All the Reviews

King of Swords, Nick Stone

KING OF SWORDS is the second book from Nick Stone - MR CLARINET debuted in 2006 creating a big stir - tense and scary, set in Haiti, immersed in that country's culture and in voodoo in particular, MR CLARINET was a notable debut.

KING OF SWORDS, whilst it is the second book, is actually a prequel to the events in MR CLARINET - set in 1980's Miami where the central character from both books, Max Mingus, is still in the police force.  Miami is portrayed very much as a city clinging to the edge of civilisation - drugs are overwhelming the community, people smuggling is rife ... Read Review

The Six Sacred Stones, Matthew Reilly (review by Evan)

For the uninitiated, Matthew Reilly does not write crime.  He does not write thrillers.  Matthew Reilly writes ACTION.  Think Indiana Jones with a healthy dose of Die Hard and you'll start to get the idea.  Character development just slows down the plot too much.  As always, Reilly is inventive in the locales and situations in which he thrusts his heroes.  Having read most if not all of Reilly's books, I am always impressed by his ability to pack into the written word things I would previously have thought would only work in the visual medium of the movies.  The Sacred Stones is no ... Read Review

The Six Sacred Stones, Matthew Reilly (review by sunniefromoz)

Matthew Reilly was born in 1974.  He is of a generation who grew up on a diet of action blockbuster movies.  Reading THE SIX SACRED STONES is like reading a screenplay for one of these movies. The characters careen from one life threatening situation to another at a breakneck speed.  There is an incredibly high body count as West’s friends and foes alike succumb to the danger of this latest quest. They die in all manner of grisly fashions. Fortunately the reader is spared too many details.  

Character development isn’t really Reilly’s thing.  Why waste the words when you ... Read Review

No Turning Back, Joanne Lees

The Falconio case held the attention of the entire country in 2001 right up to and beyond the successful prosecution of Bradley John Murdoch. Lees tells of her story in a somewhat detached manner, beginning from the early days in which she first met Peter back in England through to present day as she re-builds her life without her boyfriend and hopefully, with less media attention. Peter's body was never found, and is never likely to be considering the sheer size of outback Australia, a fact Lees acknowledges in her book. A prosecution was not the end and failing the occurrence of a ... Read Review

The Devil in Amber, Mark Gatiss

It's the 1920's and it falls to Lucifer Box to save the civilised world (or at least it seems so to him - and probably him alone!)  The threat is coming from many fronts - his own superiors are applying more than a little pressure for Box to retire quietly.  Meanwhile, somebody must get to the bottom of FAUST (Fellowship of Anglo-United States Trust) an Anglo-American fascist fraternity and its sinister leader, Olympus Mons.   The presence of Lucifer's sister Pandora in FAUST is just another inconvenience that simply must be dealt with.  When Box is assigned to kill a fence and ... Read Review

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