Sorted on book title (not in series order)
I've read MERCY (aka THE KEEPER OF LOST CAUSES) by Jussi Adler-Olsen twice now and finally I think I've got it the review straight in my head.
Why twice? The first time I read this book was right in the middle of a series of releases based around the woman locked in the...Read more
If the idea of a serial killer novel titled THE MERRY MISOGYNIST has you slightly confused, then I can only guess that perhaps you've never read a Dr Siri book before. If you're a fan of quirky, without cute or cosy, humour without slapstick and the most marvellous sense of place that you'...Read more
On page 2 of this book I kind of got the feeling that we'd be destined to get on very well....
"He's got more prior convictions than brain cells which means he won't get bail, so he's wallowing in the Metropolitan Remand Centre at Ravenhall, trying to find a
...Read more
To say that author Lauren Roche has taken on a mammoth undertaking with MILA AND THE BONE MAN is possibly one of the bigger understatements this reviewer has uttered. There is so much happening in this coming of age story, which is more than just that - it's an exploration of consequences,...Read more
Not sure what's weirder, talking to fictional characters, or the feeling that you actually know those fictional characters... Either way, you have to think it's quite a feat for a writer to get you to the stage where you're more than happy to regard her characters as real people. MILES OFF...Read more
Being a 14 year old girl is never an easy undertaking, but living in a dying town, in a family beset with problems makes Miracle's life that bit more complicated.
She's known as Miracle because she was born in the middle of Australia's biggest-ever earthquake. The same quake...Read more
Hopefully more and more of us are looking for answers to the state of the world in the right directions, but then again you look at the state of world politics and the rise of the nationalistic mobs, environmental degradation and climate change denial, and it's getting hard to see any light...Read more
Very very niche, set in a fairytale world (Wyld Enchantment Woods) MIRROR, MIRROR WHO'S THE KILLER? is a non-romantic, paranormal, cozy mystery for adults with talking cats and quirky characters. Needless to say - you're going to have to be the sort of reader that likes this sort of thing...Read more
The second in the Cass Diamond series MISSING PIECES is set in far North Queensland, with Cass Diamond investigating connected cold case disappearances. In 1992, toddler Yasmin Munoz went missing from a picnic spot near Cairns. In 2012 local businessman and former mayor Andrew Todd dies,...Read more
Sure Logan McRae's now an Acting Detective Inspector, in uniform. In the backend of nowhere, with a good team working with him, especially when you realise the number of cows they have to chase off roads. His girlfriend has improved a little, she's now in a care home, still uncommunicative...Read more
The novella THE MISTAKE is short, sharp, packed with a punch crime fiction set in Iceland, written by ex-pat New Zealander Grant Nicol. Set in Reykjavik, there's a lot that's laid on the line, as you'd expect in something constrained by length. There's been a brutal murder and the clear...Read more
I still remember the profound sense of disquiet that WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN? left me with, and Wendy James has done it again with THE MISTAKE.
There's something about Jodie Garrow that I suspect is going to trigger differing responses in readers. Personally I couldn't get past a...Read more
Never underestimate a tea lady.
Sydney, 1968. When a popular local man is murdered, police are quick to pin the blame on his glamorous model fiancée, who has since disappeared. But Hazel suspects a criminal cover-up and rallies the tea ladies to investigate; a...Read more
Pete McAuslan is Vietnam Vet, and retired police officer, now holed up in the family's remote cabin near the small Tasmanian town of Mole Creek, writing his memoir. His grandson Xander is a Sydney based journalist, and they are close. So close that the shock of the death of Pete, and the...Read more
There's a particularly interesting idea at the heart of A MOMENT'S SILENCE. A holidaying New Zealander makes a chance sighting out of a bus window, subsequently connecting the dots between the car he saw, and a subsequent bomb explosion. Originally reporting his suspicions in the Cotswolds...Read more
It’s 84 years since Dame Ngaio Marsh published the first Roderick Alleyn novel. Now he’s back, in a crime novel outlined by Marsh during the Second World War and completed by Stella Duffy in 2018.
Dame Ngaio Marsh was a New Zealand crime writer and theatre...Read more
Romance only appears to work for me when it includes a hefty dose of comedy. Having enjoyed the first book in this series - ROUGH DIAMOND - it felt like no trial to be back in the company of Erica Jewell. Probably because she's just ever so slightly bats (...Read more
Ely is a small town, deep in the Cambridgeshire Fens. It's situated near low lying marshes and the canals that formed the trading routes of old. Current day Ely is slow and quiet. It's also deeply shrouded in heavy smog – part mist / part smoke from the local dump. The dump is a huge pile...Read more
The third Catherine Berlin novel from Annie Hauxwell takes the concept of moving a character out of their comfort zone that bit further. Berlin is one of those unrepentant flawed types. A heroin addict she's prepared to manage the addiction with prescription medications, but she's really...Read more
The second novel in the Siri Bergman series, MORE BITTER THAN DEATH, suffered a little from this reader having missed the first book - SOME KIND OF PEACE. It left such a sense of missing out for this reader, that SOME KIND OF PEACE was slotted into the teetering pile of books to be read....Read more
Steamy is right – and not just the weather. THE MORUTAU AFFAIR was not what I was expecting.
Ostensibly about the death of a plantation owner, it's a story made up of current action and flashbacks to the time that he and his wife, met, married and from there, the lead-up to his...Read more
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...Read more
Think Hercule Poirot in a Sikh turban and the tropical heat of Kuala Lumpur, but add a hefty dose of rumpled Columbo and I think that's the best description of Inspector Singh of the Singapore police that I can come up with. A MOST PECULIAR MALAYSIAN MURDER is the first in this series from...Read more
My review of RESERVATION FOR MURDER, FACULTY OF MURDER and MAKE-UP FOR MURDER has been posted:
June Wright has faded from view, but in 1948 her novel Murder in the Telephone Exchange outstripped sales of Agatha Christie in...Read more
Lucy, like most women on the precipice of marriage, has spent some time considering not only what her new life might be like when she becomes a wife, but also how it might be to become someone’s daughter-in-law. In order to achieve her happy-ever-after with the lovely Oliver, Lucy must...Read more
It is probably no coincidence that this book is likely to appeal to fans of TV shows like CSI and Law and Order as the author says she is very fond of those shows and the book has a structure, subject matter and delivery which seems somewhat reminiscent of that style of...Read more
MR PENUMBRA'S 24-HOUR BOOKSTORE actually wasn't a book I was planning on reading, although there were whispers about it everywhere I looked. Then a friend mentioned that they'd enjoyed it and their observations are always spot on, so I thought I'd take a look. And I must admit I found it...Read more
We first came across this character in the TV Series, MRS SIDHU INVESTIGATES starring Meera Syal who is just perfect as the caterer, and amateur eponymous sleuth at the centre of a surprising number of food adjacent (but not necessarily caused by) deaths. (Seems they all stem from a radio...Read more
From the cute, silly, chatty end of the cosy spectrum, what I saw were aspects of Nell Forrest and Tabitha Darling, crossed with Helen Hawthorne delivered with a hefty hat-tip to Murder, She Wrote. But I'm not a close follower of cosy crime, so that probably reflects more about my limited...Read more
A MURDER AT MALABAR HILL introduces Miss Perveen Mistry, a young lawyer-turned-sleuth in 1920's Bombay. This novel is the winner of (amongst other awards), the 2019 Mary Higgins Clark Award, the 2019 Lefty Award for Best Historical novel and the 2018 Agatha Award for Best Historical Novel....Read more