanic eruption 25 years earlier. Although Surtsey has always felt an affinity with Inch, having been born on the day it was formed, she is not there to go sightseeing, Surtsey is there to meet her boss, PhD supervisor and lover Tom. When Tom is found dead on the shoreline Surtsey panics, quickly grabs Tom’s phone and ... Read Review

Jack's Return Home - Get Carter, Ted Lewis

In 1971 the film Get Carter starring Michael Caine was released and it has since become arguably one of the greatest gangster films of all time. The film was so successful after it's release that the book upon which it was based, Jack's Return Home, was renamed after the film. For this review I'm using the original title.

"The rain rained. It hadn't stopped since Euston. Inside the train it was close, the kind of closeness that makes your fingernails dirty even when all you're doing is sitting there looking out of the blurring windows. Watching the dirty backs of ... Read Review