All the Reviews

Maigret and the Idle Burglar, Georges Simenon

There is an awful lot to like about Maigret in AND THE IDLE BURGLAR.  Despite dreadful facial injuries, Maigret knows the identity of this man instantly from a single tattoo on his body.  The victim, Cuendet, is well known to him.  He's a career burglar - a Swiss man, who started out very young as a run of the mill burglar; graduating after a period in the Foreign Legion to an extremely professional, cautious and studied burglar.  He has a particular method - he carefully cases out a target, using the newspapers and social magazines to pick a victim; frequently moving into a room or ... Read Review

A Venetian Reckoning, Donna Leon

Rather than the normal method of being called out, Commisarrio Guido Brunetti learns of the death of prominent international lawyer Carlo Trevisan from the headlines in the newspaper the next day on the way to work.

What starts off as a baffling investigation of a seemingly blameless victim, turns into something altogether different as a suicide and another shooting see the death of a well-known Accountant, and then Trevisan's own brother-in-law. What is not immediately clear is why these three become victims.

Brunetti is desperate to find some clues about ... Read Review

Dead Set, Kel Robertson

DEAD SET is the first novel for barman, labourer, industrial advocate, policy advisor and now author Kel Robertson and it's a very promising debut.

Brad (Bradman, but don't mention that in front of his colleagues) Chen is an ex-football star, Australian Federal Police Detective, hit and run victim. He's on crutches with a badly broken leg and nursing an Amaretto and pain-killer addiction. He's back on duty and involved in the big, high profile murder of of the Honourable Tracey Dale, Minister for Immigration which is causing a lot of political ructions in Canberra. ... Read Review

The Mystery of a Hansom Cab, Fergus Hume

This is hardly a new book, being originally self-published in 1886, but it is a really important book in the history of crime fiction. Firstly, it was the best selling crime novel of the nineteenth century - outstripping both Arthur Conan Doyle and Wilkie Collins. It actually pre-dates Doyle's A Study in Scarlet by one year, and it was an overnight sensation when originally published, selling around 750,000 copies during Hume's lifetime, nearly half of those copies within the first six months of re-publication in London in 1887. By the end of 1886 a total of 20,000 copies had been ... Read Review

Manic Streets of Perth, Dave Franklin

Manic Streets of Perth is an anthology made up of 3 distinct novellas - Manic Streets of Perth, Looking for Sarah Jane Smith and To Dare A Future.

Each novella is a separate story in its own right, so I've commented on all 3 individually.

Manic Streets of Perth features intrepid, and idiot reporter Paul Lewis, but more importantly, Kim Jones, animal activist, some-time petrol station attendant, daughter, fighter and survivor. When a snake wielding bandit robs her father's petrol station, when Kim is working the till, her life starts to spiral just a little ... Read Review

Hit, Tara Moss

Meaghan Wallace is invited to one of the "must be at" social events in Sydney - a party at the very very rich Cavanagh household. When her escort (and boss) finally passes out, she stumbles across Damien, the very spoilt son of the family, arguing with other men in the same room as a bed, and a very young, dead Asian girl. Meaghan uses her phone camera to videotape the event, amazed at the famous faces she's encountering at this party, but is caught by Damien's friend Simon who smashes the phone and quietly removes Meaghan from the party. When Meaghan is found dead in her own ... Read Review

The Murder Of Madeline Brown, Francis Adams

I'll be honest - I was keen to read this book because of the similarity in timeframe for its writing to that of Fergus Hume's The Mystery of the Hansom Cab - and because of Shane Maloney's excellent introduction to the book comments that Adam's made no particularly literary claims for this novel, and possibly wrote it in an attempt to capitalise on Mr Hume's huge success.  Interestingly I liked the Hansom Cab book very much.  Even allowing for the differences in timeframes, languages and sensibilities, the story still held up well - the investigation felt reasonable and realistic and ... Read Review

Inspector Imanishi Investigates, Seicho Matsumoto

INSPECTOR IMANISHI INVESTIGATES is the first Japanese written crime / mystery book that I can remember reading for quite some time, and it must have worked as I've been tracking down other examples and other authors to try.

When an unidentified (and it soon appears) difficult to identify man is found under the rails of a Tokyo Station early one morning, he's been strangled and dumped on the rails - seemingly in an attempt to take away any further chance of identifying him when the first train of the morning ran over the corpse.  

I'll admit it - I found ... Read Review

Cheaters, J.R. Carroll

J R Carroll writes a really lively combination of gangster thriller crime fiction. Set in and around Melbourne there have been a few books which are a series - using the same characters and a lot that are standalone.

CHEATERS is one of the standalones thus far, or at least, this is the first / only time I've come across these characters and I've read a lot of J R Carroll's books.

CHEATERS is set, I think, sometime in the early 1990's - or at least in Melbourne when the temporary casino was in operation before the monolithic, vaguely prison like Crown Casino ... Read Review