Sorted on book title (not in series order)
Readers were introduced to Joel Fitch and his mentor Richard Mordecai in the first book of this series, CHASING THE ACE. This second book, FAST AND LOOSE, starts up where the first left off, with Fitch and Mordecai parted ways, and Fitch left holding the cash. Rather a lot of cash straight...Read more
Martin's the sort of bloke that persons of a certain age can identify with. It might not make you all that comfortable with yourself, but boy can you identify (I hasten to add I have NEVER worn brown suede shoes and if I ever do .... well feel free to shoot me on sight), but I digress....Read more
A remote island. A brutal murder. A secret hidden in the past . . .
In the middle of the North Sea, between the UK and Denmark, lies the beautiful and rugged island nation of Doggerland.
Detective Inspector Karen Eiken Hornby has returned to the main island, Heimö...Read more
Having had the urge to try BorrowBox from our Library system recently, I happened upon the first three books in the Doggerland series by Maria Adolfsson - FATAL ISLES (2018), WILD SHORES (2019) and CRUEL TIDES (2020). It looks like there are three more books that haven't yet been translated...Read more
Imagine a very different Edinburgh, one where constant earthquakes, tremors and aftershocks are a regular part of life. This is the setting for Fault Lines which opens with Surtsey setting foot on Inch, a small island in the Firth of Forth which was formed after a volcanic eruption 25 years...Read more
It's probably heresy to admit this - but there were a few things about this book that made it sound less attractive than it could have. Not least of all the plot of a teenage girl going missing in circumstances sounding suspiciously like a run-away. Teenage angst is a subject normally...Read more
There are simply not enough of these short novella books being published these days. Not only do they give you a real taste of (frequently) lesser known writers, they are perfect little handbag books - stocking stuffers if you want. FEDORA WALKS could definitely stuff the stocking of a...Read more
This is one of those books that the blurb will give you a very good feel for the style (and there is a lot of style here) of story-telling deployed. THE FELL I can best describe as a stream of conscious coming of age novel that's light on punctuation, and big on the angst, challenge and...Read more
Mr Wong is a breath of fresh air to the mystery genre. He is a feng shui master who just happens to solve mysteries while giving his clients interior decorating advice as a geomancer; its all about noticing negative chi energy accompanied by simple observations. All Mr Wong wants to do is...Read more
The second novel in the RJ Rox series, THE FESTIVAL KILLER is a crime novel, with a rejected manuscript at its heart. The connection between the past unsolved case of an ambassador's secret love child going missing at the Berlin Book Festival, and subsequent disappearances from similar book...Read more
Relationships (personal, business, familial, friendship) are complicated things, as the 6th Tony Hill and Carol Jordan book FEVER IN THE BONE explores.
The central investigation centres around the brutal deaths of a number of apparently unconnected teenage victims. Starting...Read more
A FEW RIGHT THINKING MEN introduces Rowland Sinclair to fans of Australian historical crime fiction. Set in 1930's Sydney and Yass, A FEW RIGHT THINKING MEN takes a reader into a world where the affects of the Great Depression are being felt, and the tension between the Proto-Fascists and...Read more
John Cardinal is a detective in the small police force, in Algonquin Bay, Ontario a small rural town in Canada. The local mayor keeps reporting his wife missing, when everybody else in town knows exactly what she's up to. Rather than just try to convince the poor delusional husband what's...Read more
Adrian McKinty has an awful lot to answer for. Sitting down to read FIFTY GRAND, I thought this would be another good book from an author whose books I've increasing come to like. What I didn't expect was a nearly straight reading sitting, leaving the entire household making do with...Read more
Remarked upon often as the first Arabic detective story translated, THE FINAL BET is a very slim volume that has a strong central message. The book really isn't particularly about Casablanca the place, or even the people. It's very much targeted straight at the way that the Moroccan legal...Read more
A sequel to THE GENTLEMEN'S CLUB and THE VANISHING ACT, THE FINAL CALL is set in 1979 (10 or so years after THE VANISHING ACT) located in Remuera New Zealand, where Rita Saunders is the boss at The Gentlemen's Club, a high class brothel. Rita's more than a madam to her girls though, and the...Read more
FINAL CURTAIN is the first of Kjersti Scheen's books to be translated into English and is also the first in a series of books feating ex-actress turned private investigator Margaret Moss.
Margaret's had a go at quite a few things in her life and hasn't really been able to...Read more
Adam Stubo and Johanne Vik are a couple that met in an earlier book in this series by Scandinavian writer Anne Holt. Vik is a profiler with a prickly nature, and a complicated past. Stubo is a Police Superintendent with a gentler, kinder nature and a tragic background. Vik is hard to...Read more
A debut crime novel from Australia, THE FINGERPRINT THIEF is written with the focus on the forensic technician. Not that surprising given the "CSI Effect" that so many people talk about these days. Set in Melbourne, the novel uses Melbourne's Williamstown Beach as the location of the body,...Read more
Australian author Emma Viskic depicts a community well used to living with constant tension, disappointment and outright hostility. It’s a unforgiving world for sure, and we are reading of people who are not living their best lives by a long shot. The summer heat and the threat of...Read more
“…last night’s dreams had slipped into waking hours again, plucking at his thoughts with their blood-stained fingers.”
With her first novel, Resurrection Bay, Emma Viskic not only announced herself as a novelist to watch she also created a lead character in Caleb Zelic...Read more
Emma Viskic explores difference, and its consequences, in this sequel to Resurrection Bay. Reviewed at Newtown Review of BooksRead more
Housekeeping first - FIREPLAY (Jack Emery) 0.5 is the novella based prequel to THE FOUNDATION, but released after the first full-length novel came out. The action in FIREPLAY clears up some of the backstory in THE FOUNDATION, but it doesn't matter a jot what order you read them in....Read more
One glance at the blurb for this book will give you a pretty good feel for the style. Yep, another comedic female private detective crashing through life in a manner that can make a reader cry with laughter, or stick their hands up in the air begging for a good old fashioned police...Read more
The Orient Express instantly conjures up images of luxurious travel, fine dining, people dressed in their very best, quiet and attentive staff gliding unseen and unremarked through carriages, Inspector Hercule Poirot and 12. Always 12 people.
And so it is with FIVE FOUND DEAD...Read more
The 4th Theodore Tate novel, FIVE MINUTES ALONE sees author Paul Cleave continuing to pull together connections from many of his previous novels - this series and the Christchurch Carver books. Must admit some of these connections, and the continuation in these books fascinate this reader....Read more
FLAMEKEEPER is the 5th book in the Peter Clancy series, and the first not to be set around the mean streets of Melbourne, within the context of The Truth Newspaper. A real-life sensationalist weekly paper that liked nothing better than personal scandal and a spot of stirring of the pot (...Read more
If you take absolutely nothing else from author Felicity Young's Cam Fraser series, then it should serve as a reminder of how important volunteer fire services are in rural communities Australia-wide. Young's background in her local service provides a real-life understanding of the embedded...Read more
FLAWED is the seventh in the Brodie Farrell, Daniel Hood and Jack Deacon books, although the blurb doesn't mention Daniel. As I've never read any of this series before, I was a little confused at the start as Daniel (who at that stage was a total unknown as far as I was concerned) takes...Read more
If you are teetering on the edge of fully-fledged vegetarianism FLESH HOUSE could be the trigger that pushes you over. MacBride is one of those author's who seem to be able to take the grotesque, the frequently cruel and absolutely obscene and wrap that in humanity. FLESH HOUSE is one of...Read more