Sorted on book title (not in series order)
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
'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
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
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
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
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
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
A mystery set in 1880's Idaho with a bordello madam Hennessy Reed at the centre of it, that has a lot going for it. I know....
Hennessey Reed is a bordello madam with a liking for laudanum, irish whiskey and the local marshal. Although they keep that last one on the quiet as...Read more
ONE LITTLE LIE is targeted at the upper age limit of YA readers, a suspense novel, that sees four friends, Melissa, Katrina, Belinda and Alison working the Christmas Holidays on Melissa's uncle's tomato farm on Waiheke Island, New Zealand. The girls are hoping for a classic university...Read more
The third book in the Ngaire Blakes series, THE ONLY SECRET LEFT TO KEEP finds Blakes back in the police force (see my review of the second book: ...Read more
If you're a fan of fast paced, fun thrillers and haven't clued into the Jeff Bradley Thrillers from New Zealand based author Thomas Ryan yet then you are in for a treat.
Action packed, set in interesting places with excellent plots and a great central character in Former...Read more
We've got this little dog... Jedda is a 3 year old Australian terrier female. She's short, red-golden haired, extremely independent, determined to the point of obsession, friendly but can switch quickly into extreme bolshie and she is absolutely and utterly incapable of stepping away from...Read more
Paul Cleave is an absolute master of the art of the expected unexpected, especially when Theodore Tate pops up. On the expected front you know that things are going to get messy weird, and you know that Tate is going to go out of his way to try to do right by victims, regardless of the...Read more
Horror isn't a sub-genre I spend a lot of time reading, so PAINTED, being a mystery with a horror overlay, wasn't a book that came with much in the way of preconceptions or expectations. The premise is that when an extremely reclusive artist instructs a law firm on the manner in which is...Read more
Finn Bell made quite an impact on the 2017 Ngaio Marsh Awards with two shortlistings - his first novel DEAD LEMONS in Best First Novel, and PANCAKE MONEY in Best Crime Novel. Grouped together as The Far South Series, these aren't series books as such, so you can read them in...Read more
A vengeance styled thriller, set in Asia, PAYBACK tackles sex-trafficking and child abuse head on. Opening with the recounting of a young village girl being trucked off to the south of the country, along with many others, to be forced into a child sex ring. The resourcefulness this young...Read more
Book 13 in the Hana Du Rose Mysteries series and boy oh boy do I wish I'd read at least one of the earlier novels as I really struggled to work out what and who and how and why coming in at this point. Young Adult series that moves around the extended Du Rose family as far as I could tell,...Read more
PLEASE DO NOT DISTURB comes with a wonderfully evocative sense of place and people, delivered with an affectionate comic touch. There's something reminiscient in here of lots of these styles of novels set in developing nations, where the people in positions of power and leadership are over...Read more
This is now the second book by NZ author David McGill that I've read, both of which share a central detecting character, and a style being a combination of true history and crime fiction. The first novel, THE DEATH RAY DEBACLE was set in 1935, and this one, THE PLOT TO KILL PETER FRASER, is...Read more
Set in New Zealand, written by an Australian author, POISON BAY by Belinda Pollard is one of those novels that you just can’t help but wonder what tourism authorities reaction would be...
Located in one of New Zealand’s most rugged and beautiful locations - Fiordland - the...Read more
I was very intrigued by the idea behind Brisbane journalist Belinda Pollard's debut novel - a 'who's the unknown killer in the group' adventure thriller set in one of New Zealand's most ruggedly gorgeous national parks: Fiordland. A sort of And Then There Were None in the heart of...Read more
Not being at all adverse to a big suspenseful thriller I was more than pleased to get my hands on a copy of NZ author Steve Malley's book POISON DOOR.
Even more pleased that I didn't dither around like I'm wont to do and sat down and read it. There's an awful lot to like about...Read more
POKER CHIPS AND POISON is the first novel in what's intended to be a series set around 97-year-old Alice Atkinson, resident of Silvermoon Retirement Village, and cunning sleuth. Anybody who has read this author's Hitchhiker series may remember a cameo from Alice, but in this story she's...Read more
The promotional material pushes the connection, and it's hard not to get a vibe of THE SLAP from the blurb of this one - young families, a tragedy at a bbq that implodes relationships, crumbles friendships and all, but fear not if you're feeling like this is another commentary on parenting...Read more
Written by New Zealand based author Cat Connor, PSYCHOBYTE is book 8 in the Byte series based around FBI Agent Ellie Conway. Reading this series has always been a mixed experience for this reader - sometimes I find myself really enjoying them, sometimes I'm just not getting it at all. ...Read more
PUZZLE ME DEAD is the story of Careen Tamley, a survivor of the Clown Killer. On her nineteenth birthday, she survived a terrifying assault by a still unidentified serial killer, eleven other girls were not so lucky. Each murder scene included a card, numbered two to twelve. Careen moved on...Read more
Seeing something you shouldn't have makes life on the margins a whole lot scarier.
Ranger Cal Nyx works alone in the vast NSW bushland reserves but is pulled away from the quiet and solitude by a coded message that only one other person could understand.
Dif, the...Read more
THE QUARRY is now the second novel in a series featuring NSW ranger Cal Nyx. If you're new to these, it's a series that's going to be well worth following. There's no immediate requirement to read the earlier book first (THE BEAUTIFUL DEAD), although it will give you a slightly fuller...Read more