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We Solve Murders, Richard OsmanFirst 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. Her father-in-law, Steve Wheeler, is a retired police officer doing the odd bit of local investigation work - missing pets and the like. He's a regular at the local pub quiz, loves his cat ... Read Review |
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Karla's Choice, Nick HarkawayAlong with a lot of other readers around the same age, I started out reading Espionage thrillers with John le Carré's George Smiley, Robert Ludlum's Jason Bourne, Ian Fleming's James Bond and the novels of Frederick Forsyth and Len Deighton. George Smiley was always a particular favourite, possibly because the tone and feeling of Le Carré's books was always pared back, steeped in foreboding, doubt and regret, which meant KARLA'S CHOICE was always going to be "an undertaking". I can't imagine how it would feel to be the son who takes on his father's most famous work, although the ... Read Review |
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A Line to Kill, Anthony HorowitzThe 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. ... Read Review |
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How To Send A Message, Caimh McDonnellI'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. Have I learned anything about human nature ... Read Review |
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The Mother Paul Series, June WrightMy 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 |
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Birnam Wood, Eleanor CattonOne 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:
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String Theory, Bing TurkbySTRING 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....". Set, unsurprisingly, in and around Dana Osborne's guitar store, where she would be happy just hanging out, talking music with an eclectic range of ... Read Review |
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Life & Crimes, Andrew RuleCatching 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. Reading this one at the time that I did had a particularly poignant overlay as the story of the Easey Street murders is included, at the same time as the ... Read Review |
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Naked City, John SilvesterI'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. This collection (published in 2023) goes back over some well known cases, brings in some new stories, and provides some of Silvester's observations on the good, the dumb and the ugly of Melbourne's crime fraternity. He doesn't pull any ... Read Review |
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Present Tense, Natalie ConyerThe 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. Having read the second book first, PRESENT TENSE provided the details for a lot of the important parts ... Read Review |
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Cutler, David Whish-WilsonCUTLER, 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.Read Review |
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Murder Mindfully, Karsten DusseFirst 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). ... Read Review |
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The Chilling, Riley JamesThis was one of those fortuitous picks from the library (I know I should be attending to the visible from space TBR here, but something about this book appealed when I heard a whisper about it, and sometimes giving into a little bit of temptation is... good for morale). Anyway, I saw this and thought it sounded just the thing for a bit of late night reading. Proved to be exactly that, kept me awake and reading, and finding excuses the day after to keep reading. Based around MacPherson Station in Antarctica (which I think is fictitious but don't take my word for anything ... Read Review |
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The Cryptic Clue, Amanda HampsonFor somebody who claims to prefer the darker end of the Crime Fiction spectrum, I've been thoroughly enjoying some cosies recently. Although I did originally try to "read" this one via the audio book, but that didn't work, so I switched to the printed form and found myself happily enjoying the 2nd of The Tea Ladies series - THE CRYPTIC CLUE. Anybody who hasn't picked up the first book - THE TEA LADIES - would find no problems in catching up with the main characters in this series - Hazel, Betty and Irene, although their backgrounds are more thoroughly explained in the ... Read Review |
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Madame Brussels, Barbara MinchintonThis is the biography of Caroline Hodgson, the woman who became known as Madame Brussels. She was a legendary brothel keeper in nineteenth century Melbourne, with a laneway in the city now named after her, and yet even during her life, she was an enigmatic and private woman who kept a very low profile, given the high-profile opposition against her. Born in Prussia into a struggling working-class family, she made her way to Melbourne in 1871, alongside her husband, a member of a well-to-family with a story of his own. When he abandoned her to work as a policeman in remote ... Read Review |
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Outback, Michael Davies"A brand new novel that continues the legacy of ‘Master of the Genre’ Desmond Bagley by the co-author of Domino Island." Insurance investigator Bill Kemp made his first appearance in Domino Island - the story of that novel is best told here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domino_Island, but in a nutshell it was first published posthumously in 2019, based on a draft discovered in the author's papers, curated to life ... Read Review |
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The Chancellor, Kati MortonI read and reviewed this book in September / October, posted the review on StoryGraph and then promptly nuked the wrong account there and lost it. So in lieu of the carefully constructed comments I made there, let's have a go at something coherent here. This biography was written by an author who, whilst connected to Angela Merkel's circle and the author of a number of high profile biographies, didn't actually interview Merkel or get any input directly from her. So this is an observational biography as opposed to a detailed memoir (which Merkel is writing ... Read Review |
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Dish, Rhys NicholsonListened to this on audio and loved it. Rhys is one of my favourite comedians, love their honesty and openness, and willingness to talk about the things that make life complicated. Particularly appreciated the idea that somebody with an eating disorder would include recipes in a book like this. I mean I can't attempt any of the recipes personally, but they were there, and the instructions were perfect. (Yes this is tongue in cheek in style, yes there are some messages and, heavens to betsy, some opinions, dotted throughout so no don't listen to it if you don't like their ... Read Review |
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The Bookshop Detectives: Dead Girl Gone, Gareth Ward & Louise Ward“When we opened Sherlock Tomes people warned us that we’d made a terrible mistake. People warned us that e-readers were taking over. People warned us that we’d never compete with the evil Amazon. The one thing they didn’t warn us about was the murders…” Introducing...the Bookshop Detectives!
I hear a rumour that the joint authors of this book are also the joint owners of a rather quirky little bookshop in their native New Zealand, so no guesses where the idea for the two main characters of this novel came from. Gareth and Eloise own ... Read Review |
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Last One to Leave / Find Us, Benjamin StevensonBit of explaining first - LAST ONE TO LEAVE and FIND US are available as stand-alone ebooks / novellas. They are also available together in printed form under the title FOOL ME TWICE. I read the two separate novellas, but will combine the review here. Starting out with LAST ONE TO LEAVE - it's a murder mystery set within a reality competition. Which frankly, given that all reality shows border on criminal in my eyes, worked before I'd even started. The idea of this one is that there are seven complete ... Read Review |