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Madame Brussels, Barbara Minchinton26/11/2024 - 12:32pmThis is the biography of Caroline Hodgson, the woman who became known as Madame Brussels. She was a legendary brothel keeper in nineteenth century Melbourne, with a laneway in the city now named after her, and yet even during her life, she was an enigmatic and private woman who kept a very low profile, given the high-profile opposition against her. Born in Prussia into a struggling working-class family, she made her way to Melbourne in 1871, alongside her husband, a member of a well-to-family with a story of his own. When he abandoned her to work as a policeman in remote ... Read Review |
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Outback, Michael Davies22/11/2024 - 4:14pm"A brand new novel that continues the legacy of ‘Master of the Genre’ Desmond Bagley by the co-author of Domino Island." Insurance investigator Bill Kemp made his first appearance in Domino Island - the story of that novel is best told here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domino_Island, but in a nutshell it was first published posthumously in 2019, based on a draft discovered in the author's papers, curated to life ... Read Review |
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The Chancellor, Kati Morton22/11/2024 - 12:55pmI read and reviewed this book in September / October, posted the review on StoryGraph and then promptly nuked the wrong account there and lost it. So in lieu of the carefully constructed comments I made there, let's have a go at something coherent here. This biography was written by an author who, whilst connected to Angela Merkel's circle and the author of a number of high profile biographies, didn't actually interview Merkel or get any input directly from her. So this is an observational biography as opposed to a detailed memoir (which Merkel is writing ... Read Review |
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Dish, Rhys Nicholson20/11/2024 - 3:35pmListened to this on audio and loved it. Rhys is one of my favourite comedians, love their honesty and openness, and willingness to talk about the things that make life complicated. Particularly appreciated the idea that somebody with an eating disorder would include recipes in a book like this. I mean I can't attempt any of the recipes personally, but they were there, and the instructions were perfect. (Yes this is tongue in cheek in style, yes there are some messages and, heavens to betsy, some opinions, dotted throughout so no don't listen to it if you don't like their ... Read Review |
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The Bookshop Detectives: Dead Girl Gone, Gareth Ward & Louise Ward20/11/2024 - 11:50am“When we opened Sherlock Tomes people warned us that we’d made a terrible mistake. People warned us that e-readers were taking over. People warned us that we’d never compete with the evil Amazon. The one thing they didn’t warn us about was the murders…” Introducing...the Bookshop Detectives!
I hear a rumour that the joint authors of this book are also the joint owners of a rather quirky little bookshop in their native New Zealand, so no guesses where the idea for the two main characters of this novel came from. Gareth and Eloise own ... Read Review |
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Last One to Leave / Find Us, Benjamin Stevenson19/11/2024 - 1:32pmBit of explaining first - LAST ONE TO LEAVE and FIND US are available as stand-alone ebooks / novellas. They are also available together in printed form under the title FOOL ME TWICE. I read the two separate novellas, but will combine the review here. Starting out with LAST ONE TO LEAVE - it's a murder mystery set within a reality competition. Which frankly, given that all reality shows border on criminal in my eyes, worked before I'd even started. The idea of this one is that there are seven complete ... Read Review |
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Partners in Crime, Stuart MacBride14/11/2024 - 3:37pmThis is gathering together of two DI Steel short stories, one featuring DS Logan McRae (Stramash) and the other (DI Steel's Bad Heir Day) has her giving Constable Guthrie a day to remember. DI Steel's Bad Heir Day is set around Christmas with her manically buying / wrapping presents, sorting out a missing person, and dodging the eulogy of somebody who's offered to leave her a lot of cash - if she can say something nice about them. Problem is, the recently deceased's a villain and Steel's conflicted. Well pissed off really. And when DI Steel's pissed off the nearest to her ... Read Review |
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Guilty By Definition, Susie Dent14/11/2024 - 2:27pmIf everyone has a book hidden somewhere in them, it seems, these days, it's probably going to be a crime fiction book. It seems inevitable now that "celebrities" will show up at, touting their wares - some with considerably more success than others. Susie Dent, famous for her appearances on Countdown, and in this household, Cats Does Countdown, is a lexicographer and wordsmith. Her non-fiction books on words, and language, are particular favourites around here, so GUILTY BY DEFINITION jumped more than a few 100 places in the queue when it became available at my local ... Read Review |
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A Town Called Treachery, Mitch Jennings13/11/2024 - 12:05pmThere have been a number of Australian crime fiction books recently that are tackling the effects of poverty / deprivation / loss and family breakdown in small towns, on small boys in particular. A TOWN CALLED TREACHERY is following, successfully, in the footsteps of authors like Mark Brandi and Stephen Orr, all three of whom have delved deeply, and sympathetically into damage, and resilience. Life is very hard for eleven-year-old Matty Finnerty. Mother dead, father's absent even when he's around, and his grandfather is slipping further and further into dementia, he's not ... Read Review |
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The Mystery of the Crooked Man, Tom Spencer11/11/2024 - 3:57pmThis was one of those fortuitous pickups in the Audio section of the library's BorrowBox app. Probably based on the reference to Magpie Murders in the blurb, which was a TV series I thoroughly enjoyed. It might also be because of the description of the main protagonist:
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What, John Cooper Clarke10/11/2024 - 10:05amI've said before that John Cooper Clarke is part of the soundtrack of my life, so any collection of his poetry, in particular, has to be read with his voice in my head. It works best when read by the author himself, but in the written form, it's easy to go back and back and back over the bits that just make you go, well well well. WHAT is a new collection of work, a scathing, pointed and caustic grouping of subtle, and none-too-subtle commentaries on everything from celebrity, smooth operators (operetta's), necrophilia, anger, and yet more. Favourites, in ... Read Review |
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Cold Case Investigations, Dr Xanthe Mallett08/11/2024 - 3:55pmListened to the audio of this one, read by Casey Withoos, it's a rehash of a number of Australian cold cases, many of which will be instantly recognisable to local listeners / readers. Where this outing varies a little is in the way the author, Mallett, discusses the cases from a forensic anthropologist / criminologist viewpoint, which did provide some interesting insights.Read Review |
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We Are the Stars, Gina Chick08/11/2024 - 12:39pmThe subtitle of this book is "A misfit's story of love, connection and the glorious power of letting go" and if there was ever a statement that succinctly defines what's wrong with this world, it's that. Gina Chick should never be made to feel like a misfit. The rest of us, those who don't get what she is, how she lives, how she sees the world - at least should just shut up and move along. Better still, do the shut up thing, and listen, watch and see a woman who deserves her place in the world, and has so much to teach everyone about the importance of difference, and ... Read Review |
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A Stroke of the Pen, Terry Pratchett08/11/2024 - 11:28amFar away and long ago, when dragons still existed and the only arcade game was ping-pong in black and white, a wizard cautiously entered a smoky tavern in the evil, ancient, foggy city of Morpork... A truly unmissable, beautifully illustrated collection of unearthed stories from the pen of Sir Terry Pratchett: award-winning and bestselling author, and creator of the phenomenally successful Discworld series. I was so intrigued when I saw that this selection of short stories was published in October 2023, but, as usual ... Read Review |
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The Woman Who Knew Too Little, Olivia Wearne24/10/2024 - 3:57pmAn historical mystery that mixes fact and fiction, THE WOMAN WHO KNEW TOO LITTLE is set in Adelaide in late 1948. It's a story about female police officers built around the factual case of the Somerton Man, a notorious tale that has captured much speculation for many years until recently solved (with the decidedly non-edgy revelation of a missing Australian man whose disappearance went unremarked upon for many years). But the point of the inclusion of the Somerton Man in this story is designed to give a starting off point for the tale of Kitty Wheeler, a member of the Women Police, ... Read Review |
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Woman, Missing Sherryl Clark23/10/2024 - 4:23pmSherryl Clark is an author with a keen eye for a fascinating central female character, and Lou Alcott is one out of the box. A Melbourne based Private Investigator with a prominent organised crime figure for a grandfather, she's a disillusioned ex-cop with a major attitude when it comes to domestic violence perpetrators. Starting out as a PI in a job facilitated by her grandfather, she finds herself in a small office with a boss who is impressively competent and a full time tech-expert who is very good at what he does. Assigned a couple of cases up front, one of them is a ... Read Review |
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The Glasgow Smile, Chris Stuart23/10/2024 - 2:04pmThe follow on from FOR REASONS OF THEIR OWN, GLASGOW SMILE is set (the title relates to something specific in the surroundings), in Melbourne, where the discovery of a woman's body stabbed and strangled late at night in the graffitied and dark tangled laneways of the innercity sets off a complicated investigation. For those that haven't read the first novel, DI Robbie Gray and her offsider, new into town from very different locales in the NT, have some collective and individual baggage to lug around. Probably best to read my notes on ... Read Review |
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Liars, James O'Loghlin22/10/2024 - 10:51amDon't be put off by LIARS by James O'Loghlin. It's a biggish book at 464 pages, but it fills that size admirably. Engaging, addictive, and intriguing, it's small town setting is used to build a complex story, with personalities, connections, backgrounds and people that are anything but. Set in the fictional location of Bullford Point, a seaside town on the NSW Central Coast that seems very real. Quaint and slow paced, it's facing big changes with a major real estate development planned, and tension between incomers and long-term residents; and those long-term residents ... Read Review |
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Madame Midas, Fergus Hume17/10/2024 - 4:27pmGrowing up around Ballarat not quite as long ago as MADAME MIDAS is set, it was really amazing to see how much of the layout of the city remains and how many of the locations are easily identifiable. Which probably meant that I ended up reading this book paying a lot more attention to the setting than I did to the plot. That's not to say that MADAME MIDAS doesn't have a plot that isn't bad, what with a caddish Frenchman trying to have their way with the charming, intelligent and very wealthy Madame Midas. Given that it was first published in 1888, it's probably no surprise ... Read Review |
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The Bat, Jo Nesbo09/10/2024 - 2:07pmAnother one of those periodical restarts of a favourite series, some of which actually get off the ground, some of which linger in the piles of unread books, mostly due to lack of time / organisation (which I'm working on). THE BAT is the first of the Harry Hole series, which is now up to 13 books in total, a few of the later ones I've not had a chance to read yet. Released originally in 1997 I vaguely remember my first reading of THE BAT, some time after that, and was startled to find a Scandinavian writer setting a book in Australia. At the time I also remember it ... Read Review |