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Old Rage, Sheila Hancock30/12/2024 - 4:49pmI love Sheila Hancock's view of the world. She comes across as acerbic, pointed, and not particularly interested in cutting fools any slack. She also is clearly a compassionate, loving woman who has lead a life. I'm not sure I go along with the idea that this is a book of overwhelming rage, as I have seen some reviews suggest. She just seems mightily pissed off with a lot of aspects of life, and being an ageing (but nowhere near her) woman myself, I have a lot of sympathy with the things that make you furious, although I don't think I'm quite at the stage of shouting at the TV yet, and there's no pigeons in this neighbourhood.Read Review |
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The Battle of the Generals, Roland Perry30/12/2024 - 2:35pmI saw this reviewed somewhere, and now can't find where. Which is a right pain because it was that work that tweaked my interest. Don't read enough history, and my knowledge of circumstances around World War II in particular, is sketchy to say the least. Not so sketchy as to be unaware of Douglas MacArthur and his "I will return" line. I'd also been aware of Thomas Blamey and his role in the defence of Australia, and his sidelining. I had no idea that both of them had extremely questionable personal morals. Okay so that's too polite. Macarthur's morals would make him a ... Read Review |
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The 7th Woman, Frédérique Molay29/12/2024 - 4:11pmLe French Book have released some excellent French crime fiction, translated into English, of which THE 7TH WOMAN by Frédérique Molay is already an international bestseller. As the blurb puts it "Winner of France's prestigious Prix du Quai des Orfèvres prize for best crime fiction, named Best Crime Fiction Novel of the Year, and already an international bestseller with over 150,000 copies sold." A police procedural built around Chief of Police Nico Sirsky, there is a serial killer stalking and killing women in a macabre and vicious manner. The connection between these woman ... Read Review |
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Shakespeare is Hard, But So is Life, Fintan O'Toole19/12/2024 - 5:46pmA short, concise and absolutely fascinating take on a number of the well known plays of Shakespeare, in a series of essays:
Free of academic speak, jargon and grand gestures, what this precise and very informative collection does is provide fresh insights into the power plays within the plays themselves. Some ... Read Review |
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Gunnawah, Ronni Salt19/12/2024 - 10:50amRonni Salt’s debut is historical crime fiction at its best, with a strong sense of place and time and wonderful characters at its core. Full review at Newtown Review of BooksRead Review |
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He Went Back for His Hat, Justice Michael Lee15/12/2024 - 4:27pmTRIGGER WARNING - this book discusses a civil case that revolved around an alleged rape. There are some challenging aspects to the observations and testimony recorded here.
This ... Read Review |
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We Solve Murders, Richard Osman10/12/2024 - 2:51pmFirst in a new series from The Thursday Murder Club author Richard Osman, WE SOLVE MURDERS uses many of the stylings and touches that make all his books very readable. WE SOLVE MURDERS features two new main characters. Amy Wheeler is a close protection agent, working for a unique security company Maximum Impact Solutions, that, it turns out, is having issues of its own. Her father-in-law, Steve Wheeler, is a retired police officer doing the odd bit of local investigation work - missing pets and the like. He's a regular at the local pub quiz, loves his cat ... Read Review |
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Karla's Choice, Nick Harkaway10/12/2024 - 1:18pmAlong with a lot of other readers around the same age, I started out reading Espionage thrillers with John le Carré's George Smiley, Robert Ludlum's Jason Bourne, Ian Fleming's James Bond and the novels of Frederick Forsyth and Len Deighton. George Smiley was always a particular favourite, possibly because the tone and feeling of Le Carré's books was always pared back, steeped in foreboding, doubt and regret, which meant KARLA'S CHOICE was always going to be "an undertaking". I can't imagine how it would feel to be the son who takes on his father's most famous work, although the ... Read Review |
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A Line to Kill, Anthony Horowitz10/12/2024 - 12:56pmThe third book in the Hawthorne & Horowitz series (it's meta - you can find out more about all of that at reviews of THE WORD IS MURDER and THE SENTENCE IS DEATH), sees Horowitz convinced (slightly) that he's got the upperhand on his colleague, and subject of the books he's currently writing, Daniel Hawthorne. They are guests at a literary festival, and if there's one thing that Anthony Horowitz knows a lot more about than Hawthorne, it's literary festivals. ... Read Review |
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How To Send A Message, Caimh McDonnell10/12/2024 - 12:50pmI'm really only slightly obsessed with this author's work. Slightly in that just about everything he has written now is automatically high on the read / listen list. Sometimes, into every life, a bloody good laugh, a bit of craic, some distraction from the general godawfulness of everything around is required, and right now, for my ears and eyes, that's Bunny McGarry (he features in two of this collection of seven short stories) and anything else that's offered up. Is this a fun collection - yes it is. Have I learned anything about human nature ... Read Review |
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The Mother Paul Series, June Wright06/12/2024 - 2:10pmMy review of RESERVATION FOR MURDER, FACULTY OF MURDER and MAKE-UP FOR MURDER has been posted: June Wright has faded from view, but in 1948 her novel Murder in the Telephone Exchange outstripped sales of Agatha Christie in Australia. Full Review at Newtown Review of Books |
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Birnam Wood, Eleanor Catton05/12/2024 - 2:06pmOne of the very best things about reading the entrants in the 2024 Ngaio Marsh Awards is just how varied a bunch of books they were. BIRNAM WOOD is a eco-thriller, set on New Zealand's South Island, serving up a hefty dose of challenges for the reader to be going on with. The story is built around members of the Birnam Wood "collective" - a group involved in eco-activism through guerrilla gardening. As the blurb puts it:
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String Theory, Bing Turkby05/12/2024 - 1:27pmSTRING THEORY is the 2nd in the Guitar Store Mysteries, and the first I've read. Which I think might have been a bit of a mistake. This worked, in that it was fun, a bit silly, and a bit of giggle in places, although it did take me a while to figure out who was who and how it all fitted together. Maybe the first book, DEAD MAN'S AXE will fill in those gaps when I get to it on "MtTBR that can be seen from the moon....". Set, unsurprisingly, in and around Dana Osborne's guitar store, where she would be happy just hanging out, talking music with an eclectic range of ... Read Review |
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Life & Crimes, Andrew Rule04/12/2024 - 12:31pmCatching up with true crime reading meant I also had to pick up LIFE & CRIMES by Andrew Rule. A different tone from his sometime writing partner, John Silvester, Rule's style is more, I don't know, measured. Certainly he's less inclined towards calling a spade a bloody shovel, but instead applies a forensic, detailed and dispassionate telling whilst still managing to achieve a readable, pacey style of narrative. Reading this one at the time that I did had a particularly poignant overlay as the story of the Easey Street murders is included, at the same time as the ... Read Review |
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Naked City, John Silvester04/12/2024 - 12:23pmI've gotten behind with my true crime reading, so what better way to kick an interest back into gear than a meander around "the cop stations, courthouses, back alleys and gangster mansions of Melbourne" through the skewering eye of journalist John Silvester - a man with a fine turn of sarcastic, pointed phrasing if there ever was one. This collection (published in 2023) goes back over some well known cases, brings in some new stories, and provides some of Silvester's observations on the good, the dumb and the ugly of Melbourne's crime fraternity. He doesn't pull any ... Read Review |
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Present Tense, Natalie Conyer03/12/2024 - 10:00amThe author of this series was born in South Africa, but has lived in Sydney, Australia for a long time. PRESENT TENSE is the first, followed by SHADOW CITY (https://www.austcrimefiction.org/review/shadow-city-natalie-conyer). Based around veteran cop Schalk Lourens these books are gritty and dark, tackling aspects of South Africa's past and present in a clear, concise and unflinching manner. Having read the second book first, PRESENT TENSE provided the details for a lot of the important parts ... Read Review |
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Cutler, David Whish-Wilson29/11/2024 - 11:24amCUTLER, the novel, features Paul Cutler, the former undercover operative, now working "off the books" in the dangerous and unpredictable world of investigator for hire. In this story he's tasked with finding the truth about the disappearance of an Australian marine scientist, whilst on a Taiwanese distant water fishing vessel, working in the incredibly murky and dodgy world of deep sea trawling and fisheries.Read Review |
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Murder Mindfully, Karsten Dusse28/11/2024 - 12:33pmFirst few chapters - what on earth am I doing reading this. Next few chapters - okay I'm getting this, this is .... different. Next few chapters - what do you mean you want something ... can't you see I'm busy. Why do I keep hearing Henning Wehn's voice in my head? All of the book, this is making me laugh. A lot. I probably shouldn't be - I mean there are people locked in boots, there is a chipper on the side of a lake, there's guns and cars going boom, and a law firm full of people who survive (which doesn't seem right). ... Read Review |
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The Chilling, Riley James26/11/2024 - 4:29pmThis was one of those fortuitous picks from the library (I know I should be attending to the visible from space TBR here, but something about this book appealed when I heard a whisper about it, and sometimes giving into a little bit of temptation is... good for morale). Anyway, I saw this and thought it sounded just the thing for a bit of late night reading. Proved to be exactly that, kept me awake and reading, and finding excuses the day after to keep reading. Based around MacPherson Station in Antarctica (which I think is fictitious but don't take my word for anything ... Read Review |
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The Cryptic Clue, Amanda Hampson26/11/2024 - 3:32pmFor somebody who claims to prefer the darker end of the Crime Fiction spectrum, I've been thoroughly enjoying some cosies recently. Although I did originally try to "read" this one via the audio book, but that didn't work, so I switched to the printed form and found myself happily enjoying the 2nd of The Tea Ladies series - THE CRYPTIC CLUE. Anybody who hasn't picked up the first book - THE TEA LADIES - would find no problems in catching up with the main characters in this series - Hazel, Betty and Irene, although their backgrounds are more thoroughly explained in the ... Read Review |