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City of Vengeance, D.V. BishopThe debut novel in a series featuring Cesare Aldo, former soldier, now an officer in the city's most feared criminal court, CITY OF VENGEANCE is set during the winter of 1536 in Florence, Italy. At that time Florence was a wealthy and influential city, ruled over by the Duke Alessandro de Medici - volatile and dangerous in his own right. When a prominent Jewish moneylender is murdered in his home Aldo is directed to solve the murder before the feast of Epiphany, in four days time. What the edict doesn't take into account is the plot that Aldo uncovers to overthrow de Medici. ... Read Review |
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The Consequence, Gabriel BergmoserOne of my recent audio book listens, THE CONSEQUENCE by Gabriel Bergmoser features hardman, rogue ex-cop Jack Carlin who's the sort of bloke that finds running thugs out of town, and handing over all of the money they'd stolen to a struggling kid de rigueur. The drug cartel, whose money it ultimately was, isn't quite so laid back about the whole thing, and their idea of revenge is swift and deadly. Leaving Carlin with a couple of big problems - a guilty conscience and a desire for some revenge of his own. Hence the title of this hard-boiled, hard-nosed, gritty outing ... Read Review |
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Waking the Tiger, Mark WightmanWAKING THE TIGER is set in 1939 Singapore. Dripping with sense of place and time, there's something vaguely reminiscent of Chandler's styling, and the excellent Inspector Le Fanu series by Brian Stoddart in the characterisation and plot. Inspector Maximo Betancourt is working a new beat, that he never wanted. Following the disappearance of his own wife, everything has collapsed around him, including his career. Once a rising star of the Singapore CID, he's been relegated to the Marine Division, adjudicating dockyard disputes and conducting goods inspections. ... Read Review |
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Miracle, Jennifer LaneBeing a 14 year old girl is never an easy undertaking, but living in a dying town, in a family beset with problems makes Miracle's life that bit more complicated. She's known as Miracle because she was born in the middle of Australia's biggest-ever earthquake. The same quake that so traumatised her older brother that he's been left living with an ongoing mental health / nervous issue. Her mother's agoraphobic, her father's not coping with unemployment, and the boy she really likes, Oli, is playing really cruel tricks on her. All in all, a bit of a mess. Anyone who has ... Read Review |
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Day's End, Garry DisherThe thing about a book by Garry Disher is that I know it's going to be good. But every single time I find myself marvelling at just how good. Disher is a master at the art of the space - be it in the narrative, the place or the thing. He evokes a sense of place better than any other Australian crime author I can think of, and he does it without the need for massive amounts of description or detail. The characters in his books don't just inhabit their place, environment and job, they are them. It's seamless, and it's so clever it's worthy of all the accolades. ... Read Review |
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The Quiet People, Paul CleaveBack when I first discovered Paul Cleave's books and the Theodore Tate series in particular, I did wonder if he really liked frightening the living daylights out of his readers. I'm not talking horror or anything here, but the creepy, persistent sense of terror that invades those books has been responsible for some lost sleep hours and locked doors in these parts. Lately though I'm starting to realise it's his characters he's trying to exact some sort of revenge on. In the beginning of THE QUIET PEOPLE you could be forgiven for wondering what Cameron and Lisa Murdoch did to deserve ... Read Review |
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Deadly Intent, Laraine StephensThe second in the Reggie da Costa Mystery series from local author Laraine Stephens, DEADLY INTENT is set in Melbourne, in October 1923. In this outing, heavy rains have battered Melbourne, and local crime reporter Reggie da Costa finds himself at the centre of a story when he discovers that a trunk, hidden away in what became a flooded basement, contains the decomposing remains of a wealthy widower. Cornelius Stout has been missing for two years, and it doesn't take long for da Costa, and his sidekick in this outing - teacher Dotty Wright - to uncover other missing ... Read Review |
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Wipptee, Jai BaidellI used to keep count of "girl in a hat" (and man standing on a foggy street corner) book covers. But in this case, you know the sort of thing, book covers for rural / romance styled novels with girls looking off into the distance, over fields of golden (dry) grass, akubra style hat firmly on head. Not a sign of sun blemishes, squinting eyes, dry skin, chafed hands, bandaids, broken fingernails, bruised arms, or scratches from the hay bales. The hats are pretty well always devoid of signs of wear, tear and the sort of battering that comes from being trampled in stockyards... So ... Read Review |
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A Runner's Guide to Rakiura, Jessica Howland KanyStarted this book with absolutely no idea what I was going to get, got through the first quarter with no idea what was going on, ended the whole thing thoroughly enjoying every word of it. Maudie is the central character of this novel, a millenial New Yorker who, on assigment to cover Aotearoa New Zealand's southern-most running trails, takes herself to Rakiura Stewart Island. She's erratic, impulsive, and very American when she first arrives in the eccentric, self-sufficient, laid back community that captures her heart and energy. Despite a sense of constant "otherness" ... Read Review |
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The Woman in the Library, Sulari GentillThe Wikipedia definition of metafiction is:
It's a notoriously difficult style to execute, and compelling and very clever when done well - and Sulari Gentill is proving herself ... Read Review |
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Criminals, James O'LoghlinInto the crime fiction reader's life something different should lob more often. CRIMINALS is not only different, it's brilliantly different. Well known ABC presenter James O'Loghlin has taken his inspiration for this novel from his time as a criminal lawyer, and told the tale in a laid back, yet funny and compassionate style. There's a fine line being teetered on here, with three seemingly ordinary people being flung into each other's orbits as a result of one act, revealing more and more about those people as the story progresses. The humour is always there, but it's ... Read Review |
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Death at the Belvedere, Sue WilliamsThe fourth book in the Cass Tuplin mystery series, set in the dryland farming areas of Victoria, somewhere sort of north west of Bendigo (I think), in the fictional town of Rusty Bore, with a takeaway that always makes me think of Wycheproof. (There's nothing whatsoever in these books that makes you think Rusty Bore is anything other than completely fictional and I've no idea why that's been in my head since the opening novel..., but I digress.) Which I think is probably encouraged by reading the Cass Tuplin series - she of (as it turns out in this novel), "a lot of ... Read Review |
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Knitting Needles and Knives, Rodney StrongAlice Atkinson is back, laid up with an injured ankle and mildly bored. When her friend, and fellow resident of Silvermoon Retirement Centre, Owen asks for her help with his wayward granddaughter who has gotten herself into a spot of trouble. Nothing compared to the trouble she's going to be in when her boyfriend is found dead on the Centre grounds, and she keeps conveniently "forgetting" to make with all those little details of a story that mean that Alice can think her way to a solution. Being laid up doesn't stop Alice, although it does complicate the investigation ... Read Review |
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I Wanna Be Yours, John Cooper ClarkeThe soundtrack of your life often reflects the time when you were a teenager, when everything sears into the memory, embeds itself deep in the psyche and remains with you. Come my old age, my nursing home will have a very different soundtrack to the Hits of the Blitz that the grandparents favoured. For me it will be The Clash, The Slits, The Sex Pistols, The Ramones, Blondie, Siouxsie and the Banshees and of course, The Saints. Interspersed with the most unlikely offerings that came with the disco era. What can I say, the 70's and 80's were a weird, weird, gloriously outrageous, ... Read Review |
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Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone, Benjamin StevensonEveryone is going to be talking about EVERYONE IN MY FAMILY HAS KILLED SOMEONE, because it's fiendishly clever, dryly funny (well as funny as a crime novel with a very high body count is going to get), complicated without being overly so, different, and well, relatable, in a weird sort of way. Right from the very start our narrator, Ern Cunningham, has a lot on. Professionally he self publishes "How To Write" crime books, with his advice based on Ronald Knox's '10 Commandments of Detective Fiction' from 1929 (well worth googling although they are all (with one edit) ... Read Review |
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Boy Fallen, Chris GillSet in small-town New Zealand, Boy Fallen is beautifully written and elegantly plotted crime fiction. Auckland Detective Brooke Palmer returns to her home town of Taonga to support her best friend Lana when the body of Lana’s teenage son is found at the base of the local falls. Full review at Newtown Review of BooksRead Review |
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Auē, Becky Manawatu
Understanding the meaning of the verb auē doesn't quite cover the visceral, gut-wrenching capacity of it in the way that the novel AUĒ depicts it. The characters in this novel experience it in all sorts of ways ... Read Review |
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Consolation, Garry DisherAustralia’s leading writer of rural crime fiction, Garry Disher, has been quietly crafting an excellent series set in the dry wheatbelt of South Australia. Full review at Newtown Review of BooksRead Review |
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Canticle Creek, Adrian HylandIt's been way. too. long. since the last Emily Tempest novel from Adrian Hyland was published. Been way too long since anything from Adrian Hyland was published, so I will admit to some serious stack reshuffling when CANTICLE CREEK arrived. Not a shred of disappointment about the decision to sit down and read the first novel featuring NT Police Officer Jesse Redpath. (I say first novel with some determination - this is a series in the making if there ever was one). Jesse Redpath is a cop in the small NT community around Kulara, and she was more than prepared to stick her ... Read Review |
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The Way It is Now, Garry DisherTHE WAY IT IS NOW is another new character from Garry Disher, mining some familiar territory for him, in that we've got a cop who is struggling with his past, present and future. Even for a youngish man, Charlie Deravin has been a cop for years, and there's a lot of backstory to his life. Missing mother for 20 or so years, believed murdered; tricky relationship with his father, and his new wife, the woman who was there at the breakdown of Charlie's parents marriage. A brother who blames their father, but stays close to Charlie. Who now has his own failed marriage, a university aged ... Read Review |