All the Reviews

Mavis Levack, P.I., Marele Day

Personally I think I agree with Eddy - Mavis is a busybody.  She's also a bored housewife, living in a flat with her retired husband, desperate for something to break the monotony of life.  When Claudia Valentine drops in to peak through the curtains as part of her investigation in The Life and Crimes of Harry Lavender, Mavis is intrigued - and she's unstoppable.

This is a series of short stories all about Mavis and the way that she can manage to turn anything into an investigation - if the dead bodies aren't dropping at her feet - then she'll chase down your missing ... Read Review

Exit Music, Ian Rankin

There is a mandatory retirement age of 60 in the Scottish Police Force, so Rebus is finally on his way out.  Weird really that with all the suspensions, life threatening events and the number of times that he's annoyed Siobhan to the point of shooting him, it's age that's going to see Rebus move on.  At the very least you'd think something spectacular.  Depending on how Rankin feels about his creation, I guess he could equally have killed him off with a massive whiskey, beer and fish and chip induced heart attack.  But Rebus is alive at the end of Exit Music and this is his retirement ... Read Review

The Brush Off, Shane Maloney

The things a ministerial assistant must do. Murray Whelan's exact job title and the details of his expected duties have never been fully explained but they certainly call for a deft kind of versatility in adapting to all possible situations a Labor party man might find himself inserted into. In yet another show of party shuffling, Murray's boss Angelo Agnelli has picked up the Arts portfolio, and Agnelli's need to endear himself to a new brand of people has now become Murray's personal headache. With suitable gothic dramatism, a failed artist has chosen the first day of Agnelli's new ... Read Review

Eden, Dorothy Johnston

Sandra Mahoney and her partner Ivan are security consultants, so what she is doing poking around the death by natural causes of a well known politician seems to confuse Sandra as much as everybody else.  In EDEN, the third Sandra Mahoney series book by Dorothy Johnston, Sandra is home alone - Ivan and their daughter Katya are in Russia visiting his relations and it's summer in Canberra.  Sandra had originally planned to spend summer on the coast - with her son, but she's at a bit of a loose end when he heads off to Tasmania with his father, leaving her in hot, slightly dismal Canberra ... Read Review

The Heavens May Fall, Unity Dow (review by sunniefromoz)

The book is a series of vignettes set around a main story.  All the stories centre around women facing legal problems.  The author, Unity Dow, is Botswana’s first female High Court judge and has made a name for herself dealing with human rights issues, particularly in relation to women.  Botswana is a very young country still trying to come to terms with the modern world.  That is where the main interest in the book lies.  How to reconcile a modern British Justice system with old traditional ways and still achieve justice for women is what makes THE HEAVENS MAY FALL so interesting. ... Read Review

Mixed Fancies, Brenda Blethyn

In this age, where there appear to be more and more people obsessed with being "famous for being famous", and an unfortunate group who follow their every, underwhelming move, MIXED FANCIES arrived in my post box recently.

Brenda Blethyn is one of those actresses you undoubtedly have seen in something.... turning to the back of the book first it was rather surprising to see that so far she has appeared in around 27 movies, 32 TV shows (including Rumpole and Maigret for we mystery fans) and a similar number of theatre productions. Suddenly you realise that she's not overtly ... Read Review

In The Woods, Tana French

Is it really only a month or so since IN THE WOODS was released in paperback? There's a lot of talk about this debut book, and you should be listening, the positive talk is highly deserved.

In 1984, in Knocknaree, County Dublin, Ireland, three 12 year old children - Adam, Peter and Jamie (Germaine) are playing. They've been life long friends and they go everywhere together. They are seemingly leading an idyllic childhood, with the housing estate they live in filled with young families and other children, backing onto the wood in which they regularly explore, run and play ... Read Review

Frankie, Kevin Lewis

If "About the Author" in the press release is to be believed, then in FRANKIE, Kevin Lewis is writing about a world not that far from the one he grew up in.

On a cold London evening Frankie, a young woman with a sad past, now living on the streets, has no choice when a drug dealer, pimp and lowlife targets the very young Mary - a recent street kid, still pretty, still not drawn into addiction and degradation. Frankie fights for Mary and the pimp dies. Frankie is now not just on the streets with her own past to deal with, but she's running from the police, from the ... Read Review

Plaster Sinners, Colin Watson

Wandering around in Wormhole Books in Belgrave South last Saturday, you have no idea how pleased I was to find a copy of Plaster Sinners by Colin Watson. This is the last of his 13 Flaxborough novels that I've been looking for for such a long time.

Colin Watson is one of the great under-appreciated and discussed British Writers as far as I'm concerned. His Flaxborough Series, written between the late 1950's and 1980 (he died in 1982) are a magnificent example of the slightly cheeky, irreverant but never scorning, school of the ever so slightly absurd Crime Fiction. ... Read Review