A white-knuckle ride into a nightmarish outback setting, where a man searching for mercy encounters a town baying for violent vengeance. A pulse-pounding literary thriller with a stunning final twist.
This listing shows posts that went onto AustCrimeFiction.org in the last 14 days. Sorted into post type groups - Blogs (Updates), Books, Reviews.
Lake Herrod, a once-thriving community, now lies in the shadow of a nearly dry lake. The town, like the water, is evaporating and its residents are left clinging to what little remains.
When Aaron Love discovers a fresh corpse near the cracked lakebed – along with evidence his missing father is alive and linked to a web of organised crime – he is thrust into a world of deception, injustice and betrayal. With the town on the brink of collapse, Aaron and a haunted detective, Martyn Kravets, uncover a web of conspiracy that reaches far beyond the small community.
A heart-pounding, high-stakes, high-adrenalin relentless blast of an action-packed thriller, from Gabriel Bergmoser. the bestselling author of The Hunted and The Caretaker.
Who's got time to think about murder when there's a wedding to plan?
It’s been a quiet year for the Thursday Murder Club. Joyce is busy with table plans and first dances. Elizabeth is grieving. Ron is dealing with family troubles, and Ibrahim is still providing therapy to his favourite criminal.
Ten suspects. Ten heists. A puzzle only Ernest Cunningham can solve.
I’ve spent the last few years solving murders. But a bank heist is a new one, even for me. I’ve never been a hostage before.
The doors are chained shut. No one in or out. Which means that when someone in the bank is murdered, hostages become suspects.
A country town, a brutal murder, a shameful past, a reckoning to come... The injustices of the past and dangers of the present envelop Aboriginal policewoman Renee Taylor, when her unwilling return to the small outback town of her childhood plunges her into the investigation of a brutal murder.
Renee Taylor is planning to stay the minimum amount of time in her remote hometown - only as long as her mum needs her, then she is fleeing back to her real life in Brisbane.
In Norway's frozen north, it's not just secrets that are buried…
When nineteen-year-old Iselin Hanssen disappears during a run in a popular hiking area in Bodø, Northern Norway, suspicion quickly falls on her boyfriend. For investigator Jakob Weber, the case seems clear-cut, almost unexceptional, even though there is some suggestion that Iselin lived parts of her life beneath the radar of both family and friends.
On the remote West Coast of the South Island, vast forests stretch out between mountain ranges and rugged beaches. There, in the small town of Koraha, not a lot happens - until a young girl with blood on her hands walks out of the bush and into the local store, collapsing to the floor.
She can't - or won't - speak to anyone. It's the town's sole policeman who recognises her face. She looks exactly like a local girl who disappeared twenty years ago. She has the same red hair. The same green eyes.
England, 1979. Vincent, Lawrence and William are the last remaining residents of a secluded New Forest home, part of the government’s Sycamore Scheme. Every day, the triplets do their chores, play their games and take their medicine, under the watchful eyes of three Mother Morning, Mother Afternoon and Mother Night.
Their nightmares are recorded in The Book of Dreams.
Their lessons are taken from The Book of Knowledge.
And their sins are reported in The Book of Guilt.
Mum, please. I need your help. I’ve done something stupid… They’re coming for me.’
Friday, one thirty p.m. Emily Barnes is finishing work for the week, ready for a break from her laptop. Then she receives a panicked voicemail from her son Zach, punctuated by a gunshot.
By four p.m., she's driving a stolen car out of Perth, with explicit instructions from Zach's captors - in three days, deliver the car to Gunpowder Creek, a ghost town 900 kilometres deep into the West Australian outback. Miss the deadline and Zach dies. And don't open the boot.
Humorous cosy-crime caper in which a feisty, amoral book dealer uses her unique skills to catch a murderer, desperate to hide the secrets kept by the yoga-obsessed staff and students of a West London ashram.
When Erik Make Loud, retired rock star and a major World War Two nut, hires Cordelia, the Paperback Sleuth, to track down a series of lurid paperbacks about his favourite global conflict—the “Commando” novels by the blatantly pseudonymous Butch Raider—it seems like a routine job. But Cordelia soon discovers the final novel in the series, the incredibly rare Commando Gold, is all but impossible to track down.
Gaslight, Femi Kayode
Years (sadly) ago now I read the first book by Femi Kayode, LIGHTSEEKERS, and loved it. Partly because it was very much a whydunnit and partly because the central character, acclaimed investigative psychologist, Philip Taiwo is such an interesting take on an investigator. Having lived most of his life in the US, he's now in Nigeria, with his family, reconnecting with his families origins, and, to be frank, looking for somewhere that everyone else looks like them.
A Shipwreck in Fiji, Nilima Rao
The second book in the historical series featuring Sergeant Akai Singh, A SHIPWRECK IN FIJI follows on from A DISAPPEARANCE IN FIJI. This series makes for particularly interesting reading if you're aware of the motivation behind the books, which Rao spells out in her author's notes. In this book she comments:
Kataraina, Becky Manawatu
Our ancestor once lived close to the
house where he was shot. She was at
the river when a man approached
her and offered her some peaches
from a can, but then he attacked her.
KATARAINA is the much anticipated follow up to the, frankly, gut-wrenching AUĒ, which at the time I reviewed it, and since then, whenever I return to the book I remember saying:
AustCrime Update June 2025
Firstly apologies. The last newsletter was back in March, and since then things have been ... well chaotic. So there's some news to be caught up with.
Firstly some releases you might want to keep an eye out for (click on the cover images for the book details):
RELEASE DATE: 29/5/2025: Aside from this being a really interesting cover design, a locked room mystery on a cruise ship set in 1925.