Sorted on book title (not in series order)
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 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
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
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
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
Miller Hatcher made her debut as a character in NOTHING BAD HAPPENS HERE. In my review of that book I noted that she was "a flawed character, frequently almost pathetic, but there's enough in her back story, and the way her problems presented to make her understandable, if not completely...Read more
Third novel in the super-cozy Hitchhiker series which features stay at home dad Oliver Atkinson, and his propensity to pick up ghostly hitchhikers with problems that they need solving. In this outing he finds himself dealing with a precious nine-year-old and an investigation into what...Read more
Two books from the Hitchhiker series of cosy paranormal novels based around unwilling house-husband Oliver Atkinson and his adventures with the odd and quirky. Atkinson is a stay at home husband who doesn't seem to be all that happy with that situation. Although he is trying to write a book...Read more
MURDER IN PINK is the fourth book in the Hitchhiker series featuring Oliver Atkinson, his family, and his ... hangers on. Basically Oliver is an unwilling house husband, and amateur investigator who is "aided" by witnesses or involved parties, who inhabit his being. Ghosts with opinions and...Read more
Set in the early twentieth century in mannered and beautiful Dunedin, New Zealand there are plenty of similarities between the stories of Mr Mancini and the delightfully idiosyncratic Hercule Poirot. A cerebral solver of crime, his collaboration with the acerbic Detective Haynes is a nice...Read more
Quirkly written tale of 1870's gold rush New Zealand, with more than enough parallels with local history to make this believable and entertaining reading. Central character Gordon Trembath, is a young, inexperienced police constable, stuck with being the only one on duty over the Christmas...Read more
The third book in the Audrey Murders series, THE MURDER TRAIL is set in a very picturesque location in the far north of New Zealand. Audrey owns a beautiful holiday cabin property perched on a rural mountain top. She's been unlucky in love and she's a serial killing psychopath.
...Read more
The second book from NZ based author Danyl McLauchlan MYSTERIOUS MYSTERIES OF THE ARO VALLEY follows on UNSPEAKABLE SECRETS OF THE ARO VALLEY. If this reader's experience was anything to go, it may be better to have read the first book, as there was quite a bit that remained somewhat...Read more
THE MYSTERY OF THE MISSING MINISTERS is the first in an intended series JUST PIE MYSTERIES by Gina Poekeleen (a pseudonym I believe).
Straight out of the cosy manual, it's one of those arch, comically styled female investigator types of novel full of aside comments, and...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
Followers of this series have probably read the second book THE LEWIS PASS, which when I reviewed it way back, I did mention:
The only downside is one of those endings that sort of reeks of "and in the next book
...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
'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