Sorted on book title (not in series order)
It is possible that the reader of a lot of mystery fiction could come to BAY OF FIRES with a predisposition to like it very much. It's an unusual twist on what is, frequently, a rather formulaic style. More importantly, it's a lot more about the people involved in a community than the...Read more
Whenever you're confronted by a jointly authored novel it's very hard to dampen the temptation to constantly look for hints on who contributed what components. Which was the case for around the first 20 pages of BAY OF MARTYRS and then I totally forgot to look.
Set in the South...Read more
Number 4 in the Jack Parlabane series and silly me thought this would be an excellent audio book to have burbling away in the background whilst I got on with some work around the house. Kept having to stop and listen hard, or lean against a wall because I was laughing so much.
...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
A disgraced son of a powerful Australian media tycoon, the traumatised daughter of a small town newspaper editor, coincidentally owned by the aforementioned tycoon. One is sent to "learn the ropes of journalism" / ie been kicked down the line, the other is in town after something sent her...Read more
When THE OLD SCHOOL was released all the way back in 2010, I noted "As I was reading this book I couldn't help but create a checklist of the things that make up seriously good crime fiction for me, and apply it as I went." Every box ticked needless to say, which means that the follow up has...Read more
In a small rural community north-west of Sydney, park ranger, Cal Nyx, finds a badly decomposed body in the bush. When the remains are identified as someone she once knew, the police treat her as a suspect. Cal, a tough and canny woman, needs to find the killer and convince the...Read more
Another book from the Ngaio Marsh list of 2021 that feels like the start of a series. This one is set north-west of Sydney, Australia, featuring park ranger Cal Nyx, who finds a badly decomposed body in the bush. Identification shows the body to be that of somebody she once knew, and Cal...Read more
Now a little housekeeping before we go too far. Beautiful Death is the second DCI Jack Hawksworth book, published under the author's real name of Fiona McIntosh. The first, Bye Bye Baby, was published under the pseudonym Lauren Crow. Fiona is a well known Fantasy writer in Australia, and...Read more
One thing that will strike readers of A BEAUTIFUL PLACE TO DIE firmly between the eyes is how an apartheid society is so incredibly foreign from the ways in which others of us live. That's not to say that there is an overtly "political" agenda in this book, rather the book does not take a...Read more
Having never heard of the Wiki Coffin series before, THE BECKONING ICE was an opportunity to read some historical crime fiction from New Zealand that doesn't come along all that often. Part Maori, part American, Wiki is on board the United States Exploring Expedition when a very odd murder...Read more
BEFORE I LET YOU GO goes down the path of teaching, not preaching, and the colossal unfairness of addiction is empathetically portrayed here in what it is a very entertaining read. This is a book you will knock off in just a few seatings as you get caught up in wanting to see Annie through...Read more
Sometimes the world is very kind to a dedicated fan of Australian Crime fiction, particularly when two new books from authors that we've not heard from for a very long time arrive. Peter Doyle and Dave Warner each played their part, many years ago, in engaging an interest in our own stories...Read more
In 2022 Jacqueline Bublitz's novel BEFORE YOU KNEW MY NAME won both the Best Novel and Best First Novel categories of the Ngaio Marsh awards. It was the first time this had occurred since the award was established in 2010, and there are some really good reasons for that.
There'...Read more
Angela Savage won the Victorian Premiers Literary Award for Best Unpublished Manuscript by Emerging Author in 2004 for this book, then called Thai Died.
Jayne Keeney is an expat Australian woman who, in order to avoid a predictable life, left Australia and started teaching...Read more
Yikes. Be prepared for the push and pull as your suspicions settle on one person and then are shunted briskly away to lay uneasily on the head of another. Rinse and repeat.
There’s a lot to like in this novel and there’s also a lot that simply doesn’t work. It’s clever or...Read more
BENEATH THE BLEEDING is the fifth book in the Tony Hill / Carol Jordan series from Scottish writer Val McDermid. Which fans of this writer will already know. Fans will also know that anybody as daft as me, who would leave this book on the review pile for as long as I have, is really...Read more
The frustrating thing about discussing a book like BEREFT is the reason Womersley's the author, and I'm the reader. How do you put into words something as moving, involving, immersing as BEREFT and make it intelligible? No idea, so let's go with the next best option.
"A searing...Read more
It’s July 1945, and the war in Europe is finally over. Auguste Duchene has survived, but the past will not let go.
As implausible as it sounds Omar Yussef is a man in the middle of an awful situation that you want to meet. Spend some time with. Drink some sa'ada coffee. Talk to about his Bethlehem. Omar brings a unique perspective to murder, to power games and to fanaticism whilst simultaneously...Read more
Date rape isn't a subject that I've come across a lot in my crime fiction reading, so combine that with an Australian setting, a very dark outlook and a number of quite damaged, imperfect characters who crash towards an unusual ending in the second book by local author Y.A. (Yvette) Erskine...Read more
There's a quote on the blurb for this book which goes:
Guy Ritchie meets Elmore Leonard – this is a fast-paced humorous crime thriller with splashes of dark and sinister
Which is where I could leave this review because it sums it...Read more
TRIGGER WARNING: Addresses foster and orphaned children and child abuse, as well as animal abuse - see expansion below.
The second DI Nyree Bradshaw novel from Catherine Lea, this is a police procedural styled series that is strong on character and sense of place, and no slouch...Read more
A DETECTIVE IN SEARCH OF THE TRUTH
Hana Westerman is a tenacious Ma¯ori detective juggling single motherhood and the pressures of her career in Auckland’s Central Investigation Branch. When she’s led to a crime scene by a mysterious video, she discovers a man hanging in a...Read more
BETTER THE BLOOD is one of those novels that I'd been hearing whispers about for quite a while, and should have made it to the top of the reading pile more quickly than my poor priority setting allowed. On the one hand I'm now regretting the delay, but on the upside, maybe I've cunningly...Read more
As Leif G.W. Persson is a new author for me, I was interested to read the bio in this book:
"Leif Persson is the Grand Master of Scandinavian crime fiction. Over three decades, he has taken a scalpel to the political and social mores of Swedish society in dark, complex and...Read more
Launch! From the opening pages, this reviewer was hooked.
There are so many subtly creepy things going on in BETWEEN THE LIES that you hardly know where to throw your suspicions. Who is the master manipulator here? Why is no one in this family being honest...Read more
As a young adult novel, BETWEEN, is a little firecracker of a story, mostly because Olly is a wonderful character. Grounded, a lot, in the relationship between the slightly naughty Olly, who is constantly drawn to Mad Martha, despite the blanket family ban on contact, the other side of that...Read more
BEYOND FEAR is journalist Jaye Ford's first book, billed as an adrenaline-pumped suspense thriller. Which, if you're reading it with that aim in mind it absolutely is. The book starts out with one of those scenes that just make you know something bad's going to happen. Something very bad...Read more
Didn’t know you were in the mood for a legal thriller? Legal thrillers can be terrific reading sorbets when you are longing for a bit of law and order in your crime fiction reading. BEYOND REASONABLE DOUBT fits the bill in spades.
Elliot Rook always knew that one of the...Read more