Status Update - Refactoring 2024
All the books and reviews for 2024 are now over from the old site and relaid out. Will be worrying about blog posts / updates later on as they are less important. Now onto 2023....
This listing shows posts that went onto AustCrimeFiction.org in the last 14 days. Sorted into post type groups - Blogs (Updates), Books, Reviews.
The fourth in Dark Passage’s reissue series of crime mysteries by June Wright, The Devil’s Caress , originally published in 1952, is an tense psychological thriller set on the wild southern coast of the Mornington Peninsula, outside Melbourne.
With the fate of Australia at stake, the two great Allied generals of the Pacific War face off against the Imperial Japanese Army - and each other.
12 March 1942: The Japanese have swarmed the Philippines, forcing US general Douglas MacArthur to flee with his family, escaping by the skin of their teeth to the nearest safe country - Australia.
A judgment to remember.
‘Having escaped the lions’ den, Mr Lehrmann made the mistake of going back for his hat.’
Justice Michael Lee with an introduction by Chanel Contos
On 15 April 2024 Justice Michael Lee delivered his judgment in Lehrmann v Network 10. The case, which centred on proceedings brought by Bruce Lehrmann against journalist Lisa Wilkinson and Network 10 for her 2021 interview with Brittany Higgins, alleged that Wilkinson had defamed Lehrmann by accusing him of raping Higgins at Parliament House in 2019.
Business is dead at the Pick Me guitar store. But that's not the only thing that's dying in town. When a local music teacher is murdered, store owner Dana Osborne is determined to track down the killer. She's joined by her young employee Brody, and guitar store cat Paws McCartney. Can this misfit crew deliver justice in the guitar-infested backwaters of small-town Aotearoa?
BRONTE NEEDS A PLACE TO LIE LOW.
She posted a drunken rant that went horrifically viral. Now – jobless, friendless and broke – she’s forced to volunteer as a carer on an isolated rural property. She won’t be paid for looking after dementia sufferer Nell, but at least she’ll have a place to stay.
Bronte’s host is Nell’s daughter Veda, who runs spiritual rebirthing retreats. She also claims the rights of a sovereign citizen and rejects the authority of the state, refusing even to register her car. She has acquired a small but devoted following.
Prince of spin and life of the party, Baz King, is missing. Nine years ago, at an innocent summer barbecue in Melbourne, everything imploded. For the Kings and the four other young families there that fateful day marriages fractured, friendships crumbled and lives were upended.
Nothing would ever be the same.
Sri Lanka, 2009. Decades of civil war and bloodshed are being brought to an end at last—by any means necessary. In the capital, Colombo, tenacious journalist Ameena Fernando is murdered, execution-style, on a busy street near her home, with no witnesses.
It was just supposed to be a family vacation.
A terrible accident changed everything.
You don't know what you're capable of until they come for your family.
After moving from a small country town to Seattle, Heather Baxter marries Tom, a widowed doctor with a young son and teenage daughter. A working vacation overseas seems like the perfect way to bring the new family together, but once they’re deep in the Australian outback, the jet-lagged and exhausted kids are so over their new mom.
Bunny McGarry is back – and he’d really like a nice holiday. Somewhere with hot weather and cold drinks that come with little umbrellas for reasons he never understood. A certain nun has other ideas though and instead, he finds himself dispatched to London to find Sean Malone, a runaway teenager who doesn’t know his mother hasn’t got long left to live.
We Solve Murders, Richard Osman
First in a new series from The Thursday Murder Club author Richard Osman, WE SOLVE MURDERS uses many of the stylings and touches that make all his books very readable.
WE SOLVE MURDERS features two new main characters. Amy Wheeler is a close protection agent, working for a unique security company Maximum Impact Solutions, that, it turns out, is having issues of its own.
A Line to Kill, Anthony Horowitz
The third book in the Hawthorne & Horowitz series (it's meta - you can find out more about all of that at reviews of THE WORD IS MURDER and THE SENTENCE IS DEATH), sees Horowitz convinced (slightly) that he's got the upperhand on his colleague, and subject of the books he's currently writing, Daniel Hawthorne. They are guests at a literary festival, and if there's one thing that Anthony Horowitz knows a lot more about than Hawthorne, it's literary festivals.
How To Send A Message, Caimh McDonnell
I'm really only slightly obsessed with this author's work. Slightly in that just about everything he has written now is automatically high on the read / listen list.
Sometimes, into every life, a bloody good laugh, a bit of craic, some distraction from the general godawfulness of everything around is required, and right now, for my ears and eyes, that's Bunny McGarry (he features in two of this collection of seven short stories) and anything else that's offered up.
Is this a fun collection - yes it is.
The Mother Paul Series, June Wright
My review of RESERVATION FOR MURDER, FACULTY OF MURDER and MAKE-UP FOR MURDER has been posted:
June Wright has faded from view, but in 1948 her novel Murder in the Telephone Exchange outstripped sales of Agatha Christie in Australia. Full Review at Newtown Review of Books
Birnam Wood, Eleanor Catton
One of the very best things about reading the entrants in the 2024 Ngaio Marsh Awards is just how varied a bunch of books they were. BIRNAM WOOD is a eco-thriller, set on New Zealand's South Island, serving up a hefty dose of challenges for the reader to be going on with.
The story is built around members of the Birnam Wood "collective" - a group involved in eco-activism through guerrilla gardening. As the blurb puts it:
String Theory, Bing Turkby
STRING THEORY is the 2nd in the Guitar Store Mysteries, and the first I've read. Which I think might have been a bit of a mistake. This worked, in that it was fun, a bit silly, and a bit of giggle in places, although it did take me a while to figure out who was who and how it all fitted together. Maybe the first book, DEAD MAN'S AXE will fill in those gaps when I get to it on "MtTBR that can be seen from the moon....".
Life & Crimes, Andrew Rule
Catching up with true crime reading meant I also had to pick up LIFE & CRIMES by Andrew Rule. A different tone from his sometime writing partner, John Silvester, Rule's style is more, I don't know, measured. Certainly he's less inclined towards calling a spade a bloody shovel, but instead applies a forensic, detailed and dispassionate telling whilst still managing to achieve a readable, pacey style of narrative.
Naked City, John Silvester
I've gotten behind with my true crime reading, so what better way to kick an interest back into gear than a meander around "the cop stations, courthouses, back alleys and gangster mansions of Melbourne" through the skewering eye of journalist John Silvester - a man with a fine turn of sarcastic, pointed phrasing if there ever was one.
Present Tense, Natalie Conyer
The author of this series was born in South Africa, but has lived in Sydney, Australia for a long time. PRESENT TENSE is the first, followed by SHADOW CITY (https://www.austcrimefiction.org/review/shadow-city-natalie-conyer). Based around veteran cop Schalk Lourens these books are gritty and dark, tackling aspects of South Africa's past and present in a clear, concise and unflinching manner.
Cutler, David Whish-Wilson
CUTLER, the novel, features Paul Cutler, the former undercover operative, now working "off the books" in the dangerous and unpredictable world of investigator for hire. In this story he's tasked with finding the truth about the disappearance of an Australian marine scientist, whilst on a Taiwanese distant water fishing vessel, working in the incredibly murky and dodgy world of deep sea trawling and fisheries.
Murder Mindfully, Karsten Dusse
First few chapters - what on earth am I doing reading this.
Next few chapters - okay I'm getting this, this is .... different.
Next few chapters - what do you mean you want something ... can't you see I'm busy.
Why do I keep hearing Henning Wehn's voice in my head?
All of the book, this is making me laugh. A lot. I probably shouldn't be - I mean there are people locked in boots, there is a chipper on the side of a lake, there's guns and cars going boom, and a law firm full of people who survive (which doesn't seem right).