Sorted on book title (not in series order)
It is just possible that a book about a middle aged, female, technical writer working for a software company might, just, perhaps be set in a world that feels more than a little bit comfortable (sans daughter of course). I will admit that when NO SAFE PLACE arrived I was more than a little...Read more
When your protagonist is a member of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and her partner is a trained drug-sniffer cat (yes, I said cat), you know the book isn’t going to be heavy on the gritty realism. NO SUSPICIOUS CIRCUMSTANCES is pure fluff so you do have to suspend disbelief to an...Read more
Constance appears as a fully formed resourceful character with an interesting background and the holder of some firm convictions. No flies on this officer, Con relies on no one but herself and is pleasantly surprised if any of her colleagues in the Met are actually non-biased and useful. ...Read more
NO TIME TO LOSE is Matt Baak's debut novel, set in the high-tech, high octane world of bank robberies in the current day. Which are considerably less about fronting the bank waving a gun around, and more the very high-tech way in which time locks, centralised security, and automatic systems...Read more
Four Pufferfish novels were never ever going to be enough for dedicated fans of this wonderful, quirky Police Procedural from Tasmanian based author David Owen. There was always a real sense of disappointment that Owen didn't appear to have been given the opportunity to publish more of...Read more
It's hard not to have certain expectations of crime fiction when it's written by a former Victorian Assistant Police Commissioner, as unreasonable or unfair as that may seem.
The first expectation is that the plot should have a strong sense of realism about it. NO WITNESS, NO...Read more
I came away from this book with a very strong sense of a culture that is profoundly different from my own, despite the idea that the main character Pablo Martelli seems to spend as much time driving great distances as we do. I also came away from this book with a profound sense of...Read more
Lovers of Precious Ramotswe, Kurt Wallender, Rebus and Kay Scarpetta may wish to look away now. Toby Clements in his second book THE NO 2 GLOBAL DETECTIVE, rolls up his sleeves and gets stuck in.
When Junior Tutor at Cuff College Oxford, Tom Hurst, joins the faculty of the...Read more
Another series that I really should be doing a better job keeping up with as Barbara Nadel writes about Turkey in a way that's vivid, believable and extremely entertaining.
A NOBLE KILLING is the 13th book in the Inspector Cetin Ikmen series, although it might be fairer to...Read more
NORFOLK tells a story that has particular resonance in Australia at present - asylum seekers arriving by boat. The substance of the story is covered by the blurb, but in essence, desperate people quickly overwhelm the idyllic community, and government responses are heavy handed enough to...Read more
New Years Eve often involves some reflection, some celebration, and some odd goings on. For Aimee, Melinda and Lou, starting out their celebration with an illegal Chinese lantern ceremony. Filling each lantern with their own resolution, the women light them and they lift off, after which...Read more
As an unrepentant, welded-on, dedicated Christopher Brookmyre fan I do have to ration these books a bit. So NOT THE END OF THE WORLD has been lurking here for quite a long time, although I was a little startled to learn it was originally published in 1998. Not because it's been lurking for...Read more
The first book in the Sergeant Frank Hardy series, NOT THE FAINTEST TRACE is an historical crime fiction novel, set in New Zealand in around 1869-1877. Based around the Taranaki Wars, a land war from New Zealand's past that I will confess to having known absolutely nothing about, the novel...Read more
I forgot NOTHING BAD HAPPENS HERE was a debut novel as you'd never know it from reading it. Set in the sort of small town in New Zealand that caters mostly to the summer tourist trade, journalist Miller Hatcher is sent there when the body of a tourist who went missing a while ago is...Read more
A murderer is identified by a team of oxen. A dead man rises from a watery grave to indict his killer. A phantom hearse gliding through Melbourne’s slums foretells violent death. A seamstress turns detective to avenge her friend’s homicide. A locked-tent mystery. ...Read more
Between 1865 and 1910 Mary Fortune wrote over 500 crime stories, set in the Victorian goldfields, Melbourne and the outback. Published initially in newspapers and the like, they form the first detective fiction series written by a woman, although she was published under a series of pseudonyms hiding both her real identity and her gender from the wider world.Read more
Part of a series of novels placing real life historical events in a modern setting, NOTORIOUS deals with one of England's past mysteries - the Princes in the Tower, and the enigma that was Richard III. The modern setting revolves around a world famous arty family, the Snows. Belle is a...Read more
When I read this back in January I posted a review. Or at least I thought I did. Imagine my surprise when I found it here in the draft queue. Whoops.
NOW WE ARE DEAD is a spinoff from the Logan McRae series featuring the glorious DS Roberta Steel. I say glorious in a "slightly...Read more
There must be such a delicate balancing act involved when you're writing crime fiction about some of the worst possible crimes. In NOW YOU SEE ME Bedford has tackled the question of child abuse and child murder, and she's opted, bravely to do that in a most unusual manner.
The...Read more
The fourth book in the series sees probation officer Cate Austin out of the familiar ground of career, single parenthood and England in a new life in Luxembourg. She's moved there, with her young daughter Amelia, to live with boyfriend and local police detective Olivier Massard. The...Read more
Clare Curzon began writing in the 1960s and has published over forty novels under a variety of pseudonyms, with twenty or so of these in the Superintendent Mike Yeadings series. OFF TRACK is the first time I've come across this series.
It has been a long while since I...Read more
I'm behind with this series, and heartily confused about the order in which to read them. But this fortuitous find in a neglected stack of purchased books, is blurbed as the "long-awaited sequel to 1222". Which I did really enjoy. It's also listed as the 9th Hanne Wilhelmsen novel, but I do...Read more
Cristina Sanders is a new to me author who has written a number of books in the past along the same lines of ŌKIWI BROWN - a fictionalised version of historical events that incorporate early tales (tall and true) of Aotearoa. This story is told in a series of anecdotes, incorporating the...Read more
Despite a rather shaky start in the legal profession, Robert Rotenberg's background in criminal law explains the perspective of his first novel OLD CITY HALL, most of the the book is being told from either the defence or the prosecution viewpoints.
OLD CITY HALL starts off in a...Read more
Morally flexible best mates and private investigators Alice and Teddy pride themselves on fixing every kind of mess imaginable, no questions asked. So, when they're tasked with locating the recently-stolen ashes of long-dead celebrity tennis player Ashley “Perry” Perrineau, it should be a...Read more
The morally flexible PI team of Alice and Teddy are back in a perfectly bonkers scenario in Fiona Hardy’s new novel Old Games.
Alice and Teddy, introduced to readers in the excellent...Read more
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.
A sense of place that puts you right on the spot, without turning into a travelogue. Something that gives you a sense of...Read more
It would seem that there is a rich vein of corruption, vice and criminality to be mined in 1970's and 80's Perth, if the ongoing involvements of Frank Swann, disgraced cop, now private eye from the pen of local author David Whish-Wilson, are anything to go by.
OLD SCORES is the...Read more
Cosy mysteries are so far from my comfort zone we could be classified as sworn enemies. Which is not to say that some haven’t worked for this particular reader. But to be fair, those that have worked normally deploy a sly, dry sense of humour, a huge dollop of self-awareness and preferably...Read more
A New Zealand born, Australian and Northern Ireland dwelling, now Iceland based author has written a book set in his adopted city of Reykjavík, with a central female character whose life is turned upside down in a very short space of time, that really works. Read ON A SMALL ISLAND so you...Read more