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Finders Keepers, Natalie Barelli20/02/2026 - 4:10pmAuthor Natalie Barelli's website has a tagline on it that says 'Psychological Thriller Author' and it lists 10 books written by her (another due out in 2026), although FINDERS KEEPERS is the first I've read. You can definitely see where the psychology comes into this as she's created a couple of main characters that seem to be in desperate need of psychological counselling at the very least. Rose (aka Iris) is a woman with so much baggage she's going to need a large trolley to keep it moving, and Emily is an author who is, it turns out, a disaster to be around. ... Read Review |
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The Menu of Happiness, Hisashi Kashiwai20/02/2026 - 1:13pmThis is now the third book in The Kamogawa Diner series which I think now has to be said is considerably more about the meals / food than it is about the investigation. The premise is simple, using an obscure advertisement in a Culinary Magazine, the father and daughter duo behind the Kamogawa Diner draw anyone to them that has a longing for food or a particular dish that they remember but now cannot access. He's the chef, she's the head of the detective agency although these days that's mostly her getting the details of the client's longing (craving), and leaving it to her father to ... Read Review |
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Weeping Angels, Riley Chance19/02/2026 - 4:17pm
Lauren Brown has a booming business on her hands - an agency that helps victims of family violence obtain protection orders - something notoriously difficult in a world that seems more comfortable in forcing women to prove guilt, then men to prove innocence, but Lauren's also no amateur. She obsessively guards her privacy, and her past, preferring her personal life ... Read Review |
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Surveillance, Riley Chance19/02/2026 - 4:06pmJournalist Grace Marks needs a good story, but she has no idea how good a story she's unearthing when she starts out investigating a surge in suburban minor crime. I mean who would put that much organisation into a series of minor crimes. Maybe a security company CEO, a company that offers some very new technology for people to use in thwarting the aforementioned sorts of minor crimes. Only the CEO of Erebus Optics turns out to be as suspicious of the owner of the American technology at the core of what his company offers, and despite the fact that Will Manilow's business ... Read Review |
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The Impossible Fortune, Richard Osman18/02/2026 - 3:48pmThe last thing this series needs is another review, and besides I've left this way too long and I'm relying on the notes I made at the time of reading. Well I say reading, but I listen to this series via audio books mostly because as much as I loved Leslie Manville's narration, I've come to really enjoy Fiona Shaw's work as well. THE IMPOSSIBLE FORTUNE is the fifth book in the series now, and unless you've been in a coma or doing some determined avoidance, most readers of crime fiction these days will have heard of Elizabeth, Joyce, Ron and Ibrahim. Whilst there is a ... Read Review |
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Running Amok, Paul E. Mullen11/02/2026 - 12:07pmI'm not sure what alerted me to the existence of this book, and I'm well aware of the exploitative and often sensationalised discussion around real-life lone killers, and have, in recent years been turned right off some true crime narratives because of it. The author of this work, Paul E Mullen however has the following bio:
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When the Deep Dark Bush Swallows You Whole, Geoff Parkes05/02/2026 - 11:33amWHEN THE DEEP DARK BUSH SWALLOWS YOU WHOLE is the first in the Ryan Bradley series (the second - THE FIRST LAW OF THE BUSH was released on 6/1/2026 prompting me to extract the digit and read this!), set in New Zealand's rugged and remote King Country, around the small town of Nashville. A community made up of people who have been there for generations, relying mostly on agriculture as the main economic driver, it's a quiet place, with the spectre of a series of disappearances of women hanging over it. Set in 1983, the ... Read Review |
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No One Was Supposed to Die at This Wedding, Catherine Mack04/02/2026 - 1:31pmI cannot explain it either. One look at the blurb of this and you'd think I'd be backing away at the fastest possible rate. A couple of chapters in and I was wondering what on earth I thought I was reading.Read Review |
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Wrongdoings, L A Joye04/02/2026 - 12:26pmAn historical mystery set in 1943 New Zealand, featuring soon to be retired DI John MacBride, WRONGDOINGS is a book that's centred, unsurprisingly given the timeframe, around the fallout from war. DI MacBride is a veteran of WWI service with the NZ Expeditionary Force, a man on the cusp of retirement, really suffering from severe burnout. The victim in this story, Marine Randolph Harrington, is a saxophonist in a visiting United States Marine jazz band, found murdered on the banks of the Oreti River. The investigation is a hard one, what with MacBride's only supporting ... Read Review |
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The Clock House Murders, Yukito Ayatsuji03/02/2026 - 3:44pmThe 4th book in the Bizarre House Murders (sometimes known as The House Murders) series by Japanese author Yukito Ayatsuji. A well known writer of Japanese detective and mystery fiction, he's an adherent to the classic rules of the genre, always incorporates reflective and poignant elements, and in this series has constructed a series of elaborate locked room settings (see below). In this outing the Clock House is a remote, custom built house with multiple wings (there's a floorplan to explain it all), commissioned by ... Read Review |
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A Deadly Inheritance, Charlotte Vassell03/02/2026 - 12:51pmA DEADLY INHERITANCE is the third book in the Caius Beauchamp series. The first two (THE OTHER HALF and THE IN CROWD) were most definitely crime fiction with a hefty side serving of "having a go at the uppercrust" and hugely enjoyably.Read Review |
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The War Photographers, SL Beaumont02/02/2026 - 4:30pmFrom the blurb:
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The Mall, Michael Armstrong30/01/2026 - 1:06pmWhoever said "write what you know" to Michael Armstrong got their message through loud and clear. THE MALL is set in the world of high finance commercial real estate, and features the wheeling, dealing, and dodging goings on of that, as well as the life and times of an ambitious young Curtis Ryan. The blurb is worth reading on this one, with the final paragraph worth using as the kicking off point for this review:
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Last Rites, Ozzy Osbourne23/01/2026 - 1:08pmSomewhere in this memoir there's a throw away comment from Ozzy about most of their fans / audiences being male and that made me doubly sad that I never did manage to catch Black Sabbath live.Read Review |
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My Inner Child Wants to Murder Mindfully, Karsten Dusse21/01/2026 - 2:09pmThe follow up novel to what was, frankly, one of the highlights of my reading 2025, MY INNER CHILD WANTS TO MURDER MINDFULLY comes after MURDER MINDFULLY which came out in 2024 from memory. That first novel has been made into a Netflix series which we watched - it works pretty well although obviously all the wondrous, sly, slightly mucky moments from the novel couldn't make it onto the screen. It's one of those series (so far) that would really benefit from reading from the start because frankly, how it got to what happens in the ... Read Review |
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Quantum of Menace, Vaseem Khan20/01/2026 - 1:44pmI'd been looking forward to this one, something a bit on the softer side after a period of some hefty social commentary style undertakings, the opening salvo in a series built around "Q" from the James Bond franchise. In this introduction, after being unexpectedly ousted from MI6, he finds himself back in his quiet, very English hometown of Wickstone-on-Water, a bit lost and directionless. But the mysterious death of his childhood friend, and renowned quantum computer scientist, Peter Naper, who left behind a very cryptic note, sees Q / Major Boothroyd compelled to investigate in the ... Read Review |
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Franz Josef, Alan Carter14/01/2026 - 12:06pmThe third book now in the Nick Chester series set in New Zealand, this is a police procedural that uses sense of place and great characters as it's starting point, drawing them into nicely twisty plots that rely heavily on location to give them that little extra something. The FRANZ JOSEF from the novel's title refers to a tiny South Island town which was built right on top of New Zealand's Alpine Fault, making it particularly vulnerable to devastating earthquakes, floods and landslides. It's also very exposed to the ravages of climate change, being a tourist town, that ... Read Review |
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The Canvas Killings, Elise Janes13/01/2026 - 3:05pmTHE CANVAS KILLINGS is the debut novel written by Elise Janes, the pseudonym for writing combo Elise Wackett and Jane Abbott. It's a fast-paced, sometimes gruesome story set in past and present Australia. The Past: 30 years ago renowned artist James Montague Ballantyne was convicted of murdering eight people, using their remains in his infamous paintings. The Present: Sam Reed is a dependable, normal family man and teacher, who intervenes in a violent robbery, an act shared on social media by a couple of nearby witnesses. That unwanted attention means a ... Read Review |
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The Redline, Adrian Hyland12/01/2026 - 4:18pmA book that was pitch perfect for over the festive season reading. Set in the fictional location of the Windmark Ranges (not too hard to figure out the basis for them though), it's Christmas, and the drunks, troublemakers and idiots are out in force. Nothing unusual then, until the death of Sergeant Jesse Redpath's much admired and loved colleague up on the road known as the Redline, dealing on his own, with yet more idiots hooning about the place. The death of that lone cop though isn't as straightforward as it seems, and the more Redpath digs, the more unexplained ... Read Review |
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Quintus Huntley: Botany, Royce Leville22/12/2025 - 9:55amI was having a bit of a chat with a fellow lover of crime fiction (hi Gavin) on BlueSky who copied me in on an instagram post that outed the author of this novel as Campbell Jeffreys, a writer with a diverse background in literature, media and film, and the author of (amongst other things) a thriller entitled BALACLAVA which is now on the TO BE READ teetering piles. Because, if at any point you think that QUINTUS HUNTLEY: BOTANY (written under the author name of Royce Leville) sounds unlikely, park the concerns, grab yourself a copy and get stuck in. This is the sort of ... Read Review |