Sorted on book title (not in series order)
I'm not sure it's expected to be reading a crime fiction novel, and go from laughing out loud (waking everyone in the nearby vicinity) to sniffling. Or to find yourself going from immersed in a tricky and clever plot, to worrying yourself into an early grave over the possibility of the...Read more
The third book in the Jack Emery series of thrillers from Melbourne based author Steve P. Vincent, NATIONS DIVIDED picks up the ongoing storyline of a special agent that's happier than he's been in a long time. Because nobody has tried to shoot him or blow him up for years, and despite his...Read more
Reading NATURAL HISTORY I was struck by a number of things. Firstly, this is not your normal family. It's mostly Jane's idea to take over Monkeyland and build it into a good animal sanctuary - saving it from undoubted bankruptcy. Patrick just sort of goes along with this. It's Jane's...Read more
Stella is the only child of Adam, a pastor, and Ulrika, a lawyer. Stella is now of legal age and looks forward to soon taking an Asian holiday with her best friend since childhood, Amina. The two teenagers have been through much together and of course, know a lot more about each other’s...Read more
The second outing for Heloise Chancey, A NECESSARY MURDER follows on from the promising debut SHE BE DAMNED. In that novel we were introduced to Heloise Chancey, courtesan, independent woman and occasional detective. A combination Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poroit in an 1800's V.I....Read more
Don't ask me what's going on. NEFARIOUS DOINGS, the first book in the Nell Forrest series released in digital format by Momentum Books, is the sort of accidental female PI thing that I seem to have been reading lately. The only reason I can come up with is that the ones I have stuck with...Read more
The 4th book now in the DS Lucas Walker series, those who are new to it might need a tiny bit of background. Walker is with the Australian Federal Police, but it was on his personal home territory, in outback Australia where he first met Barbara (in book one to be precise), when she heads...Read more
I turn to these books partly for the plot, but mostly for the unapologetically grumpy Montalbano, the food porn, the supporting characters and the locations.
In terms of plot, A NEST OF VIPERS undoubtedly isn't the strongest Montalbano book in the series. There was nothing...Read more
NEST OF VIPERS is the second book in the Empress of Rome series. Author Luke Devenish has a resume that seems to hint at an ability to build a fantasy world. A novelist, screenwriter, playwright and Lecturer, Devenish was a Script Producer with Neighbours and a writer on Home and Away....Read more
Wonderfully evocative and beautifully delivered, NEST was utterly mesmerising.
I'm very grateful that the inclusion of NEST in the 2015 Ned Kelly Submissions meant that this wonderful book by Inga Simpson came to my attention. I'm not sure that I'd call this a...Read more
THE OTHER MOTHER and NEVER FORGET are two Michel Bussi novels that I'd somehow managed to miss reading, until I was reminded recently. Luckily the library had copies of both of them, so that gap, at least, has now been...Read more
James Patterson has been working with a number of crime writers recently, producing these co-authored books, so it's hard not to read each one playing a sort of "who wrote what" game in your head. Candice Fox, as Australian's all know, is the author of a brilliant series of crime fiction...Read more
Every now and then a book sneaks into my reading pile that absolutely and utterly defies this reader's ability to describe it, the affect it had, and the experience of reading it. A NEW NAME FOR THE COLOUR BLUE was simply amazing. Beautiful, moving, haunting, fragile and deceptive: actually...Read more
Australian author Shane Maloney wields the pen like no other writer imaginable, stripping each social veneer away in such a terribly effective fashion that we cringe as we recognize the creatures dwelling beneath. The Murray Whelan novels, of which NICE TRY is number three, are bitingly...Read more
When I said yes to a review copy of NIGERIANS IN SPACE, I will admit that it was partly the title. The opening line of the blurb didn't hurt either. Starting to read it, from about chapter 2 I was totally bamboozled, and firmly hooked. (Although I was mildly disappointed that the piece of...Read more
Francesco is a bus driver and gambling addict. Leila is a hustler, picking up men in night clubs and robbing them. Francesco is having big problems with Bear, a debt collector who doesn't have that nickname for no reason. Leila gets more than she bargains for when she finds the key to a...Read more
A beautiful young law student is dead. Falling from her third-storey window onto concrete below in chilly Dunedin, the house is a shared with other university students. The question is did she fall (suicide), was she pushed (murder), coerced (equally murder) or is this staged (suicide with...Read more
Recently busted back down to the rank of Constable, Mick Goodenough is the newest cop in town. Once a detective always a detective though, and it’s impossible for the experienced investigator not to speak up when it appears that his new colleagues are ignoring the sinister signs of an...Read more
The third in the Winemaker Detective series, NIGHTMARE IN BURGUNDY takes our hero Benjamin Cooker away from his native Bordeaux to Burgundy, where he is being named Chevalier du Tastevin by the Knights of the order that are proud of their slogan 'Never whine, always wine!'.
...Read more
Fast paced, heaps of action, a lot of lurking baddies, a flawed hero and comparisons with the work of Tom Clancy and Matthew Reilly are going to be coming in droves.
NO FREE MAN is the debut thriller from ex-RAAF member Graham Potts, taking it's protagonist, Stepan Volkov...Read more
NO GOOD DEED is a very welcome Australian crime fiction book, written by one of the leading local writers in Katherine Kovacic, set in the stinking hot outback, featuring Rena - a 60something retired geologist on a trip through the area that is partly fulfillment of a long standing plan,...Read more
Fans of Stuart MacBride's novels will be particularly familiar with the way that he likes to keep his police characters, in particular, at the end of their tether, under pressure from all sides, and frequently having a bit of a dummy spit by way of a coping mechanism.
NO LESS...Read more
Harris Derwent has run the full gamut of disappointment and loss in his nineteen years and is not sure if he’ll ever find the means to turn things around. Running from one disaster to the next, it takes a bullet to slow him down and even the circumstances in which Harris came to be injured...Read more
NO LOVELIER death is the ninth and latest entrant in the DI Faraday series of novels from Portsmouth based author Graham Hurley. If you're a fan of British Police Procedurals, then chances are you already know about these books - if not, you're in for a treat.
NO LOVELIER...Read more
A thriller that features surfing and a special operative anti-terrorism order, based on Eastern mysticism, is not exactly "expected territory" even with the best will in the world. Which makes NO MAN'S LAND by Australian author Roland Fishman an interesting prospect.
For...Read more
'He said that they’d let me go on purpose. That they could easily find me if they wanted to. He said that they didn’t want me. That I was too much trouble. He said if I went to the cops, he’d know. If I told Sonya, he’d know. If I talked to friends or teachers, he’d know. He told me to...Read more
Small towns and close knit communities are under scrutiny again in Nikki Crutchley's second novel NO ONE CAN HEAR YOU. Not part of a series with NOTHING BAD HAPPENS HERE, this second outing is built around another interesting and complicated female character Zoe Haywood. Haywood has...Read more
It's hard not to admire the bravery of an author that opts to write a crime novel in a strong, first person voice. A lot of a reader's enjoyment of that novel may then be hanging on their like, or dislike, of the central character. In the case of crime reporter Syeeda McKay we have a very...Read more
I cannot explain it either. One look at the blurb of this and you'd think I'd be backing away at the fastest possible rate. A couple of chapters in and I was wondering what on earth I thought I was reading.Read more
Eve Sylvester is a young, very naive girl with a lot of tragedy in her life. Raised partly in the foster care system, she's been restlessly moving around most of her life, when a chance meeting with a young Australian man overseas leads to a yacht journey home. It's a short lived period of...Read more