In 2005 Nicole Morris founded the Australian Missing Persons register, an internet resource to help find missing people in Australia.
http://www.australianmissingpersonsregister.com/ (your browser may come up with a...Read more
The third novel in the Reggie da Costa series, DEADLY GAME is set in 1920's Melbourne featuring the celebrated, well groomed crime reporter da Costa, and the brave, and very determined Ruby Rhodes.
da Costa has a habit of gathering beautiful woman in his life, with problems and...Read more
If you’ve ever wondered what a crime novel written by Noel Coward might be like, Naked Ambition could provide some clues. Review at Newtown Review of BooksRead more
THE SIGNATORY is a thriller set in and around an Australian advertising agency, leaving this reviewer wondering if there's an argument that crime fiction set in the corporate / business world is under-represented. On the face of it, perhaps an unlikely setting, but then again, there are...Read more
Book six in the Peter Clancy series, set in the world of investigative journalism, BEACHDAZE sees Peter back in Australia, out of the day-to-day newspaper game and up to his elbows in neighbourhood dispute from the moment he sets foot in his new home.
Readers of the earlier...Read more
SD Hinton’s debut novel uses the structure of a thriller to explore myriad responses to trauma. Full review at Newtown Review of Books.Read more
This latest offering of Australian rural noir contrasts urban and small-town sensibilities from the perspective of a child protection officer. Full review at Newtown Review of...Read more
As I was reading this novel, I was finishing the autobiography THIS MUCH IS TRUE by Miriam Margolyes in audio form and I was struck by the coincidence of some of the things that she says most powerfully and pointedly, about dehumanisation, the utter and abject cruelty of "Empire" and the...Read more
Maryrose Cuskelly's novel seems to have taken Arthur Conan Doyle’s maxim to heart: ‘When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’ Full Review at: ...Read more
In the previous book in the long and much loved Phryne Fisher series, DEATH IN DAYLESFORD, author Kerry Greenwood felt it was time for the younger members of the Fisher household to do some investigating of their own. Not surprisingly Ruth, Jane and young Tinker turned out to quite the dab...Read more
Author of THE GALLERIST, Michael Levitt, is a surgeon and health bureaucrat with a considerable list of scientific articles, medical books targeted at the general public and chapters in medical textbooks to his name. He's also an art collector, and has written numerous articles about art...Read more
Will confess to being more than a bit pleased when WILD CARD, the second DS Zoe Mayer (and her service dog Harry) novel arrived. The initial outing - THE LONG GAME - had all the hallmarks of a long, and good series in the making, and the follow-up does nothing to dispel that belief....Read more
Having been a fan of the Halifax TV Series, starring Rebecca Gibney as Dr Jane Halifax, this book was greeted with considerable excitement. The author, Roger Simpson, is an award-winning screen writer, creating both the telemovie series of Halifax f.p. (which ran from 1994 to 2001) and its...Read more
STONE TOWN by Margaret Hickey follows the story of the central character introduced in her (very good) debut novel CUTTERS END. Senior Sergeant Mark Ariti's moved from the South Australian outback back to his home town of Booralama. Since the death of his mother, he's living on his own in...Read more
I'm not good with the end of things that I've really loved but when it came to the Caleb Zelic series by Emma Viskic, it turns out there was only so long I could hold out.
The earlier books in the series, RESURRECTION BAY, AND FIRE CAME DOWN, and DARKNESS FOR LIGHT, introduced...Read more
Not so long ago, you couldn't move for serial killer novels, and a lot of readers (including this one) were over them. Since then the "popularity" does seem to have waned, and there's a marked tendency to make that those that do show up - very good indeed. As it was with BLACK RIVER which...Read more
There seems to have been quite a few dystopian styled novels passing before my reading eye in recent months, and BANJAWARN is the latest.
Josh Kemp's debut novel is Gothic, gritty, depressing, uplifting, disturbing and rewarding - sometimes at different times, sometimes...Read more
Grazier Mathew Dunbar led a quiet life, working on his farm, helping out with the local poultry club, meeting up with the few very close friends he had. An adopted child, he'd had a tricky relationship with his parents, his father dying not improving things between Dunbar and his mother,...Read more
One of my recent audio book listens, THE CONSEQUENCE by Gabriel Bergmoser features hardman, rogue ex-cop Jack Carlin who's the sort of bloke that finds running thugs out of town, and handing over all of the money they'd stolen to a struggling kid de rigueur. The drug cartel, whose money it...Read more
Queensland, 1976, the town of Royalton and exiled Detective Ray Windsor, sent to the dying town in the state's west, feels like an alien in his own country. Royalton is ruled by corruption, populated by despair and an overwhelming sense of hopelessness, something that Windsor instantly has...Read more
WAKE won the CWA Debut Dagger in 2019, and it's not at all hard to see why. Atmospheric and cleverly constructed, with a strong sense of place and realistic characters, WAKE has a plot that bring past trauma, grief, guilt and violence forward in a family, and community, to the consequences...Read more
Bryan Brown is an actor synonymous in these parts with that sort of dry, pared back, quintessentially Aussie bloke character, much like the ones he's played in THE CHANT OF JIMMIE BLACKSMITH and for those of die-hard local crime fiction fans, the much missed Cliff Hardy in THE EMPTY BEACH....Read more
The thing about a book by Garry Disher is that I know it's going to be good. But every single time I find myself marvelling at just how good.
Disher is a master at the art of the space - be it in the narrative, the place or the thing. He evokes a sense of place better than any...Read more
The second George Manolis novel sees him flying from Australia to Greece on an extended holiday after a turbulent time. Recently divorced, mourning the death of his much loved father, Manolis returns to the place of his father's birth - the Prespes region which straddles the borders of...Read more
The second in the Reggie da Costa Mystery series from local author Laraine Stephens, DEADLY INTENT is set in Melbourne, in October 1923.
In this outing, heavy rains have battered Melbourne, and local crime reporter Reggie da Costa finds himself at the centre of a story when he...Read more
I used to keep count of "girl in a hat" (and man standing on a foggy street corner) book covers. But in this case, you know the sort of thing, book covers for rural / romance styled novels with girls looking off into the distance, over fields of golden (dry) grass, akubra style hat firmly...Read more
Mark Tedeschi AM QC was, until 2019, the Senior Crown Prosecutor, and the head of Chambers of the Crown Prosecutors for New South Wales. He's now a private barrister, but in 35 years with Crown Prosecution he has prosecuted many high-profile trials in Australia, some of which have involved...Read more
The Wikipedia definition of metafiction is:
"Metafiction is a form of fiction which emphasises its own constructedness in a way that continually reminds the audience to be aware they are reading or viewing a fictional work. Metafiction is self-conscious about
...Read more
Into the crime fiction reader's life something different should lob more often. CRIMINALS is not only different, it's brilliantly different.
Well known ABC presenter James O'Loghlin has taken his inspiration for this novel from his time as a criminal lawyer, and told the tale...Read more