All the Reviews

Cops - True Stories From Australian Police, Vikki Petraitis

Commenting on books written by people you know is always a little bit tricky, but one of the things that I always admire about these sorts of books from Petraitis is the way that she can tell somebody's story clearly, compassionately, often with a great sense of humour, but never imposing herself on the telling.  This is a book which is very much about the people whose stories are being told.  And there are some interesting little snippets not covered in other True Crime books - the perilous retrieval of a woman's body from a sunken submarine; the capture of a brutal child rapist; the ... Read Review

Bad Intentions, Karin Fossum

Karin Fossum is an author who uses observation acutely, whilst being more than willing to play with both expectations and the outer reaches of readers' comfort zones.  Each of her books uses a different type of scenario to explore human behaviour and quirks.  In BAD INTENTIONS she is looking at the nature of manipulation, conscience, and absolute and total egocentricity.  She's also very very good at creepy - be it the characters or the setting, and in BAD INTENTIONS there's some of each.

BAD INTENTIONS is the ninth novel overall, seventh available in English, from ... Read Review

Shotgun and Standover, James Morton and Russell Robinson

Subtitled "The Story of the Painters and Dockers" I think this probably would have been better if it had said "The Story of Members of the Painters and Dockers".

Told in typical James Morton style, this is a book of anecdotes and stories of various members of the painters and dockers from its inception to its folding.  One of the most notorious unions in Australian History, the book doesn't really give you much insight into the workings of the Painters and Dockers themselves, rather it provides a long and involved tale of all of the various goings on of the various ... Read Review

Criminal Tendencies, Lynne Patrick (editor)

In his foreword to this fantastic collection Mark Billingham points out so many of the mysteries behind the decline of the short story.  In these days of short periods of available quiet time for reading, it does seem strange that fewer and fewer short story collections seem to be published.  Without or without a theme, I really like this sort of book - that mixes in well-known and lesser known authors.  For a start you can play games with yourself and see if you can pick the writer from the style - rather than checking out their name.  You also get a very direct comparison base from ... Read Review

Killing for Pleasure, Debi Marshall

Quick comments, rather than a full review, but for those that aren't aware - this is a book about the notorious South Australian "Snowtown" killings.  There's only ever been a couple of other books that have taken me longer to read - KILLING FOR PLEASURE has been picked up, read a bit and put down since 2006.

Not because of the writing, or the analysis or even the nature of the crimes - this book covers one of those completely inexplicable, sad, pointless, horrible crimes that really did happen - as unlikely as that could possibly be.  It also attempts to look for some ... Read Review

Silk Chaser, Peter Klein

SILK CHASER is the third novel set within the Australian Racing Industry by ex-strapper, trainer and punter Peter Klein. These books, unsurprisingly, have a fantastic sense of place and reality within that setting, covering the difficulties and vagaries of the Sport of Kings from exactly those viewpoints - strapper, trainers and punters as well as bookmakers, stewards, security and other people who work in and around the tracks and horses, through to the occasional racetrack visitors - the full range of hangers-on.

In SILK CHASER there are all these sorts of characters, ... Read Review

Dark Matter, Juli Zeh

DARK MATTER is one of those books that I picked up with considerable happy anticipation, so was more than a little startled to find myself really struggling to get into the start of it.  Until a point at which I found I wasn't struggling and was completely absorbed.

And I suspect that's very much what the book is set out to do.  Set in Freiburg near the Black Forest, the book starts out with two men and their obsessions.  Their friendship begins at University, studying physics - Sebastian, retains his love of physics opting for academia, sharing his love of physics with ... Read Review

Murder in Utopia, Philip McLaren

There are a lot of reasons why I move heaven and earth to get hold of a Philip McLaren book when I hear there's a new one in the offing.  Firstly, as you can probably pick from the synopsis above, there's a very dry, understated wit in McLaren's story-telling style.  He's also writing about his own people, in a way that's both affectionate and exasperated.  He's also frequently very very pointed about the difficulties Aboriginal people in Australia face on a daily basis.

What McLaren is doing in MURDER IN UTOPIA is really interesting.  He runs a parallel story of a young ... Read Review

Mosquito Creek, Robert Engwerda

MOSQUITO CREEK, the first novel from Robert Engwerda is set in 1855 on the northern Victorian goldfields.  It's a particularly pleasing experience to read about this area of the goldfields, deep in flood, when we've spent such a long desperate period in drought.

Engwerda has done a fantastic job at putting the reader into this location and the time period.  There is a real sense of place and time, evoking the sheer weirdness of the alliances, tension, desperation and transience of the Goldfields.  It's very easy to forget, in this day of easy transportation, just how much ... Read Review