Second Status Report on the Project 'KEEP THE READING QUEUE UNDER CONTROL'.
Successes
- Read - Panic, Catherine Jinks (to be reviewed at Newtown Review of Books)
- Read - Cold Truth, Ashley Kalagian Blunt (to be reviewed at Newtown Review of Books)
- Read - The Accident on the A35, Graeme Macrae Burnet (review pending)
- Read - Three Boys Gone, Mark Smith (review pending)
- Read - The Housemate, Sarah Bailey (review to be published here 25th February)
- Added a LOT of Ngaio Marsh entries (Ngaio Marsh 2025 Entrant List)
- Added a LOT of other books (Last Fortnight)
Failures
- Didn't manage to get to an older book
- Reshuffled the stack too many times, still didn't get it properly in order (I blame the cats who keep knocking the damn thing over!)
- Went to the library when I promised myself I wouldn't
Plan
- Better Left Dead, Catherine Lea (started already)
- Nothing But Murders and Bloodshed and Hanging, Mary Fortune (started already)
- Humidity, Dan Kaufman
- The Freezer, Kim Hunt
- The Private Island, Ali Lowe (release date 25th February)
- 17 Years Later, J.P. Pomare
- Miss Caroline Bingley Private Detective, Kelly Gardiner & Sharmini Kumar (Release date 2nd April)
- Ripper, Shelley Burr
It's still pretty much fantasy. Huge tracts of Western Victoria are still on fire and it's hot enough to melt bitumen. I'm getting there.
Panic
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.
Are they harmless cranks, with their conspiracy theories and outrage at government overreach? Or dangerously paranoid domestic terrorists? And what is the dark secret that Nell, in her confusion, keeps harking back to?
Bronte, increasingly uneasy, would be getting far away from the whole place – if she had anywhere else to go.
Panic, Catherine Jinks
In her new novel, Panic, Catherine Jinks provides a timely take on online mobs, conspiracy theorists, and sovereign citizens.
Full Review at Newtown Review of books.
Cold Truth
Harlow Close has made a career as an influencer uncovering the secrets of Winnipeg, dubbed 'North America's strangest city'. The region is renowned for its sub-zero temperatures, dropping to minus 40 degrees - sometimes for months at a time. Yet, it's not just the frigid winters and geographic seclusion that render Winnipeg peculiar.
When Harlow's father mysteriously disappears amidst a particularly brutal cold snap, suspicions of foul play arise. It's not like Scott to miss phone calls - and he's been even more cautious sicne that time he was catfished by a romance scammer. Unhappy with the pace of the police investigation, Harlow launches her own search, enlisting her sister Blaise's reluctant help.
As Harlow struggles to uncover what happened to her father, she's forced to question everyone and everything around her - including herself.
Cold Truth, Ashley Kalagian Blunt
Set amid the ferocious cold of a Canadian winter, Ashley Kalagian Blunt’s new novel continues her exploration of the threats of life online. Full review at Newtown Review of Books
The Accident on the A35
The methodical but troubled Chief Inspector Georges Gorski visits the wife of a lawyer killed in a road accident, the accident on the A35. The case is unremarkable, the visit routine.
Mme Barthelme—alluring and apparently unmoved by the news—has a single question: where was her husband on the night of the accident? The answer might change nothing, but it could change everything. And Gorski sets a course for what can only be a painful truth.
But the dead man’s reticent son is also looking for answers. And his search will have far more devastating consequences.
The Accident on the A35, Graeme Macrae Burnet
Having read the third in the series A CASE OF MATRICIDE very recently I was intrigued enough by the prospect of the two earlier books that I managed to get the 2nd via the local library. Hence it jumped quite a long way up the queue in order to be able to return it.
Luckily this doesn't seem to be a series that is suffering from my backwards approach. Georges Gorski is a fascinating sort of character, bought to life, as I said in the review linked to above, by a writing style that combines wry humour and detailed observations. Everything's wonderfully understated, with a gentle, but skewering analysis of human nature along the way.
In this story, Gorski's personal life is imploding, and his professional life seems to be caught up in the most mundane of small town goings on. What seems like a straightforward death in a road accident twists somewhat after Gorski visits the widow to deliver the bad news. Mme Barthelme, seems surprisingly unmoved by the news of the death of her husband, and her teenage son Raymond, who has some problems of his own, instigates his own search for the truth about his father's whereabouts on the night he died with devastating consequences.
The story turns on the question of personality, and control. The dead man's presence weighed heavily on his household, his behaviour a burden for them all. His beautiful wife might seem a little ineffectual, but she can manipulate, something Gorski must learn for himself. Their son has chafed against the control of his father, and you'd think, his curiosity about his father's activities might be a way to purge some demons, but nothing is ever as straightforward in these novels. Whilst Gorski is busy trying to piece together the timings, and paths that lead to the accident, young Raymond is trying to understand a father who was always aloof. An austere figure of rigid rules and behaviours, the lead up to his own death seems to be the most unpredictable thing about him.
As with the earlier book, this is another masterful psychological study of human nature and small town life. In the small moments, the day to day angst and small humiliations of growing up, and living lives closely observed by those around you, THE ACCIDENT ON THE A35 is as much about the death of a tyrant as it is the lives lived around him.
Three Boys Gone
'First rule of rescue: don't create another casualty.'
Grace Disher is about to face every teacher's worst nightmare.
Three of her students are going to die.
On a high school camping trip, three boys slip away for an ocean swim. By the time Grace catches up, the perilous surf conditions are overwhelming the teenagers. If she goes in, she will die trying to save them.
Should she have given her life?
The question haunts Grace as investigations begin and her decision not to attempt a rescue comes under scrutiny. Hounded by conflicted staff, grieving parents and relentless media - all dissecting her actions, all looking for someone to blame - Grace's safety is compromised and she must be careful who she trusts.
And she's not the only one with a secret.
Three Boys Gone, Mark Smith
When three 16 year old boys on a school hiking trip run into perilous surf, the only witness is Grace Disher, the teacher in charge of the trip, who reluctantly defers to the first rule of rescue: don't create another casualty and stands helplessly by as the boys disappear.
Switch then to the remaining boys in the party, and the two other teachers who were with them on the hike as Disher was setting up for the group's arrival at their next destination. It was when she was hiking back in to meet them that she came across these three, who inexplicably it seems, simply ran straight into the ocean in conditions that nobody would think to swim in. Then to the frantic search for a phone signal, the arrival of police, SES and search and rescue. The remaining boys and the two (male) teachers are evacuated out to a nearby town and a motel for the night, but Disher opts (insists) on staying in the area, providing what assistance she can to the searchers, being interrogated by a local cop as to the circumstances of the drownings, and why she didn't try to rescue them.
The story rapidly becomes about that decision - should she have sacrificed her own life in what she could see would be a fruitless attempt to save the boys? As the story is taken up by the media, the witch hunt grows, Disher's safety is compromised, and her home life exposed. Assumptions are made about her competency and there's plenty of hints that a woman, worse still a lesbian, should not have been in the position she was in - in charge.
I have to confess to being very challenged by THREE BOYS GONE. On the one hand, one hell of a premise - should you follow that "rule" of rescue, or should you throw caution to the winds as the only adult in the area. Good point, and one that is well worth considering in these sorts of circumstances, as is the human tendency to blame when the inexplicable happens. On the other hand there's a lot to the delivery of the premise that seemed convenient. A lesbian, a woman, worse still a "not a mother" she stuffed up the risk assessment process, she was there when the boys entered the water, she didn't rescue them from the impossible conditions. It just seemed to take an age for anybody to ask what made the boys do what they did, and where were the male teachers who had been with them at the time? What were they doing? To say nothing of the oddness of the scenario - a bunch of traumatised kids put up in a motel miles from home after such an event, no parents charging in to collect them, a headmaster whose response was frankly weird, and then all IT gubbins which just didn't ever reach the vicinity of the general area of plausibility.
For this reader, as the implausibilities piled up, the inevitability of the twist at the end got more obvious and that original premise disappeared in a soup of stalkery, homophobic, misogynistic byways and assorted red herrings that went off and started to pong.
The Housemate
Three housemates.
One dead, one missing and one accused of murder.
Dubbed the Housemate Homicide, it's a mystery that has baffled Australians for almost a decade.
Melbourne-based journalist Olive Groves worked on the story as a junior reporter and became obsessed by the case. Now, nine years later, the missing housemate turns up dead on a remote property. Oli is once again assigned to the story, this time reluctantly paired with precocious millennial podcaster Cooper Ng.
As Oli and Cooper unearth new facts about the three housemates, a dark web of secrets is uncovered. The revelations catapult Oli back to the death of the first housemate, forcing her to confront past traumas and insecurities that have risen to the surface again.
What really happened between the three housemates that night? Will Oli's relentless search for the murderer put her new family in danger? And could her suspicion that the truth lies closer to home threaten her happiness and even her sanity?
A riveting, provocative thriller from the bestselling author of The Dark Lake, Into the Night and Where the Dead Go.
The Housemate, Sarah Bailey
A standalone from the author of the well-known Gemma Woodstock series, THE HOUSEMATE is a story told in two timelines. Back to nine years ago when three housemates were sharing a property, one of them is killed, one goes missing, one is accused of murder. The current timeline sees journalist Oli Groves, who worked on the original murder story as a junior reporter, still a reporter, drawn back to a case she has always been obsessed with, when the missing housemate turns up, possibly as a suicide, at a Dandenong Ranges property.
The basis of this story is an intriguing one. The reasons for the three housemates supposed falling out was never really explained, their lives at the time of the murder never fleshed out, the missing girl never located. The problem is now the housemate accused of murder is out of jail, the missing girl is assumed dead by suicide, and there's something in the past that everyone's trying to keep quiet. Cue Oli back on the case, only this time, reporting has changed, and the paper she is working for have decided that podcasting is the new thing, so Oli is paired up with Cooper Ng, a young, relentlessly cheerful millennial producer. These two are destined to clash, and yet they might also be able to find a way to work together.
That is if Oli can dig herself out of the personal mess that she's buried herself in, and her obsessive nature. Engaged now, to the widower of the original police detective on "The Housemate" case, who was killed in a mysterious hit and run leaving her husband with two small twin daughters to raise. Only he was having an affair with Oli in the past, she was in a relationship with one of the cops that's now on the case, the twins are now older, and he mostly seems to be looking for a live in childcare provider, or something that certainly doesn't feel right. The personal story in this is novel is BIG, and it's complicated, messy and more than a bit overwhelming. In fact, I wouldn't recommend THE HOUSEMATE to anybody with an allergy to huge chunks of personal angst. Needless to say, the ex-boyfriend's the good bloke, the fiance a controlling creep, and Oli seems to be unable to sort out her feelings about the personal or professional. There are times when Ng's relentless upbeatness is a bit of a relief to be honest.
In amongst all the personal stuff there is a crime story lurking, with the story leading up to the original murder likely to explain the current housemate death. Or not. There are plenty of red herrings, complications, missteps and misleading elements in there - more than enough to keep a reader guessing. That aspect of the story was interesting, and cleverly constructed, but for this reader, not quite cleverly enough to have it rise beyond the soap opera threatening to subsume it.
Better Left Dead
DI Nyree Bradshaw and her team have their work cut out for them once again. Local woman Lizzy Bean has been found dead, garrotted with a piece of wire. Lizzy's property, a 1970s beach house overlooking a pristine Northland bay, is overflowing with rubbish. Inside, the house is even worse.
As Nyree and her team delve into the case, clues begin to reveal an intricate web of connections involving a local crime syndicate, a kidnapped woman, and a group of ex-foster children haunted by the past.
Meanwhile, Nyree's own past is catching up with her. Forever racked by guilt that she has failed her son who is currently in prison for murder, Nyree might finally get a chance to redeem herself in his eyes . . . but it comes at a steep cost.
Better Left Dead, Catherine Lea
TRIGGER WARNING: Addresses foster and orphaned children and child abuse, as well as animal abuse - see expansion below.
The second DI Nyree Bradshaw novel from Catherine Lea, this is a police procedural styled series that is strong on character and sense of place, and no slouch when it comes to plotting and personal complications for its characters.
BETTER LEFT DEAD is an interesting tale based around the death of an eccentric hoarder Lizzy Bean. Lizzy seems to an bit of an unknown in her local area, although there are a lot of people who have a problem with the build up of rubbish and junk around her house. A house which is located in a pristine, sought after area, with views overlooking Northland Bay. Needless to say how she ended up in this house, in this place, is something that Bradshaw's team have to dig to discover, and along the way, they find an intricate series of connections to the past, a dangerous crime syndicate and a kidnapped woman, and, particularly sadly, a group of ex-foster children haunted by their pasts.
That last aspect is haunting for the reader as well, although it's very carefully and respectfully handled, but it is there, hence the earlier warning. It's also balanced up against Bradshaw dealing with the discovery of a previously unknown granddaughter, her fractious relationship with her son who is in jail, and the decisions around ongoing care for the child. With a lovely touch out of the tragedy that made this reader sniffle ever so slightly.
The animal abuse aspect is also carefully handled but it's there and this reader, who particularly struggles with accounts of animal abuse, found it discomforting without being so overt as to be confronting.
The hassle for authors who are tackling these sorts of subjects is that they are extremely worthy of exploration and outing. What happens to people in their childhoods has ramifications for lifetimes to come, and despite the fact that these subjects are incredibly difficult for some readers, the avoidance of gratuitousness helps immensely. Bradshaw is one of those characters who can lead her team, and the reader, through a minefield like this, as she struggles to process the outcomes, deals with a messy personal life and battles away on all fronts. Well supported by a good cast of surrounding team members, she's a good character, who is developing into an engaging, and nicely "imperfect" perfect sort of a woman. Up to her elbows in work, battling the mess that became her personal life, harassed, vaguely pissed off, peddling hard.
Nothing But Murders and Bloodshed and Hanging
A murderer is identified by a team of oxen. A dead man rises from a watery grave to indict his killer. A phantom hearse gliding through Melbourne’s slums foretells violent death. A seamstress turns detective to avenge her friend’s homicide. A locked-tent mystery.
Such are the themes of Mary Fortune’s ingenious and dramatic crime stories. Between 1865 and 1910 she wrote over 500 of them; they comprise the first ever detective fiction series written by a woman. Set in the outback, on the goldfields, and in the burgeoning metropolis of Melbourne, they offer a vivid account of life and death in colonial-era Australia. Fortune tackled subjects such as murder, armed robbery, bootlegging, and sexual violence with a frankness unprecedented for a woman in the 19th century, in styles ranging from melodrama and Gothic horror to social realism and what is now called noir. This collection comprises 17 of her finest stories, edited and introduced by literary historians Lucy Sussex and Megan Brown.
Born in Ireland in 1832, Fortune arrived in Australia during the gold-rush, which she observed firsthand and depicted in many of her stories. A brief, bigamous marriage to a policeman gave her inside knowledge to write about crime, and over the next 40 years her prolific output was serialized under the title The Detective’s Album in the mass-circulation Australian Journal. She often lived precariously, struggling with alcohol and unable to prevent her son drifting into a life of crime, and preserved her privacy by always using pseudonyms. Her anonymity meant that when she died in 1911 she was almost lost to literary history. Only recently has her true identity and her extraordinary life story emerged. This collection, appearing concurrently with a biography, restores her to her rightful place as a trailblazing crime writer.
Nothing But Murders and Bloodshed and Hanging, Mary Fortune. Edited Lucy Sussex and Megan Brown
Between 1865 and 1910 Mary Fortune wrote over 500 crime stories, set in the Victorian goldfields, Melbourne and the outback. Published initially in newspapers and the like, they form the first detective fiction series written by a woman, although she was published under a series of pseudonyms hiding both her real identity and her gender from the wider world. At the same time as this collection was released a biography of Fortune, and her career-criminal son George, entitled Outrageous Fortunes has been published - which is well worth reading in tandem.
This reviewer was particularly struck by the intended "pun" of the title of the biography and did wonder whether Fortune would be chuffed by it. There's a sly, dry sense of humour at the heart of many of this collection that makes me hope she would. I was also struck most forcibly whilst listening to a talk by the two editors in Ballarat recently, when something was mentioned about the difference between male and female writers of the time. Men having a tendency to embellish (dare I suggest show off) their "education" with florid language, and the inclusion of Latin and other classical language words and phrases. This collection, on the other hand, hints at the gender of its writer more strongly in that the language is pretty direct, there is that sly sense of humour, and a strong sense of support for the underdog. To say nothing of some overt language of affection for other men in the stories that seemed to be hinting at one of two potential scenarios.
The thing that you'll find most about NOTHING BUT MURDERS AND BLOODSHED AND HANGING (a title taken from one of Fortune's own stories), is that it's such a readable and enlightening set of stories. They are all about murder and mayhem, and there's a sense of real knowledge of policing of the time (there is conjecture that her marriage to a local policeman in the Dunolly area might have been part of her source of information) but it seemed to this reader that Fortune must have been possessed of a keen eye and ear for her fellow citizens. As well as that strong sense of justice - perhaps because of the fortunes of her own son George, who went from a street urchin to a career criminal, whilst Fortune was battling plenty of her own demons. She has, it seems, one hell of a personal backstory, and whilst there are possibly glimpses of the struggles in the stories themselves, there are also wonderful depictions of society, the environs, and the sensibilities of the time.
For those of us residing on the Goldfields today there are plenty of references to places that will ring bells, as are there likely to be for those in the inner city of Melbourne, although the mark of the gold diggings is still very visible to this day - mullock heaps, mine shafts and all. It's also a cleverly combined set of stories, taking the reader through a range of subjects including murder, bushrangers, bootlegging, sexual violence and armed robbery. Has to be said that this reviewer found the inclusion of women's viewpoints, sexual violence, manipulation and the difficulties of life in that period for women particularly illuminating. It's a viewpoint that is too often just ignored, or white-washed. Yet another period in history that a return to the restrictions and prejudices of, should be resisted at all costs.
There are also many hints of her Irish background, and the well known antipathy on the Goldfields between the miners and the authorities, leading of course to some of the defining moments in Australian political history. It's sobering to think that her anonymity, and her sad and unfortunate death in 1911 meant that her work, and her identity were very nearly lost. What Sussex and Brown have done (for periods of 35 and 25 years* respectively) is a great service to Australian literature, but also truth-telling in history. Mary Fortune was undoubtedly a trailblazer, and we should know her name, and her work.
* Number of years quoted from my memory from something said at the talk mentioned earlier. It may be slightly inaccurate, but it's close.
Humidity
Welcome to an Aussie town where the violence is rampant and the humidity’s hell
Ben doesn’t like being a nude model in a small country town. Then again, the local footballers don’t like their girlfriends ogling Ben.
Broke and desperately lonely, Ben falls for Marty, the ambitious and violent young woman rapidly taking over her brother’s drug and gun-running trade.
Once Ben gets pulled into their dark world of bikies and crime, he discovers a new level of violence that makes the footballers seem harmless – especially when his only friend is then murdered.
Humidity, Dan Kaufman
The opening line of HUMIDITY made me laugh:
Word gets 'round when you're a nude model in a small country town.
That would most definitely get around our nearby small country town, even though it could never be said that we have the rampant violence and hellish humidity referred to in the book's blurb.
An unusual crime novel, HUMIDITY is set in a one of those small towns that has lost most of its economic basis and is slowly dying as a result. The story revolves around Ben, a broke, desperately lonely, lost sort of a young man with a sad family backstory, who lobbed into town and ended up working as a nude model for the local art class. He lives in a tiny, mould infested granny flat at the back of the house his best mate shares with his elderly Granny, and sort of just mooches about. Until he falls for the local barmaid. Marty's whip smart, violent, and rapidly muscling in on her own brother's drug and gun-running business, dragging Ben with her, who frankly is more than a bit sex struck and in way over his head - sex, relationship, business, and friendship wise.
It may take a little while to get into the swing of HUMIDITY because there's a lot of nothing in Ben's life, and his lost and directionless act plays out slowly, and in a slightly meandering manner. Until it's not anymore, and there are bikies, drugs, guns and violence aplenty, as well as some athletic sex and unexpected interpersonal relationships building. The story is kind of less a murder mystery, although there are dead bodies, and more how the hell are these people going to keep living mystery though. As well as a little too realistic a portrayal of a lost young man who got himself into the wrong company and missteps constantly in his attempts to get back out again.
Slyly funny in places, mightily violent in others, the build up is steady, the resolution twisty and unclear, and the reality of the whole thing shone, sadly, through.
The Freezer
In the endless tracts of the New South Wales bushland Ranger Cal Nyx finds a dead body under unusual circumstances. It soon becomes apparent this is a historic death. Growing attention on the crime puts the blowtorch to a murderer who’s managed to evade justice. For now.
Detective Inspector Liz Scobie leads the police investigation while her partner, Nyx, uses her own considerable - some might say unorthodox - methods to chase down a killer. With speculation growing in the small community, someone privy to information becomes a new target for the killer.
Join Nyx and Scobie in their dogged pursuit of a bold predator with everything to lose.
The Private Island
New Year's Eve, Loloma Island, Fiji. At one of the most exclusive island resorts in the Pacific ocean, the champagne is poured, the fireworks are ready, and the countdown to new year is just beginning. It's set to be a night that no one will forget.
Especially when a body washes up on the shore...
But it's impossible to find answers when everyone here has a motive.
The billionaire's daughter, glamorous, untouchable, hungry for her inheritance.
The start-up founder, out of money, and out of time.
The young dive instructor, in way over his head and struggling to stay afloat.
The husband, blinded by desire, in all the wrong ways.
And the lover, hidden in the shadows, where no one can see them....
One person's holiday of a lifetime is about to be the last they'll ever have.
Miss Caroline Bingley, Private Detective
A missing maid. A murder most foul. A highly imprudent adventure. Only her fine eyes can uncover the truth.
Two years after the events of Pride and Prejudice, Miss Caroline Bingley is staying at her brother's country estate within an easy ride of Mr and Mrs Darcy's home, Pemberley, and wondering if there's more to life than playing cribbage and paying calls on country neighbours. So when Georgiana Darcy's maid, Jayani, vanishes - and worse, Georgiana disappears in search of her - Caroline races to London to find them both, and quickly discovers a shocking, cold-blooded murder.
Soon Caroline and Georgiana are careering through the gritty, grimy underbelly of London assisted by Caroline's trusty manservant, Gordon, and demanding answers of shady characters, police magistrates and mysterious East India Company-men to discover the killer. Along the way they uncover the cost of Empire on India and its people ... and Miss Bingley's incomparable powers of investigation. As Caroline puts her superior new talents to work, she finds out exactly what an accomplished, independent woman with a sharp mind and a large fortune can achieve - even when pitted against secrets, scandal, and a murderer with no mercy.
Ripper
Gemma Guillory knows her once-charming town is now remembered for one reason, and one reason only.
That three innocent people died. That the last stop on the Rainier Ripper's trail of death seventeen years ago was her innocuous little teashop.
She knows that the consequences of catching the Ripper still haunt her police officer husband and their marriage to this day and that some of her neighbours are desperate - desperate enough to welcome a dark tourism company keen to cash in on Rainier's reputation as the murder town.
When the tour operator is killed by a Ripper copycat on Gemma's doorstep, the unease that has lurked quietly in the original killer's wake turns to foreboding, and she's drawn into the investigation. Unbeknownst to her, so is a prisoner named Lane Holland.
Gemma knows her town. She knows her people. Doesn't she?
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