Project Status Report: 30th June 2025

The third Cal Nyx novel, THE FREEZER, would possibly work as a standalone, but the connections between this and the second novel, THE QUARRY in particular, make the characters here make a lot more sense. Nyx and her partner, DI Liz Scobie, her cousin Dif, and boarder Spike (complicated) are a great group of real feeling people and there's a backstory to how they all got here, together. 

Hunt is from New Zealand, but this series is set in Australia - New South Wales - where Nyx is a ranger, working way out in the bush. She comes and goes from her city base, a house that was left to her, and the job, where, during a work outing to check the state of bush trails and general maintenance after a storm she comes across a dead body in unusual (maybe unless you're a ranger) circumstances. It may be an historic death, but the discovery creates attention, and a murderer who has evaded justice until now, is worried that may all be about to implode. Whilst Nyx's partner, DI Scobie is leading the police investigation, Nyx is busy deploying her own, somewhat unorthodox methods in a small community, where it turns out, something that she unearths becomes very dangerous information to know.

Nyx is one of those characters who leaps off the page at the reader. Physically capable, emotionally not always so much, she's loyal, hardworking, brave, and a bit daft on occasion. It's rewarding to read a female character who is independent, strong and good at her job, despite the physical challenges, and remote locations she's working in. Her partner, DI Scobie is a good cop too, and whilst they don't work "together" as such, they compliment each other, when Nyx isn't driving Scobie mad. And then there's Dif - who goes way back with Nyx, and is capable, and complicated all at the same time. That backstory from THE QUARRY would be handy to know although there are hints about the past and the reality of Dif's life in this novel. 

All these books come with intriguing plots, and the build up of that cast of characters, with some social commentary sprinkled in there for good measure. They are a bit on the gritty side without falling into noir, emotional without being over the top, much like Nyx herself, who is very much a female working class hero.

BROKE ROAD is the follow up to the excellent BLACK RIVER, the opening salvo in the series, featuring the determined and dedicated DS Rose Riley, journalist Adam Beaumont, and a serial killer that didn't make this reviewer want to chuck that first book against a wall, hard. 

Riley is back, with her sidekick Priya Patel, and Beaumont, this time in the wine tourism area of the Hunter Valley around Cessnock when a young woman is found dead in an isolated new townhouse, by her husband late one night. No forced entry and no signs of a struggle means that the husband is obviously suspect number one, and whilst a local tabloid journalist is busy spinning her own story about all of that, Riley is questioning everything and everybody. When Beaumont arrives on scene they slip back into the sort of working relationship that opened up in the first novel, collaborative without being unbelievable, cautious and friendly, Riley, Patel and Beaumont are joined by a local cop this time, in an investigation that takes some most unexpected turns along the way.

There are quite a few references back to the earlier novel, particularly in terms of how these three main characters met, and developed the friendship that they have. This novel also looks back a little further at Riley's own childhood, in this region, on a farm that was marginal, before the wine industry moved in and turned the place into a tourism mecca. There are nice touches of the clash between the old and the new, the old pub where Beaumont finds himself staying, compared to the swish new, hands off model motel where the women are staying. The older residents, many of whom have now found work, for the incomers, the big winemakers, the restaurateurs and the entrepreneurs. The differences between the region midweek and weekends when the tourists arrive, and finally the tension between the mining industry and the winemakers, something reflected in the household of the dead woman who worked in PR and marketing for the wine industry, and her coal mining geologist husband.

Whilst there is a lot going on locally, including some hefty doses of corruption involving some of those wealthy incomers, the police and the local media, the investigation finds tentacles outside the area - to Adelaide, Canberra and potentially other locations, and it's those leads that flush out some complicated connections. To say nothing of the goings on at the motel where RIley and Patel are staying. All of which makes up for a wild ride of a read, which for this reviewer, was basically a one sitting inhalation.

The balance between personal and professional here is great, as is the sheer slog of detective work, analysis and thinking outside the box that goes towards an investigation that could easily have got bogged in the local. The characters are great - flawed but not overtly so, dedicated, determined, and a bit messy along the way, these three are a great, and surprisingly believable team, given we're talking a journo and a couple of cops. The friendship is well portrayed, the interactions really fun to read, and the sense of place well executed. 

Wine growing areas, where the tourists and the developers arrive in a landscape that's originally settled into marginal farming, with old families, old connections, and many layers of stories make for an interesting place to set a story that's about the murder of an incomer, a woman who on the face of it had no reason to die. Take that idyllic place, and stick in an undercurrent of sick, perverted weirdo's and you've got a well executed, disquieting novel that works on a number of levels.

NOTE:  For the American audience that this has obviously been "edited" for - Shoes and Tires would be Shoes and Tyres here / for local audiences if you do happen to come across that edition, the shoes aren't looking for a lie in.... (Why publishers do this is beyond me, I mean we can "translate" the reverse - seems a bit disrespectful to suggest your reader's can't do the same ... ). 

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:

Understanding the meaning of the verb auē doesn't quite cover the visceral, gut-wrenching capacity of it in the way that the novel AUĒ depicts it. The characters in this novel experience it in all sorts of ways, including love, lamentation, surprise, annoyance, and sorrow.

When the publishers got in touch to say this follow up was now available, the news bought anticipation and the slightest sense of trepidation. Whilst reading AUĒ was truly a gut wrenching experience though, KATARAINA is similar, but different.

The backstory is that in AUĒ, eight-year-old Ārama was taken by his brother, Taukiri, to live with Kat and Stu at the farm in Kaikōura, setting in train the tragedy that unfolded. Ārama’s aunty Kat was at the centre of events, but, silenced by abuse, her voice was absent. In KATARAINA, Kat and her whānau (family) step forward to tell of their childhood, and the relationships between them and the land around them. In particular the nearby swamp, which reflecting stories from all First Nations, is part of their very being - as she puts it "she feels the greenness of the swamp in her veins". The swamp that is partly their tears, exists in the land owned by Stu, a place that has been part of their story since the girl shot the man.

AUĒ was also a family story, exploring violence, connection, separation and redemption. KATARAINA is a more reflective, complex undertaking, still within the contexts from the earlier novel, but looking more closely at the past, future, present connections that bind, separate and create that complexity. Whilst it's not necessary to have read the earlier novel to get the undertones in KATARAINA they are interlinked, a construction of their place and time, woven together by this family impacted by so much pain and suffering, looking always to their surroundings, their relationships with each other and the land - the country that supports, heals and hides them.

KATARAINA is also an incredibly clever novel, told from a number of perspectives, that span family history. It will beguile the reader, despite the unusual, fractured timelines in which the story is told. There is the central incident that is constantly referred to without explanation "the girl who shot the man", and the timeframes are mostly before, and after that event, with a secondary thread about field study days running alongside. At points throughout the novel the introduction referred to at the start of this review is expanded, providing more snippets about the girl, man, river, and the peaches. All of which sounds complicated, but the reading of it simply flows. You will bounce backwards and forwards but it's seamless, partly because it's beautiful reading, intricate yet lyrical, with the forward momentum held in the shimmer of "the girl's" identity. And the why. If "the girl shot the man". Why? And always that beautiful, involving, sensuous prose that was there even in the desperation of AUĒ and given permission to rage in the hope of KATARAINA.

Woven throughout this text, with a glossary at the end of the novel for those that really struggle, the beauty and pointedness of te reo Māori, and the Kāi Tahu dialect is front and centre. Readers new to the language will have to work a bit to pick up meaning from context, or break the flow of the story a little to refer to it. Some, like this reader, with an understanding of the meaning of some of the words, didn't want to move away, instead just went with the flow, picking up the unknown from the reactions of the characters and their intent. 

There is so much to KATARAINA and your reviewer lacks the language and nuance that the author has such a firm grip on to truly explain the impact of a novel like this one. It, and it's predecessor are now lurking on my keep forever shelves, filled with bookmarks at points where the storyline was so intense, moving or simply illuminating that I'm going back to look at them over and over again. These novels, like the work of some of the stellar authors of our own First Nations people (Melissa Lucashenko particularly comes to mind), have given this reader a glimpse into the thought patterns, and an understanding of the world through eyes more connected to a land on which they have lived for so many generations. It's a more experienced, more aware, more nuanced view, and I profoundly hope that writers like this keep writing.

The second novel in the Professor Eustacia Rose series, HELL'S BELLS is out, about and well worth reading. For those that haven't met up with this character before, her first outing was in the book DEVIL'S BREATH. The same elements are being explored again here, Rose's experience as a neurodivergent woman in a world not designed to be easy to navigate, full of personal interactions, a relationship that she really values, but doesn't know how to say it, and a return to work as a professor with students, and a research lab and all that brings with it.

If you've not read the earlier novel, then Rose is a Professor of Botanical Toxicology, whose particular interest, some might say obsession, is with obscure, poisonous plants. As with the earlier novel, this knowledge puts her partly in the role of expert, partly suspect when a man is found dead on the streets, with a needle in his neck. Then an increasingly erratic and dangerous young student who has been harassing and stalking Rose, is found dead, after buying illegal synthetic plant toxins, the likes of which he believed Rose was denying him access to, and she's right in the middle of a big mess that, of course, she'll have to resolve. Solving puzzles, understanding connections, setting things in order is exactly what Professor Eustacia Rose yearns to do, and in this case, there's a portrait painted with a hidden needle poised beside her neck to give her that extra bit of impetus. Although when it comes to intimate personal relationships she's lost and way out of her depth. Thank goodness for her kindly elderly neighbour and friend, deliverer of both impetus and potential solutions. Meanwhile the final mystery is another elderly white-haired woman that is triggering some very weird memories.

As with the first novel, Johnson writes her character in a matter-of-fact manner. She's observational, often mildly confused, and possessed of profound one-track mindedness. Which makes the question mark over her relationship with Matilde (who readers meet in the first novel), a distraction, until she's aware that it can no longer be such and it's time to make some moves. Guided by her gentle, but firm neighbour who it turns out is quite good friends with Matilde, again post events in the first novel.

If push comes to shove, HELL'S BELLS probably would stand alone, but really it would be a much better experience to read this series in order. Getting to know Professor Eustacia Rose is the key to understanding how the flow of these investigations work, why she spends so much time on her roof with now, just a telescope and a few easy to care for plants, and what's she's lost. Her beloved father dead, her mother vanished when she was a child, her life's purpose taking a battering in both novels, Professor Rose is a very relatable woman, with foibles, eccentricities and heaps of personal twitches, yet she's liked, even loved by those closest to her. If she can just work out what that means.

The 4th book now in the DS Lucas Walker series, those who are new to it might need a tiny bit of background. Walker is with the Australian Federal Police, but it was on his personal home territory, in outback Australia where he first met Barbara (in book one to be precise), when she heads from her native Germany to the area to look for her missing sister. Long story short, her sister endured an horrific experience, but survived, there was the spark of something between Walker and Barbara, and their lives moved on. Having kept in touch since that time, it's NEMESIS now that brings them back together on Barbara's home territory, in Berlin. She's working a mysterious multiple murder by plant toxins at a collection of rustic cabins lakeside, out of Berlin, and he's in town to try to catch the bikie Stefan Markovich that was also part of the earlier storyline.

Is this therefore a novel that won't work as a standalone? Not if you crave the full backstory to Barbara and Rita's ordeal, and Walker's involvement. If you're happy to let a lot of that just be, then yes, because the personal romantic tension / will they / won't they is a big part of this outing, as is Barbara's local case. It might help to have read the earlier books as well as the "fish out of water" aspects of this are tipped on their head here - deliberately - and there's a bit of a gotcha there in who handles what best. 

But, Walker's in Berlin because the notorious Vandals motorcycle club leader Stefan Markovich has been tracked there. The whys and wherefore's of that are laid out at the start of the book, and then the action switches to the death of a man that is eluded to in the prologue. In an idyllic, rustic settlement made up of small off-grid cabins, a man dies horribly from a poisoning that is eventually identified as a plant based toxin. There are then more poisonings, and a local police service more than keen to make sure the Berlin incomers take the blame, rather than the local weirdo stalking around in the bushes. Meanwhile there's a developing romance between Barbara's sister Rita and her local offsider cop, and the will they / won't they thread around Barbara and Lucas. So quite a bit going on.

The local investigation is interesting, and it was great to get to "see" Barbara on her home turf, determined to solve this case in the light of feeling very much like her bosses don't appreciate her. Meanwhile Lucas is lurking alone, around the streets of Berlin, a country where he can't speak the language, with a cover story of being a forger, trying to flush Markovich in the face of a lot of disinterest from local police until a drive-by shooting is linked in, which leads to a bit more co-operation. To be honest a lot of the reasons for Lucas being in Berlin and the whole chasing Markovich thing didn't quite jell, it all felt a bit "hammered" into place to get Lucas to Berlin on any pretext so the relationship between the two could be explored. At one point I thought well just have him show up on a holiday and a romance fishing expedition - that would have worked as well, and not have had to led to some slightly distracting goings-on at one point around Barbara, and a final "storyline" which whilst had a bit of crash bang excitement about it, felt a bit plopped into place. 

Which all makes this sound like the book wasn't an enjoyable read, which is unfair, because in most things it was. As a reader of the first couple of books, it was almost expected that there would be something between Lucas and Barbara and pushing that fish out of water angle to the other side was worthwhile. Her local investigation was also really well done, the use of plant based poisons really well explored, and the sense of place of those murders really strong.

Having said all of that, NEMESIS is definitely going to be a police procedural designed for people who like a hefty dose of tortured romantic attachment thrown in. 

THE OTHER MOTHER and NEVER FORGET are two Michel Bussi novels that I'd somehow managed to miss reading, until I was reminded recently. Luckily the library had copies of both of them, so that gap, at least, has now been closed.

NEVER FORGET (unlike THE OTHER MOTHER) is very much a return to previous thriller stylings in books like BLACK WATER LILIES, AFTER THE CRASH and DON'T LET GO. 

The story starts out with a young Arab Para-Olympic contender, on a self-imposed training camp, running along a clifftop on the coast of France in 2014. After picking up an expensive red silk scarf caught on a fence, he then comes across a beautiful, but distressed and dishevelled woman, preparing to jump from the cliff. Despite his attempts to calm her and then draw her away from the edge, she grabs the proffered scarf and jumps to her death. Young Jamal is an easy, dare we say, convenient suspect, despite his prosthetic leg, and the very unlikely possibility that he's either a rapist or a murderer, especially when the reader discovers that two women had already been attacked in the same location, in the same manner, ten years before.

Already distressed by what he has witnessed, and then by being considered a suspect, he starts to receive envelopes with details about the prior murders and investigations, when he discovers that the latest victim is the spitting image of one of the women who were killed in 2004. Which leaves him conducting his own investigation, in an attempt to clear his name, and out of a sense of basic common decency.

In this novel Bussi is exploring not just rape, murder and overt violence, but expectations, aspiration, racism, and attitudes towards disability and difference. He does that in a twisty, dark, psychological thriller style, that will have your head spinning, and any sense of clarity and understanding blown out from under you chapter by chapter. It does beggar belief that despite the timings, despite the witnesses to this latest fall, and despite the unlikeliness of Jamal as a suspect - just based on the time gap between the three rapes and murders, that he would remain prime suspect for a nanosecond, but this is the sort of story where you just have to go with the flow, ride the peaks and troughs and stay with Jamal and his battle to discover the truth.

Whatever it is you've come to expect from a Zane Lovitt novel, forget it, this is an author who appears not care one jot for expectations. He appears, instead to care about writing wonderful, engaging characters of amazing variety.

His first novel, THE MIDNIGHT PROMISE, introduced John Dorn. Classic gumshoe, his woman has left him, he lives in the office, drinks too much, and specialises in lost causes, hopeless cases, the underdogs and the oppressed. As noted in the blurb - he was drawn to them  “as a sledgehammer is to a kneecap.” Hardboiled, dark noir short stories.

Then BLACK TEETH, which had some of the dry darkness of the earlier novel, but bought to us Jason Ginaff, an anxious man who works from home, researching job candidates, whilst running a dedicated side project looking for his own father. Which leads him to get mixed up with somebody else looking for the same man, only Rudy wants to kill Jason's dad. Populated this time by likeable and unlikable characters there was a sly, dry sense of humour at the back of this novel in particular.

Which is, now that I come to think of it, a similarity (and I'm digging deep here) between that last novel and the current one - THE BODY NEXT DOOR. The tagline for this one is "Glorious suburbia ... a romantic diary ... two accidental sleuths", which should not, for a moment make you think cosy. It's not. It's populated with mostly pretty likeable characters, sure, it's a classic little closed off suburban street called Carnation Way, tucked away in the suburbs of Melbourne, full of houses with gardens out the front, cars parked on the street, kids playing, people popping in and out of each other's houses. and a surprising body count given the ordinariness of it all.

There are some families in this street with a lot going on. Young Jamie, has moved back in with his Dad Bruce, who is starting to show rapidly increasing signs of dementia - setting fire to the kitchen being the big red flag. But it kind of worked out okay for Jamie, his marriage was imploding anyway, and he loves his Dad, his odd ways, and the community he grew up in. There's still people here from when he was younger, and it feels, safe, and very normal. If you ignore the discovery of a dead young man under the neighbouring house years ago, and the sad and odd death of George. Much of which could be put down to bad luck, until the night that Claire Corral disappeared.

Claire's lived in Carnation Way for a very long time, long enough to have been there when young Lachlan's body was found, to have known Jamie's Mum Holly before she died, his dad when he was still teaching, and Yasmin before the twins were born, George when he discovered Lachlan's body, and everybody and everything else. Born in England, she'd moved to Australia with her first husband, but the marriage had imploded (Solly was a bit of a sod), and she's now got a new partner. And the reader knows all of this as chapters that make up Claire's diary form part of the narrative, going back over the years, talking about the time the body was found, suspicions and resolutions, and not quite enough detail to explain why she's now vanished, but more than enough hints to suggest she might have known quite a bit.

Yasmin is one of Claire's best friends, with twin boys, a busy career and an ex-con-ex-husband who was a real snake in the grass, until Claire saw him off. George on the other hand had been a harmless, kind old Greek man who unfortunately smelt something odd from the house next door, and then, after the trauma of finding Lachlan's dead body, died tragically in a car accident on the Great Ocean Road, one of those weird bits of irony that happen, given he had been the driving instructor who taught all the kids how to drive. Mind you, nobody ever did really fully explain how it was that somebody, unknown to all of them, ended up getting murdered under a house in a quiet little St Albans street.

The contents of Claire's diaries would have have been useful for Jamie to know as Tessa moves into the house where Lachlan's body was found, and the connections between her and Claire come to light, about the same time that Jamie starts to feel a bit like life might be worth living again, only what is Tessa really up to, and what do the ramblings of a demented old man actually mean? And why on earth would somebody as "normal" and everyday as Claire just vanish like that?

Told with enormous affection and a gentle, almost kind regard for his characters, Lovitt has this time served up a cast of characters who might have some deadly secrets, but in the main are pretty "ordinary". The major darkness in this novel turns out to be the blinkered viewpoints that have persisted, and those crawl spaces under all those houses. Turns out that glorious suburbia is only glorious when you keep those blinkers firmly taped to the side of your head. Because taking them off gives Jamie and Bruce a whole different outlook.

Sitting down to read THE FORSAKEN (late to the party as usual), wasn't at all sure what to expect. The blurb explains that for ten years, Logan Booth, served as a contract killer for the CIA, never knowing that was what he was doing. Finding out he wasn't a rogue hitman for a band of vigilantes, but rather a means by which governments of the USA furthered their own interests is .. well it's a lot. Starting out reading a book about somebody who is fine with the killing bit, but very particular about the motivation element is something to think about.

Although to be honest, thinking about motivations, morals, rights and wrongs, became somewhat secondary to the wild, bare-knuckle, no holds barred, violent, extreme and, uncomfortably horribly train wreck that became an equally uncomfortably enjoyable crazy ride, that is Logan Booth, and just about everybody who comes into contact with him.

Don't get me wrong - this is NOT a novel for the squeamish, or violence intolerant. It's also not a novel that's necessarily going to drag readers into deep contemplation of human nature and the choices we make. Only, it kind of is that latter bit. You can "get" how it would be that somebody who thought they were a lone-wolf, vigilante killer with a "reason" for the job, might be more than a bit miffed to discover that a government was pulling the strings. Grey, faceless, suit wearing, desk sitting behind men who were simply powering through anybody or anything that they felt was in the road of their aims and machinations. It's easy to see how that would screw up your head just a little, and acceptance of that is helped by Logan Booth being a great character. Superhuman freaky violent, dangerous, utterly controlled and clear headed about what he's doing, he's also oblivious to pain, mad, bad, and more than a bit crazy, alcoholic and suicidal, and he's had a lot going on. So he's not at all pleased when people won't just bugger off and leave him alone. Then, they murder his oldest, only really, friend and the switch from despair to fury saves him, although it makes life very short for a lot of other people.

Picking up a most unexpected ally along the way in the person of homeless, crack addict, Alice Mason, Booth starts out avenging his friend's death, making sure that whoever killed him doesn't get Alice as well, and generally dishing out a bit of vengeance and justice for everybody and everything, before he finds himself chasing corruption, money, influence and rotten power into a lot of dark corners. All while facing the same sort of demons he's insisting Alice front up to as well.

As weird as this sounds, this was a thoroughly enjoyable, absolutely engaging, enthralling, extremely violent, over the top thriller with great characters and a core of humanity in amongst the blood, sweat, flying teeth, gunshots, broken bones, flying bodies, falling bodies, tripped over bodies, and corruption. As always it comes down to corruption and the pursuit of money.