All Reviews

Emma Viskic's second Caleb Zelic novel.

THE PROMISED LAND delivers another confident dose of elegantly constructed crime writing that is both insightful and challenging to unravel. Tuck yourself in, you’re in good hands.

It is impossible to escape your own past. That other self, the one you were before, will always be with you, wherever you go. Attempt to shake her off to your peril.

The new ‘horror’ is in acknowledging what is happening in the world today, in our supposedly advanced age. We’ve come so far, but so far in aid of whom exactly?

CALL ME EVIE is however a powerful psychological thriller, exploring the complications of memory (as hinted at in the opening quotations). But it's memory in all it's false, guilty, happy, searching, fragmented, convenient and confrontational guises.

Winner of the 2018 Ned Kelly Award.

The strength of RIVER OF SALT is definitely in the idea of a stranger in a strange land, back in the days when communications weren't instant, and people could reinvent themselves to some extent. It's exploring just how far you can go with that idea, and how much of the old you will never go away.

When you are next thinking of accessing a portal to another dimension, perhaps you should consider the shower block?

David Whish-Wilson is best known for his historical crime fiction set in Perth and surrounds, but The Coves takes us to 1849 San Francisco, gold fever and the Australian gangs who controlled the part of it known as Sydney-town. Newtown Review of Books

The Rowland Sinclair series is an interesting one. It's gentle and funny in places. It's characters are vivid, it's sense of place and time light and breezy, yet peppered with reminders of where the world was heading.

Peter Temple's 2nd novel and my latest summer favourite.

Holly Throsby's excellent 2nd novel.

I've been trying to think of somebody else that could write books about abalone fishing quotas, cricket, asylum seekers and now early white Australian settlement, convicts, rum runners and shipwrecks and make them all equally compelling, memorable, and ... crime fiction.

Absolutely no doubt about it - Pankhurst and what she does for a living are fascinating stories.

The second in the Cass Diamond series MISSING PIECES is set in far North Queensland, with Cass Diamond investigating connected cold case disappearances.

It's been a while since the last Brock & Kolla outing (THE RAVEN'S EYE in 2013 to be precise) and this reader has missed them. They are one of the great, solid, reliable, enduring duo's of crime fiction and it's good to see THE PROMISED LAND indicating there is some fuel left in their combined tanks.

Crime Scene Asia is an accounting of a series of cases within various locations in Asia, where forensic evidence was a large part of the court proceedings in particular.

The sub-heading says it all "Powerful and Disturbing Stories of Murdered Sex Workers".

Post 9-11 it's hard to think that there hasn't been speculation about the next shock and awe campaign. I bet nobody thought there'd be an Australian, rough and tumble ex-commercial pilot come spy at the centre of it all.

WAITING FOR ELIJAH is a respectful and meticulously put together account of the enormity of a single loss.

The murderous adventures of Maud, an 88 year lady living in Gothenburg, Sweden

The winner of the 2018 McIlvanney Prize for best Scottish crime book.

The second Jack Parlabane novel.

5th in the Discworld series - listened to during the year.

4th in the Discworld series - listened to during the year.

Opening with a breathtaking first-person account of the car accident that killed Matthew Cave's wife and unborn daughter, THE GIRL WITHOUT SKIN isn't as straight-forward an undertaking for fans of Nordic Noir as it might seem.

Based around an event that followers of the Underbelly wars in Melbourne will likely recognise, this tale is the second outing for Detective Sergeant Rory James, based in part around the Bendigo region.

It is thirty years from now and we have colonised the moon.

Third in the Dan Forrester series, we're into classic thriller mode now with this series.

...populated by more than enough sub-plots and intrigue to keep a reader on their toes.

Australian readers will probably remember C.J. Carver as Caroline Carver - writer of a series of Australian set books years ago.

This was without a doubt, one of the most intriguing books I've encountered this year and it reminded me, yet again, that Antti Tuomainen is a writer who deserves (and now has) a much higher position on the must read list.

Another one of those quintessentially Scottish sounding audible books - perfect for listening to over an extended period of time.

It's a mark of Robotham's skill that he's inserted THE SECRET SHE KEEPS into a crowded domestic noir scene, littered with unreliable narrators, dysfunctional families and tension because of poor judgements, and created an extremely readable, quite chilling, page turning entrant.

3rd in the Discworld series - listened to during the year.

2nd in the Discworld series - listened to during the year.

Another series I've restarted in audio format.

A real act of terrorism in Sydney in the 1980s inspired Ashley Kalagian Blunt to write My Name is Revenge (a finalist in the 2018 Carmel Bird Digital Literary Award). Full review at Newtown Review of Books

These people are real, this situation is real and in THE LOST MAN Harper has created another astounding work that perfectly evokes a complicated, heart-breaking, all-too-believable family tragedy.

... delivered in the classic pared down, matter of fact manner that's part of expectations that a reader is well within their rights to have when picking up the latest Wyatt novel.

This was a career criminal who seemed often to be inviting capture, whilst being equally clever – or charmed - at avoiding it.

The author's bio mentions that S.D. Rowell is interested in the interplay between culture, morality and truth, explored in THE ECHO OF OTHERS. Can't disagree with any of that, THE ECHO OF OTHERS is an outstanding debut novel.

After listening to the first two books in the Lewis Trilogy pretty much one after the other, I've done it at all the wrong time of the year.

An excellent wartime thriller by Kate Atkinson.

The best thriller you've never heard of, does such a thing exist? Kolymsky Heights may just be that book.

Educational and informative true crime writing at it's best.

There's something very satisfying about the emergence of a new crime series set in Australia - this time 1960's Perth.

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.

One reader's darkly comic domestic noir is another reader's vegan sausage.

Into everyone's life a Cass Tuplin should blunder, yoyo's in hand, sorting it out once and for all on her mind.