All the Reviews

Grief Encounters, Stuart Pawson (review by sunniefromoz)

Reading GRIEF ENCOUNTERS is like slipping into a pair of your favourite comfy slippers.  It may not set the world on fire for being fashionable or chic but you know you are going to enjoy the experience. Stuart Pawson steers away from the dysfunctional stereotypes that abound in crime fiction these days.  It is near impossible not to like the amiable Charlie Priest and his team at Heckley nick.  These are ordinary people who come to work each day and share jokes, socialise and lead quiet unremarkable lives; just like the majority of us. And perhaps that is the clue to the popularity ... Read Review

Labyrinth, Kate Mosse

For such a massive tome, the time passes quickly on the read of LABYRINTH.  Almost chatty in places for an historical drama, it manages to spin out its tale of holy secrets through the ages in a very comfortable, easy style that invites the kind of coffee and chat it generated during its creation (a six year process).  The work in progress of author Kate Mosse on LABYRINTH was live on-line during the novel's creation and spurned a massive amount of interest from the snippets of plot details and historical data that were released en route.   Similar has been done with SEPULCHRE, the ... Read Review

By Death Divided, Patricia Hall

BY DEATH DIVIDED is the 14th book in the Thackeray and Ackroyd series.  Laura Ackroyd is a journalist - her partner Michael Thackeray is a DCI.  Fitting the double central characters, BY DEATH DIVIDED has two main threads - a missing Asian woman and her husband (which Thackeray is investigating) and domestic violence (which Ackroyd is reporting on).  Both of these threads - probably predictably - meet up as the book draws to a conclusion.  Mind you, there's nothing wrong with the predictability of this joining up, as it's done with a fair amount of aplomb and some darn good reasons ... Read Review

Primal Cut, Ed O'Connor (review by sunniefromoz)

Common wisdom remembered brain paste. The old ladies of Silvertown would tell you.  The porters at Smithfield market would tell you. No doctor would tell you, but what do they know?’....With an opening paragraph like that you know you’re not reading a cozy set in a picturesque country village with a sweet little old lady figuring out who left the letter opener in the vicar’s back.

PRIMAL CUT is violent.There are themes in the book that many probably couldn’t stomach; dog fighting, and bare-knuckle fighting two name just two. It’s a very dark world Alison Dexter inhabits ... Read Review

The Skeleton Man, Jim Kelly

THE SKELETON MAN is the fifth novel in this series - "starring" Philip Dryden, journalist - once Fleet Street luminary, now small-town newspaper man, and I have to confess this is a favourite series of mine.  Not because the books are edgy, or dark or particularly enlightening of the human condition, but because everybody in them is relatively normal; the situations that Dryden ends up investigating are not that outlandish and because there is a real human touch in the way this author builds his characters.

THE SKELETON MAN is set in and around a little village that has ... Read Review

Sensitive New Age Spy, Geoff McGeachin

SENSITIVE NEW AGE SPY continues the Alby Murdoch story where D-E-D Dead! left off.  Post the hilariously over the top events at the end of the first book, Alby finds himself thrust into leadership of D-E-D, not that it's all bad.  He manages to not get too involved in the day to day, and there's always Julie.  Julie helping out on operations is one thing, Julie asleep, in not a lot, on your couch is another altogether.  Mind you Alby's pretty well convinced he'll never get to have his way with Julie, it's a pity that for an intelligence agent, he can be as thick as the walls of an 80, ... Read Review

Core of Evil (aka Still Waters), Nigel McCrery

McCrery is the writer of Silent Witness and New Tricks - TV series that are undoubtedly instantly recognisable to a number of readers of this review, and there's something about the characterisations from those shows that rings bells of recognition in STILL WATERS.  DCI Mark Lapslie is called back from "gardening leave" - extended sick leave - because his name has been flagged as somebody who could understand a particular mutilation of the body that was found at the scene of a fatal traffic accident.  The investigation into this body proceeds slowly as, whilst the identification of ... Read Review

The Wrong Kind of Blood, Declan Hughes

Okay, so Ed Loy is a bit of a lone wolf character.  He's also obviously been endowed with some sort of minor super-powers.  You know the sort.  No matter how much of a kicking he takes, no matter how much battering, beating, brawling and bashing goes on, Ed keeps on keeping on.  He might limp a bit occasionally.  He might grimace when a recent scar stings, but there's a job to be done and Ed's going to do that job.  Of course this sort of character can get right up the reader's nose unless they have something else - that personality or style - that means you can forgive the minor ... Read Review

Appeal Denied, Peter Corris

When Hardy got himself into hot water in THE UNDERTOW, you just had to wonder if this was the end of Sydney's most famous hard-boiled detective.  In APPEAL DENIED he doesn't get his licence to be a private investigator back; he's got no money; his house and car are falling apart and his love life takes a disastrous turn.  But it takes more than murder, bureaucracy and falling down houses to keep Cliff down.  Sort of.

In typical Cliff Hardy style APPEAL DENIED has events that really should see a hard man give up slightly, but when murder gets very very close to home, Cliff ... Read Review