AustCrimeFiction.org

It's been an odd old February in a never ending procession of tediously odd months. 

On the upside a lot of the layout of the older entries on AustCrime has been completed, and I'm back to 2020 in the main.

You'll see the number of books live on the site is steadily increasing, with some author's back catalogues more complete depending on how their entries in the database were encountered (there's not a lot of planning / mostly a bit of slogging going on).

You'll also see that the number of reviews is building as well, same methodology applies to them. 

It's getting there in other words.

In terms of where everything else is at - there have been a few reviews posted this month, and a lot of new books added, but really time is now being devoted to a lot of reading. The Ngaio Marsh lists, and the general review lists. At some stage I'm going to stop going to the library. Really I am. But in order to keep track and try to impose some order, I've been posting a "Project Status Update" a couple of times a month. The latest of these went live today. 

Just a few books that deserve some special mentions though:

Upcoming releases that I'm particularly keen to get to: Unbury the Dead and Lyrebird

Was also lucky enough to see Lucy Sussex and Megan Brown in Ballarat earlier this week - they were talking about two books Nothing But Murders and Bloodshed and Hanging which is a short story collection of curated works by Mary Fortune and Outrageous Fortunes which is "The gripping story of Australia's first female crime writer and her career-criminal son". For those of us who live in the Victorian Goldfields there will be resonances with the places, and the life of Fortune - somebody Sussex has been researching for 35 and Brown for 25 years (I think that's the numbers quoted the other night). Either way their work is stellar, and the short stories, in particular, full of a dry sense of humour which I hadn't expected, and really enjoyed - but more on that when I get the review formulated properly over the next few days. 

Speaking of dry senses of humour, and a steely sense of observation The Grapevine by Kate Kemp is well worth a look, as was Panic by Catherine Jinks (less funny / considerably more sobering).

 

 

This newsletter starts out with a list of upcoming releases that have wandered past - some out now / some upcoming:

RELEASE DATE: 19/6/2025 I've added this one to this update because, to my chagrin, I missed it completely at the time it was released. 

RELEASE DATE: 8/7/2025 Sort of cosy, comic, romp stuff from the author of the Vinyl Detective series.

RELEASE DATE: 15/7/2025 Third in the Hana Westerman series from New Zealand - great series, steeped in Māori culture, this one takes a dramatic turn so it would be better to read the earlier books (which is now trial).

RELEASE DATE: 22/7/2025 Fifth in the excellent, historical, Reggie da Costa series set in Melbourne.

RELEASE DATE: 29/7/2025 This looks particularly interesting and is edging its way up the piles here.  

RELEASE DATE: 29/7/2025 This is an excellent example of a bloke trying to turn his life around, despite those that might want to drag him back.

RELEASE DATE: 29/7/2025 A crossover somewhere between Crime and Science Fiction, or is it Dystopian?  

RELEASE DATE: 29/7/2025 A debut novel, set in a small town beachside community with lots to hide.

RELEASE DATE: 31/7/2025 Loved all this author's previous books, his choice of settings and scenarios is always very different.

RELEASE DATE: 26/8/2025 Very different second novel from this author. 

RELEASE DATE: 2/9/2025 Something very different, not exactly crime fiction though.

RELEASE DATE: 30/9/2025 Fascinating take on anonymous attacks / identity theft and takeover. 

RELEASE DATE: 30/9/2025 The latest Hirsch novel. Of course it's going to the top of the pile. 

RELEASE DATE: 4/11/2025  Lovely to see this due for release, with a wonderful uplifting blurb.

RELEASE DATE: 4/11/2025 Another coastal town setting, from a master of the laid back kick in the teeth.

RELEASE DATE: 4/11/2025 - back in 2017 the Ngaio Marsh Awards delivered a book called THE SOUND OF HER VOICE by Nathan Blackwell which had an astounding voice. We knew the author's name was a pseudonym because he was a serving covert police officer), and this is the novel that is outing his true identity, and I can't tell you how excited I was to receive this one. 

RELEASE DATE: 4/11/2025 The experience post crime, of victim's, and connected people, is a particular area of interest for this author.

 

In another major achievement I've been to the library only twice in the last couple of weeks, so I'm down to just 3 physical books on the stacks from there, and a bunch of ebooks on hold (nobody's perfect). The current reading pile is made up of a mix of some NZ new releases, then the obvious ones from the list above, then I really do want to clear the decks for a couple of #ScandiNoir books just to remind myself of the world outside the locals.

In the best achievement of all though I've finally started catching up on some desperately overdue reviews. Probably easiest if you take a look at the full list but there's been quite a few NZ books on that list including Carved in Blood, The Secret of the Angel Who Died at Midnight, Dark Sky, and Glass Barbie. On the AusCrime list Stillwater, Liar's Game, The Sunbaker and Broke Road are worth checking out.

 

As always I've probably missed something, so feel free to nudge me if there is anything needs mentioning in the next instalment.

The current reading stack is now so high I've done this photo from the top down, couldn't get it to fit in on any other angle with a phone camera and a pushy cat getting in the road. They're both out of control.

But I did manage to get some of the numbers down a bit last month, and in the process read / came across some really great books and added too many new ones. Somebody should ban me from the library. And bookshops. And NetGalley.

 

Unbury the Dead by Fiona Hardy is the one I'm currently reading. It's more on the mystery side of crime with a setup that is really intriguing, and some great, normal, capable, wonderful female characters.

Lyrebird by Jane Caro is another one that's a tad overdue for reading, but I'm dipping into it now and it's got one hell of a setup as well.

As is the case with The Pool by Hannah Tunnicliffe - overdue but most definitely not overlooked.

On the very funny side, I've nearly got a review for A Fly Under the Radar finished - but if you want a great tongue in cheek laugh from NZ then get hold of that one. Another interesting one from the Ngaio stakes was Black Silk and Sympathy - bit of a masterclass in not letting the research (which is expanded on in an author's note) get in the road of the story.

Another one I listened to that did something most unexpected was Dead Mile by Jo Furniss. Nearly finished the audio of this in one sitting - locked room style but on a motorway in England, gridlocked after a series of terrorist attacks. Review (as is always the case with me) is coming.

Also on the unexpected list has to go Miss Caroline Bingley, Private Detective by Kelly Gardiner and Shamini Kumar. I'm no Austen fan but even I could see how cleverly this was built on top of that world, giving a tricky character a platform to work on. Particularly one for the cosy fans, and definitely one for lovers of Austen's work.

On the acquisition front - there's a new book coming out by Sulari Gentill - Five Found Dead which looks like it could be fun, on the other side of the coin, the follow up to the gut-wrenching Auē, Kataraina by Becky Manawatu arrived filling me with anticipation and a slight sense of trepidation. The second Bookshop Detectives novel - Tea and Cake and Death by Gareth Ward and Louise Ward is also out. Another on the softer side, set in NZ.

Astute followers of the Last Fortnight's update might have noticed a number of Michel Bussi books listed - a favourite French author who, ridiculously, I'd gotten behind with reading. (Mind you the same could be said for Jo Nesbo and a heap of other favourite authors) but the library had a few of Bussi's works and now they are here. Which means that the reading stack is impossible, and I may have to give up sleeping.

Keep an eye out as well for the new Darcy Tindale book - Burning Mountain due out on 29th April, the new one from Nilima Rao - A Shipwreck in Fiji and from A.W. Hammond in his excellent post WWII series, The Moscow Defector. Just when you thought it was safe to take an evening off from the books, there's also a new one from the wonderful Margaret Hickey out in July - An Ill Wind and the latest from Joanna Jenkins, The Bluff out already, early in March.

 

Other than that, very sad news this week about the death of Ken Bruen - an author who wrote grey, black, deep black, dark black, dark noir and was a very favourite amongst the favourite authors of mine. Vale to an absolute giant.

 

Predictability is overrated. Which is another way of saying this newsletter should have come out in early September and it didn't. 

But on the upside a lot of reading and reviewing has been getting done so maybe less posting, more reading might be the trick I've been searching for.

Anyway in the review lists:

I caught up on some badly overdue ones The Pool by Hannah Tunnicliffe, Murder on the Marlow Belle by Robert Thorogood being particular cases in point. Then got stuck into some "Other Places" books The Restaurant of Lost Recipes by Hisashi Kashiwai and Innocent Guilt by Remi Kone (this last one is highly recommended by the way).

Then the locals, firstly the standouts in amongst them included Five Found Dead by Sulari Gentill, The Unquiet Grave by Dervla McTiernan, Black Silk and Buried Secrets by Deborah Challinor, Highway 13 by Fiona McFarlane, The Hollow Girl by Lyn Yeowart, One Dark Night by Hannah Richell and The White Feather Murders by Laraine Stephens. In terms of recommendations from this list then they are all good and very very different, but Five Found Dead is great fun, Black Silk and Buried Secrets is fascinating (and part of an ongoing series by the looks of it), Highway 13 incredibly clever, and The White Feather Murders another really good entrant in this Melbourne based historical series.

The not so standout (okay so I had no idea what the hell was going on here but didn't like any of it) was The Empress Murders by Toby Schmitz which I suspect is a very long / straight example of YMMV. In that vein Adam Donnison took one for domestic harmony and read / and wasn't impressed by The Turing Protocol by Nick Croydon.

On the NZ piles (which are still very behind which I'm feeling very guilty about but will try to do better) The Deeper the Dead by Catherine Lea, The Night She Fell by Eileen Merriman and The Birthmark Murders by Janus Lucky. All very different, but could appeal to a range of readers. I particularly like the series that The Deeper the Dead is part of.

Of the reading stacks of recent and past days Dust by Michael Brissenden was an excellent read exploring the way that the conspiracy theorist groups (cookers et al) can be used and manipulated in so many different ways. And I've just started Everyone in This Bank is a Thief by Benjamin Stevenson and am hooked, well and truly.

(Images below should all be active links taking you to the full book listing and/or the review already available on the site).

Recent Arrivals

Firstly, you would have all read about the Bendigo Writers Festival's mishandling of external pressure. In light of their behaviour some of the recent arrivals are books from the writers who withdrew (listed in no particular order): 

Released 30/5/2023: Winner of the David Unaipon Award, an engaging, moving and often funny yarn about growing up in the home of two Aunties running a sheep farm in rural Gundagai.

Released 21/3/2022:  'I told you this was a thirst so great it could carve rivers.'This fierce debut from award-winning writer Evelyn Araluen confronts the tropes and iconography of an unreconciled nation with biting satire and lyrical fury. 

Released 1/1/2017: Jacky was running. There was no thought in his head, only an intense drive to run. There was no sense he was getting anywhere, no plan, no destination, no future. All he had was a sense of what was behind, what he was running from. Jacky was running.

Released 1/10/2024  This is the story of a founding document in Australian democracy and the people who made it. It paints a vibrant picture of the profound and ancient culture of Australia’s first peoples, in all its continuing vigour.

Released 1/7/2012: Esma's quest for The One was never going to be easy but when family, friends and meddling employers are thrown into the equation, her path to true love suddenly takes a great big detour.

Released 2/9/2025: With a focus on two of today's most contested fields, academia and the media, Discipline tallies the price we all pay when those with privilege choose to remain silent.

Released 2/8/2023:  One of the lucky few with a job during the Depression, Peggy’s just starting out in life. She’s a bagging girl at the Angliss meatworks in Footscray, a place buzzing with life as well as death, where the gun slaughterman Jack has caught her eye – and she his.

Released 1/5/2024:  Peripathetic is about shit jobs. About being who you are and who you aren't online. About knowing a language four times. About living on the interstices. About thievery. About wanting. About the hyperreal. About weirdness.

Released 28/1/2025:  Sonia Orchard was in her forties when she told a therapist about the boyfriend she had when she was fifteen. Sure, he had been a decade older than her, but it was consensual ... wasn't it? To her surprise, Sonia broke down in tears, then began to shake uncontrollably - an unmistakable expression of trauma that lasted for days. She was clearly not okay, but could the relationship she'd thought was loving really have been abuse? Had she been groomed?

New Releases & More Recent Arrivals

Recent Releases may or may not also be recent arrivals, but I've combined the two listings here as this relates mostly (but not all) to crime fiction.

Starting out with the Australian / NZ Contingent:

Released 29/7/2025: In 1915, two days before being sent to fight in WWI, Jack O'Rourke dived into Sydney Harbour to save a drowning stranger, Samuel Lomond. Four years later, battle-scarred and weary, Jack returns home only to discover that Samuel has been brutally murdered – and that he's been left his rural property, Booroomba.

Released 5/8/2025:  Did anyone know Dr Gabriel Beaufort better than Ruby Rose Gillespie? They were friends at high school. They are secret lovers now. And because he is also the lung-transplant surgeon who saved her life, Ruby will forever be in his debt. But then the body of Dr Beaufort is found in the wetlands next to the hospital, on the same day as cystic fibrosis sufferer Ruby is readmitted with a sudden fever.

Released 31/7/2025:  Everyone thinks they can trust their therapist. We are good listeners. But what if we’re good liars, too?

Released 26/8/2025: 3rd Billie Walker Mystery - Naples, 1943. Deep within a secret network of underground tunnels, a woman takes shelter from a wartime air raid and prays her husband will return safely.

Released 26/8/2025: 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.

 

Released 26/8/2025: After her parents’ death in a car crash two years ago, Eve is back in the tumbledown family house on Magnetic Island, surrounded by nosy neighbours, an over-friendly possum and a cast of eccentric locals.

Released 2/9/2025: It’s 1973 and Detective Sergeant Eleanor Smith is finally assigned her first homicide case. A woman’s body has been discovered at Harrowford Hall, a home for unmarried mothers deep in the Victorian countryside. (There's a review of this one on the site already).

Released 2/9/2025:  In the middle of the night in a remote part of Western Australia's goldfields, the thud of a mallet on a marker peg sets off a chain reaction that unearths secrets long buried.

Released 2/9/2025: Jessica Mowbrie, beaten and dumped in the bush like a sack of garbage and lying comatose in a hospital bed: lucky to be alive.

Released 2/9/2025:  Senior Detective Antigone Pollard is fearless. Armed with a trained police dog, a black belt in judo and the will to speak her mind, she faces opposition head-on.

Released 30/9/2025:  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. 

Released 1/10/2025: All-round chaos merchant Nell Jenkins has returned to her small hometown to fulfil family duties for the mother and brother she' s barely seen since making her escape as a teen. But her homecoming isn' t the triumph it should be.

Released 1/10/2025:  Follow Paul Cutler on his next adventure as he fights the cocaine gold rush. Assuming his new identity as Paul O’Keefe, Paul is tasked with finding the supplier of a surge of Mexican cartel meth flooding Australian streets. Assigned to infiltrate a newly appointed security company at Fremantle Port, he discovers a clandestine world of off-the-books operations, and a business front that goes far beyond mere security. There’s a dangerous game afoot for who gets control of the port’s smuggling operations, and O’Keefe is caught in the crossfire.

Released 14/10/2025:  In a dying town, Ro Crowley waits for her son on the evening of his 21st birthday. but Sam never comes home. His footprints in the dust of three abandoned houses offer the only clue to his final movements. One set in. One set out.

Released 28/10/2025: Em has lived a quiet life with her complicated mother and is now looking for love and a potential escape from her small hometown. When a masked man kidnaps her in the dark of night, though, she is drawn into a terrifying world.

Released 2/11/2025:  DS Nick Chester returns with a new case that will test his limits. The tiny South Island town of Franz Josef is perched precariously on New Zealand’s Alpine Fault. It already faces devastating earthquakes, floods and landslides. And now it harbours a killer.

Released 25/11/2025: 3rd in the Jesse Redpath series, It’s the festive season in the Windmark Ranges and Sergeant Jesse Redpath’s day is going from bad to worse. It begins with her having to arrest the usual drunks and troublemakers and ends with the death of a colleague out on the Redline road. A death which may or may not have been an accident.

Released 30/12/2025: Sixteen years ago, teenage Maddie Marshall's body was found on a desolate beach near her hometown, Carrinya. Vibrant, feisty Maddie was the only daughter of a high-profile politician. The case was the talk of the town but was ultimately never solved.

Released 24/2/2026:  "You’re not going to murder me in the night, are you?" Emily asks. "Haha. That’s funny," I say. Of course, I’m not going to murder her in the night. I need my laptop back first. That’s the whole point of making friends with Emily Harper, author of the hugely successful novel Diary of an Octopus . So I could get inside her apartment and take back what’s mine.

 

Other Locations: 

Released 2/7/2024:  Fierce, mixed-race fighter Shindo has been kidnapped by the yakuza. After brutally beating most of them in an attempt to escape, she is forced to work as a bodyguard to protect the gang boss's sheltered daughter Shoko, a strange, friendless eighteen-year-old who could order Shindo's death in a moment. 

Released 28/8/2025:  The Pink Labyrinth is one of the bomb-scarred city's most shady neighbourhoods. There, in the dead of night a patrolling policeman catches a young Buddhist monk digging in the back yard of The Black Cat Cafe, a notorious brothel. In the shallow grave at his feet lie the dead body of a woman, her face disfigured beyond recognition, and the corpse of a black cat.

Released 11/9/2025:  Do you know the name for someone who loves reading in bed, or what a binfluencer does? How about the medieval invention of Lubberland as a place for lazy teenagers, or the story of Mayday as a request for help? Lexicographer extraordinaire and Queen of Countdown's Dictionary Corner, Susie Dent does and here are her greatest discoveries.

Released 19/9/2025: What happens when a serial killer forgets that he’s a serial killer? At Sunset House the tea is barely introduced to a teabag, the carpets are permanently flecked with glitter and care assistant Jolene would rather be watching daytime television than caring for the elderly – but someone might just have confessed to murder.

Released 25/9/2025:  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.

Released 30/9/2025:  When the invitation to attend the press opening of a luxury Swiss hotel—owned by reclusive billionaire Marcus Leidmann—arrives, it’s like the answer to a prayer. Three years after the birth of her youngest child, Lo Blacklock is ready to reestablish her journalism career, but post-pandemic travel journalism is a very different landscape from the one she left ten years ago.

Released 23/10/2025: A darkly humorous and warmly touching suspense novel about friendship, love and death, The Winter Job flies a hundred and twenty kilometres an hour straight into the darkest heart of a Finnish winter night.

Released 3/3/2026:  In the beautiful and dangerous landscape of Lake Geneva, in the shadow of the Swiss Alps, renowned writer Marceau Miller is found dead. In the wake of the tragedy, his wife, Sarah, discovers a manuscript he’s left behind, entitled The Story of Marceau Miller.

 

As always I've undoubtedly missed something, so feel free to nudge me if there is anything that should be included next time around. Whenever that is.