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Roll With It, Nick Place02/04/2013 - 1:41pmPersonally, and not just because the idea of Lycra and clicking around in those weird riding shoes makes me shudder, the idea of being sent to the Siberia of the Mountain Bike Police certainly sounds like a rather extreme punishment. Especially as Tony 'Rocket" Laver is adamant that the bloke he shot fired first. And he was a serial suspect in a series of armed robberies. So you might think that Laver is justified in being more than a bit miffed at the political machinations that are overt in his demotion. Although he can't really blame just the demotion for his rocky ... Read Review |
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Call Me Cruel, Michael Duffy28/03/2013 - 1:43pmThis true crime account attempts to explain the mind of a manipulative killer. It’s a cliché, but in this case it’s apt; if you came across a scenario like this in crime fiction you’d be hard pressed to stop your eyes from rolling. As is often the way, however, true life defies anything the very best fiction writers can come up with. Reviewed for The Newtown Review of BooksRead Review |
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Blind Goddess, Anne Holt26/03/2013 - 3:18pmThe Hanne Wilhelmsen series from Norwegian author Anne Holt is another one of those Scandinavian series that have been translated completely out of order. For reasons which, as usual, escape me completely. So <insert standard whinge about how profoundly annoying that is>, and onto BLIND GODDESS which is the book that started the whole thing off. It would be bad enough to discover a battered body when jogging in the morning, but you'd doubt lawyer Karen Borg would also have been expecting to be called in as defence counsel for the Dutchman who is found wandering, ... Read Review |
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Murder on the Home Front, Molly Lefebure26/03/2013 - 1:10pmTold in her own voice, Miss Molly Lefebure is tempted from her role as a journalist to work closely as secretary to one of the earliest "famous" forensic pathologists in England - Dr Keith Simpson. Set in war-time London, the work of civilian authorities continued, often in defiance of the chaos around them, investigating both unusual or suspicious deaths, as well as the results of the Blitz bombings. During in the 1940's the idea of a female secretary sitting right beside the pathologist, typing his reports as an autopsy proceeds was probably just another slightly ... Read Review |
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Close to the Bone, Stuart MacBride25/03/2013 - 3:49pmLook, let's just admit that I'm a huge fan of this series and get it over and done with. Love DI Steel, love her glorious over the topness, love McRae's constant sooking and all being put upon. Love the madness of the world in which they have to try to operate as functioning police members, love the supporting cast, love the gallows humour. Love the whole damn thing. Even love those that don't quite live up to the other books in the series (and let's face it - we're talking bees d's worth of not living up to that which came before). I'll therefore plead to some lacking in ... Read Review |
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The Girl on the Stairs, Louise Welsh19/03/2013 - 1:08pmOne of the things that makes Louise Welsh one of my favourite authors is the way you just never know what to expect when a new novel arrives. In THE GIRL ON THE STAIRS Jane Logan moves to Berlin to be with her partner Petra, in the lead up to the birth of their first child. From the moment she arrives there's something wrong. Jane is uneasy in their chic, upmarket apartment, where amongst lots of other oddities, there are shadows on the stairs and a neighbour's daughter who Jane is sure is in danger. A psychological mystery, the book is chilling and ... Read Review |
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The House of Dark Shadows, Digger Cartwright17/03/2013 - 2:50pmI was sent this book to read for a review, and I've now made numerous attempts to read it and I just can't. It's not just that the wait for something to happen seems interminable, I think the fundamental problem I'm having is with the relationships. Alex is gorgeous, a successful and supposedly wonderful man, who is looking for love. With his sexy secretary, friend and occasional bit on the side, well by his side. Even after he meets Hope on an online dating site and plunges headfirst into love, marriage and the whole damn thing. ... Read Review |
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Murder With the Lot, Sue Williams13/03/2013 - 1:46pmMURDER WITH THE LOT is set in the fictional Mallee town of Rusty Bore, featuring Cass Tuplin, fish and chip shop owner, mother, and self-appointed private investigator. The story is told all from Cass's viewpoint, a viewpoint which is somewhat skewed towards a ... how should we put this ... less than realistic outlook. Not only is the Mallee still deep in the middle of the drought that just about broke everyone's spirit, but Rusty Bore is a town that's been hit particularly hard. Loss of people to the "Big Smoke" just down the road, loss of passing traffic, loss of money and even ... Read Review |
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Tamam Shud - The Somerton Man Mystery, Kerry Greenwood12/03/2013 - 3:42pmIn TAMAM SHUD: THE SOMERTON MAN MYSTERY, Kerry Greenwood has taken the opportunity to look back. At a case that continues to remain unsolved since the body of a man showed up on a beach in Adelaide in 1948. At the traces of the investigation that remain. At a much loved father. And finally, at some of her own crime fiction, written around the same case. This approach is undoubtedly going to make this book quite a polariser. It's obvious that some readers will love it, and some readers will loathe it. I suspect both of those camps are going to take up their position with comparable ... Read Review |
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The Icon Murders, Noel Mealey07/03/2013 - 2:45pmThe second book in the Syd Fielding series, THE ICON MURDERS follows on closely from the opening salvo, MURDER AND REDEMPTION. Syd Fielding is a WA based cop who, in the first book, got himself into a lot of hot water with a drugs investigation and the death of a childhood friend. Here we're continuing with many of the themes from the debut - a childhood spent in a brutal Catholic boy's home, mateship, the illicit drugs trade, the sometime uncomfortably close ties between law and order and criminals, and love in all the wrong places. THE ICON MURDERS does, ... Read Review |
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The Price of Fame, RC Daniells03/03/2013 - 5:08pmTHE PRICE OF FAME is firstly RC Daniells' first crime fiction book (she writes fantasy under her fullname Rowena Cory Daniells), albeit with a hefty paranormal subtext. It wasn't a book that I was particularly clamouring to read, what with being mildly allergic to anything paranormal. To be fair though, THE PRICE OF FAME, doesn't start out really pushing the paranormal aspects. Sure there are increasingly odd goings on, and not just moving shaving kits, a cat that appears out of nowhere, water droplets that won't go away, strange feelings and odd dreams. There's also a ... Read Review |
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Dogstar Rising, Parker Bilal20/02/2013 - 1:58pmSummer (northern hemisphere), 2001, and religious and political tensions in Egypt form the basis of the second Makana crime novel by Parker Bilal. Whilst there's nothing new in the use of crime fiction as the vehicle for exploring society on the edge, DOGSTAR RISING set, as it is, in that place at that time, provides an illuminating alternative viewpoint. Not automatically that of the "opposing", it is a look at pressures and perspectives from another angle. It's edgy fiction based in a very edgy world. Whilst it's obvious to Makana, Private Investigator and Sudanese ... Read Review |
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The Loner, Quintin Jardine12/02/2013 - 4:37pmA standalone novel from the author best known for his Bob Skinner series, THE LONER was a real surprise package. Styled as an autobiographical account of the author's friend, journalist Xavier (Xavi) Ailsado, THE LONER is partially the recollections of the central character, partially the observations of the narrator. It's an affectionate telling of Xavi's life, from his beginnings in Scotland, the son of a local mother and a Spanish refugee. His father and grandparents having settled in Edinburgh after they were forced to flee from Franco's regime. It's a story of family ... Read Review |
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Web of Deceit, Katherine Howell07/02/2013 - 12:38pmThe lives of paramedics entwine with a police investigation to remind us just how good Australian crime writing can be. Web of Deceit, the sixth book by ex-paramedic Katherine Howell featuring Detective Ella Marconi, continues to build a solid, clever police-procedural series with an ongoing paramedic viewpoint, an element that seems even stronger in this book. In Web of Deceit paramedics Jane and Alex go from a relatively run-of-the-mill car accident – apart from involving a deliberate crash into a pole – with a driver who’s clearly ... Read Review |
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Eugenia, Mark Tedeschi QC17/01/2013 - 1:21pmI really think that whenever I feel like a bit of a whinge about the way life is these days, I should read a book like EUGENIA. Eugenia Falleni was a woman born into a large Italian Family, who grew up in New Zealand, and spent most of her all too short life in Australia, living most of it as a man. Mark Tedeschi QC looks at what happened to Eugenia in her early life, a rape and subsequent birth of a daughter which complicated her life even more, how she functioned in day-to-day life, her first marriage and the death of her wife for which she was charged with murder, ... Read Review |
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Furt Bent from Aldaheit, Jack Eden16/01/2013 - 1:56pmYou know how the rule goes, you're not supposed to barrack for the "bad guy", but seriously there's no way I wasn't totally and absolutely on Osgood Sneddon's side from the start. I mean Osgood? No wonder he uses the jokingly dubbed alias of Furt Bent from Aldaheit. Which is just silly, even if you can pronounce Aldaheit and goodness knows I changed my mind a 1000 times about how to. When I wasn't being thoroughly and completely entertained by FURT BENT FROM ALDAHEIT that is. It's a book that combines good pace and action with a dry and quite dark sense of humour, ... Read Review |
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Young Philby, Robert Littell14/01/2013 - 4:08pmYou can't help thinking that this is an interesting idea for a book, the story of one of the most famous real-life spies, told from the point of view of Philby's own life. Now the book and it's publicity material is quite tricky about the background of this book. Whilst there's nothing there to indicate whether or not this is a true story or fictional, it's written in a way that implies that the whole thing is the true story of Kim Philby's early years. YOUNG PHILBY is however, a novel. It expands on what is known about Philby's life after Cambridge University (where he, ... Read Review |
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The Phillip Island Murder, Vikki Petratis and Paul Daley11/01/2013 - 3:09pmStarted reading THE PHILLIP ISLAND MURDER ages ago, tidied up one day and promptly couldn't find the book to finish it. (Goes to prove that housework is dangerous and frankly bloody annoying as I wanted to read this book.) Rather relieved that after 12 months of idly moving things around, I finally managed to find it again. So I sat down and re-read cover to cover. Petraitis and Dale have written an extremely good true crime book. It's well researched, reasoned and thoughtful, and the case deserves a light held up to it. Alas, unlike the blurb hopes, I don't think ... Read Review |
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The Golden Scales, Parker Bilal05/01/2013 - 4:05pmBeing a bit of a sucker for a strong sense of place, and culture I was intrigued by the Makana series, and lucky enough to get the second book - DOGSTAR RISING for review. But this seemed to me to be a series that should begin at the very beginning, so I shouted myself the first book, THE GOLDEN SCALES. In terms of sense of place, and the society in which the book is set, it was extremely well done. The ancient city of Cairo is not just the backdrop for the story, it inhabits the action. There's a physical feeling of the souks, and alleys, the dark corners in which the ... Read Review |
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Not the End of the World, Christopher Brookmyre04/01/2013 - 8:16pmAs an unrepentant, welded-on, dedicated Christopher Brookmyre fan I do have to ration these books a bit. So NOT THE END OF THE WORLD has been lurking here for quite a long time, although I was a little startled to learn it was originally published in 1998. Not because it's been lurking for that long but because the central themes, in particular rabid evangelical religious fanatics, intolerance, insistence, terrorism and short-sighted idiocy works just as well now as it did then. Actually make that less startled, more disgusted. NOT THE END OF THE WORLD does take a little ... Read Review |