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De Luxe, Lenny Bartulin02/08/2011 - 1:19pmHands up everyone who has ever thought that owning a secondhand bookshop sounds like their idea of a perfect life. If your hand is in the air you might have a problem. Reading DE LUXE is either going to put you off the idea - or make it seem just that bit too exciting. Personally I still rather like the idea of a bookshop of my own, so I'm hoping that the extra-curricula activities that Jack Susko gets involved in aren't compulsory! DE LUXE is the third instalment in this wonderful set of books, set in Sydney, "starring" Jack Susko, aforementioned bookshop person, cat ... Read Review |
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Dead Man's Chest, Kerry Greenwood12/07/2011 - 2:28pmDespite constantly "bragging" that we live about an hour from just about anywhere... it does mean that every trip in the car do to anything takes a while. We've recently turned to audio books to fill in the hours of dodging kangaroos and potholes and the most recent that we've been listening to is DEAD MAN'S CHEST by Kerry Greenwood. Number 18 (good grief.. really!) of the Phyrne Fisher series, the audio version is read particularly well by Stephanie Daniel who does an excellent job of individual accents for each of the characters - and there is a lot of characters in this book, ... Read Review |
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Love Honour and O'Brien, Jennifer Rowe07/07/2011 - 2:55pmI do like a bit of a romp novel, and LOVE HONOUR AND O'BRIEN is nothing if not a bit of a romp. Which surprised me a bit - because the blurb sounded just a little dauntingly like it might be too chick-lit for me. But Jennifer Rowe's return to mystery writing has hugely exciting, so exciting I picked up this book as soon as it arrived. Set in the Blue Mountains (Rowe's home territory it seems), LOVE HONOUR AND O'BRIEN is, you'd have to hope, the first outing of accidental Private Detective Holly Love. I say accidental as she starts out as an office worker who chucked ... Read Review |
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A Man You Can Bank On, Derek Hansen06/07/2011 - 5:11pmI don't know - maybe it's because the book is set in a small country town struggling to survive (and I live 20 kilometres or so out of just such a town), or maybe it was the line on the opening page "He had the sort of body normally achieved by eating plankton.", but I was particularly disposed to liking A MAN YOU CAN BANK ON. It's not going to come as much of a surprise that this is a bit of a romp style novel. There's the local town bank manager, a disgraced cop sent to the outback to serve his time, the bank manager's daughter, the local animatronics expert, a bloke ... Read Review |
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The Simple Death, Michael Duffy05/07/2011 - 5:12pmIt's odd the things that come to mind when you're reading a book. THE SIMPLE DEATH had me very worried for central character Nicholas Troy's female colleagues. Given that he seems to spend a lot of his time jumping into bed with other women as soon as something goes wrong with his own life (not just including his wife's Post Natal Depression / leaving him etc from the first book), that I'm really worried what's going to happen if he ever gets knocked back on a promotion. It's a pity that the personal behaviour of Nicholas follows a rather predictable, well worn track now ... Read Review |
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Whispering Death, Garry Disher30/06/2011 - 3:09pmPut a book with Garry Disher's name on the cover down on the table at our place and there's bound to be a bit of sighing from certain quarters. Fair enough, it normally means that all forms of communication will cease until the book is finished. Whilst I will admit a slight preference for the Wyatt series, the Challis and Destry books are getting better and better with each outing. I particularly like the way that the focus is switching between the two main characters, and their romance is developing but not taking over from what is, after all, an excellent police procedural. I've ... Read Review |
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The Borgia Ring, Michael White22/06/2011 - 1:29pmA combination of past and present storylines, throw in some some ancient religious elements, and publishers can't seem to stop themselves from doing the "If you like Dan Brown... line". Whilst fans of Dan Brown could very well find this book appealing, non-fans shouldn't necessarily regard the attribution as a warning flag. DCI Jack Pendragon arrives at Brick Lane police station, and is immediately thrown into the search for a killer who seems to have a touch of madness about him. Unknown to Pendragon there's a history to the ancient skeleton that was found on a ... Read Review |
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The Boundary, Nicole Watson20/06/2011 - 1:34pmTHE BOUNDARY is the first novel from Australian author Nicole Watson. Nicole is a member of the Birri-Gubba People and the Yugambeh language group and her novel is set in Brisbane, at the end of an unsuccessful land rights claim, soon after which high profile people start dying. Reading this book it's impossible not to be aware of some fundamental elements. There is a sense of anger in the book - anger at the treatment of an ancient people in their land and anger at the deprivation and desecration of those people. There's also a sense of celebration - Aboriginal ... Read Review |
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Falling Glass, Adrian McKinty15/06/2011 - 1:11pmThere are some books that it is just flat out a relief to finish. Too much sleep deprivation and the dust bunnies can start to look like they are moving into formations for the final onslaught. FALLING GLASS really cheats a lot. Having become a somewhat besotted Michael Forsythe fan, I did think I could approach FALLING GLASS with the vague hope of keeping reasonable hours. He plays a bit part only in this book after all, with the action centred around enforcer Killian. Should have known better. McKinty writes that brand of dark, violent, no holds barred, tempered with touches ... Read Review |
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Prime Cut, Alan Carter14/06/2011 - 2:56pmThere's absolutely nothing like a quintessential Aussie bloke, a cop in purgatory, stuck in outback Western Australia, doing time on the Stock Squad for offending the powers that be. Alan Carter's debut novel PRIME CUT starts out with considerable promise, despite the slightly unrealistic picture of a Stock Squad peering that closely at roadkill! But the setup is beside the point as DSC Cato Kwong has to be out in the middle of nowhere for some reason, therefore becoming the only option on hand when a mangled torso is washed up on the beach of mining town Hopetoun. Much ... Read Review |
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Death of a Red Heroine, Qiu Xiaolong10/06/2011 - 2:50pmTo my mind, the very best crime fiction in the world provides a window into the world in which it is set. Be that the psyche of the people, the machinations of the society, how a community is structured and operates, the laws and mores, even the way in which authorities deal with the disorder, how they implement authority. DEATH OF A RED HEROINE is set in Shanghai in 1990, a year after Tiananmen Square, an ancient city with a population tightly controlled by the Communist Party. Poet Chen Cao is an unlikely policeman, forced into the job by the party system, he's caught between a ... Read Review |
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Paydirt, Garry Disher01/06/2011 - 5:09pmWyatt is back in a new adventure set on the far side of morality. Introduced in Kickback, Garry Disher's fast-selling, widely praised crime novel, Wyatt reappears in the South Australian outback, intent on snatching a payroll. But Wyatt is not the only one eyeing the funds. The Outfit has business with Wyatt. It will only be finished when he faces the hitman's gun. Garry Disher's highly controlled, fast-paced style brilliantly matches this tense, unnerving story of treachery and rough justice.Read Review |
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Lambs to the Slaughter, Debi Marshall01/06/2011 - 1:44pmThe strange thing about starting out reading a book like LAMBS TO THE SLAUGHTER was a vague feeling of uncertainty. Mostly because the man at the centre of this book - Derek Ernest Percy - has one of those names that instantly rings very loud bells. Uncertainty because despite knowing that he's the man that so many law-enforcement agencies in Australia are convinced is a multiple child-killer, I found I didn't really know much about him at all. At the end of LAMBS TO THE SLAUGHTER, the disturbing thing is that you still aren't going to know a lot about what makes the man tick. No ... Read Review |
Die A Little, Megan Abbott26/05/2011 - 12:54pmDIE A LITTLE is the first in a series of books from Megan Abbott flagged somewhat unhelpfully as "modern noir". I'm not at all sure what that should imply in terms of expectation, but whatever caused it, something didn't really work about this book for me. Leaving aside the fact that the cover is absolutely wonderful and the title is glorious, the style very atmospheric and the build up interesting (woman with a "past" who marries a cop, cop's sister smells a rat, digs), something about the delivery of this story simply flat out didn't hold my interest. I suspect part ... Read Review |
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Sex Crimes, Paul Thomas26/05/2011 - 12:23pmI'm more than a bit of a fan of books by Paul Thomas. I'm more than a bit of a fan of his short stories now as well. SEX CRIMES is a series of fantastic short stories themed around sex. As the blurb puts it "exploring the unpredictable and sometimes fatal consequences that can occur when sex rears its not-so-uly head." (To say nothing of the odd looks you get when you're sat in public places, with a book which declares it's title obviously on the cover, and you, the reader, are snickering and outright laughing at points). Needless to say - this book quickly became a home based ... Read Review |
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Crime, Ferdinand von Schirach25/05/2011 - 2:52pmThe author of CRIME, Ferdinand von Schirach is a criminal lawyer in Berlin. He's also an extremely good storyteller. The stories incorporated in CRIME (as the publicity material puts it) were specifically chosen to demonstrate the relationships between truth and reason, law and compassion. They are real-life cases from the author's own experience. The subject matter, frankly, is frequently much much easier to imagine as fictional - but they are not. Whilst it's clear they are tales chosen to trigger certain emotions and reactions in the reader, in von Schirach's hands ... Read Review |
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An Accidental Terrorist, Steven Lang24/05/2011 - 4:30pmA f2f bookclub read, I started this book with high hopes, having just finished another with what seemed like a similar concept. A scenario that had some serious potential, this book started off okay but quickly just seemed to degenerate into a mish-mash of making the reader feel sorry (attracted to / interested in) a central character that was just... well boring. Unfortunately this feeling of being bored was compounded by some extremely predictable events, actions and outcomes. Perhaps the idea was to show how somebody unwittingly gets involved with things that they shouldn't. ... Read Review |
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Poison Door, Steve Malley22/05/2011 - 3:17pmNot being at all adverse to a big suspenseful thriller I was more than pleased to get my hands on a copy of NZ author Steve Malley's book POISON DOOR. Even more pleased that I didn't dither around like I'm wont to do and sat down and read it. There's an awful lot to like about this book. The story revolves around three main characters - Michelle Swanston, a 14 year old girl who lives a fair amount of her life on the streets - anything to avoid her drug addled mother. Tommy Knowles is a thug - originally from London he's landed on the shores of New Zealand with a desire ... Read Review |
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Scream, Nigel McCrery18/04/2011 - 12:26pmI doubt it's much of a coincidence being a big fan of the scripts and the acting in the TV Series NEW TRICKS, that I'm also a fan of the DCI Mark Lapslie series. After all, Nigel McCrery is a writer and creator of both. (Along with many other excellent TV series including Silent Witness and All the King's Men.) SCREAM is the third in the DCI Mark Lapslie series, Lapslie being an unusual central protagonist who suffers from a particularly acute form of synaesthesia. In other words he experiences sounds as a variety of different flavours. Which makes receiving a very ... Read Review |
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1222, Anne Holt17/04/2011 - 5:50pmTake one gloriously grumpy central protagonist, add that train crash, include a massive snowstorm cutting off a train full of people 1222 metres above sea level in an inaccessible hotel, add a mysterious locked carriage and a group of shadowy unknown passengers, then kill off a high-profile passenger and see what happens. What happens is that our grumpy protagonist, Hanne Wilhemlsen, ex-police officer, in a wheelchair as a result of being shot on duty, has to work out what is going on before the body count continues to increase. With no official help from the outside, ... Read Review |