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Four Dogs Missing, Rhys Gard04/07/2023 - 6:22pmYou wouldn't think reading crime fiction would leave you with a taste for wine, but here we are. Set in the idyllic surrounds of the Mudgee (New South Wales) wine region, Oliver Wingfield has set himself up as a winemaker with a fine reputation for his wines, even if everyone talks about his reclusive nature and unorthodox techniques. He's a man with a complicated past, which is dragged kicking and screaming into the light after his estranged twin brother Theo suddenly arrives after a fifteen year period of no contact whatsoever, and is promptly murdered. Physically ... Read Review |
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The Yellow Dog, Georges Simenon03/07/2023 - 3:35pmThe world is a pretty awful place at the moment and there's no way I will stomach listening to a book that casually talks about animal cruelty. So this was a DNF with extreme nope.Read Review |
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A Rake of His Own, A.J. Lancaster01/07/2023 - 11:17amFrom the Blurb: Marius Valstar doesn’t know which is worse: the dead body in his greenhouse or the naked fae prince on his desk. The only rakes of interest to Marius are garden tools. Not fae princes. Certainly not the arrogant, selfish fae prince he has the misfortune to have a history with. But when Prince Rakken turns up naked and bleeding in Marius’s college the same day a body appears in his greenhouse, scruples must take second place to solving a murder that could unravel the delicate balance between humans and fae. Marius’ ... Read Review |
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A Disappearance in Fiji, Nilima Rao20/06/2023 - 6:31pmIn the author's notes at the back of A DISAPPEARANCE IN FIJI, Nilima Rao provides background to the thinking behind this novel, including the structure of the Indian indentured servitude program, established by the British overseen, Indian government, coming into its own when slavery was abolished. Why am I not surprised that this was yet another example of utter bastardry, arranging for Indian workers, desperate to improve their lives however marginally, to be sent to places like Trinidad, Jamaica, and Mauritius on fixed period contracts with working and living conditions that were ... Read Review |
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Vanished, Nicole Morris15/06/2023 - 4:54pmIn 2005 Nicole Morris founded the Australian Missing Persons register, an internet resource to help find missing people in Australia. http://www.australianmissingpersonsregister.com/ (your browser may come up with a security alert because the site is missing the encryption layer). A valuable part of that website is the FAQ - http://www.australianmissingpersonsregister.com/FAQ.htm which provides important information if you have ... Read Review |
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A Deadly Game, Laraine Stephens05/06/2023 - 2:39pmThe third novel in the Reggie da Costa series, DEADLY GAME is set in 1920's Melbourne featuring the celebrated, well groomed crime reporter da Costa, and the brave, and very determined Ruby Rhodes. da Costa has a habit of gathering beautiful woman in his life, with problems and complicated lives of their own. None of which stops da Costa looking upon a lot of them (except perhaps the one he should be looking towards) as potential love interests. Needless to say, this never quite works out as he'd hoped. A DEADLY GAME introduces him to Rhodes, a quiet, studious museum ... Read Review |
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Orphan Road, Andrew Nette05/06/2023 - 2:27pmThe second Gary Chance novel, ORPHAN ROAD, sees Chance move his centre of activities to Victoria, all because of an old friend and former employer, the once notorious Melbourne social identity, Vera Leigh. Owner of a struggling S&M club being circled by property developers, knower of decidedly dodgy characters, it all starts with Chance and another contact of Leigh's in Byron, shaking down a peace and love cult front for a major drug smuggling ring. Which turns into another one of those jobs that could be described by the quote in the blurb:
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Terry Pratchett: A Life With Footnotes, Rob Wilkins22/05/2023 - 4:56pmTook me a while to start reading this (published in 2022), mostly because this book, of all the books around Terry Pratchett, will mean knowing something personal about the man behind the genius. Written by Terry's long-time assistant, and very good friend, Rob Wilkins, this is an emotional (inspiring / hilarious and frequently brutally honest) walk through exactly that. At the heart of the writing genius was a gloriously grumpy, irascible, kind and funny human being, with a capacity for vision and thought that was utterly astounding. Wilkins came into Terry's life as a ... Read Review |
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Naked Ambition, Robert Gott09/05/2023 - 1:18pmIf you’ve ever wondered what a crime novel written by Noel Coward might be like, Naked Ambition could provide some clues. Review at Newtown Review of BooksRead Review |
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One Hundred Years of Dirt, Rick Morton04/05/2023 - 4:34pmLess a review and more a gut reaction - I just loved ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF DIRT which was a f2f bookclub book, otherwise it could have sadly become one of those ones on the "so many books, so little time list". I realise that sounds ridiculous that you could love a book that describes a background like Morton's. This is the story of the family of Rick Morton's father and the violence, treachery, and cruelty that ran through generations of them. But it's also the story of a mother with the guts to leave, and a son who is as close to that mother as he could be, without it being cloying, ... Read Review |
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The Signatory, Stuart Black02/05/2023 - 2:41pmTHE SIGNATORY is a thriller set in and around an Australian advertising agency, leaving this reviewer wondering if there's an argument that crime fiction set in the corporate / business world is under-represented. On the face of it, perhaps an unlikely setting, but then again, there are more than reasons to think that there's villainy in day to day business, even if its not strictly illegal. The story of THE SIGNATORY revolves around Sam Pride - who has just sold his start-up company to a US conglomerate for large piles of money. His life is looking good - young, married ... Read Review |
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Fatal Isles, Wild Shores & Cruel Tides, Maria Adolfsson28/04/2023 - 3:20pmHaving had the urge to try BorrowBox from our Library system recently, I happened upon the first three books in the Doggerland series by Maria Adolfsson - FATAL ISLES (2018), WILD SHORES (2019) and CRUEL TIDES (2020). It looks like there are three more books that haven't yet been translated into English. It's a series featuring Detective Inspector Karen Eiken Hornby, and her (turns out fictional) native island of Doggerland (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland). The opening book, FATAL ISLES, introduces Eiken ... Read Review |
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Beachdaze, TW Lawless27/04/2023 - 2:47pmBook six in the Peter Clancy series, set in the world of investigative journalism, BEACHDAZE sees Peter back in Australia, out of the day-to-day newspaper game and up to his elbows in neighbourhood dispute from the moment he sets foot in his new home. Readers of the earlier books in the series will find the idea that Clancy has given up the high-octane world of investigative journalism in swinging London slightly surprising. He got there via an interesting route, starting out his reporting days on the old Truth newspaper in Melbourne, Australia (denizens of the state of ... Read Review |
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The Brothers, S.D. Hinton23/03/2023 - 3:54pmSD Hinton’s debut novel uses the structure of a thriller to explore myriad responses to trauma. Full review at Newtown Review of Books.Read Review |
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Wild Place, Christian White21/03/2023 - 2:17pm"Why do good people do bad things?" is an interesting question, explored fully in WILD PLACE by Christian White. Set in the heart of Australian suburbia, during the height of the summer of 1989, seventeen year old Tracie Reed vanished one night. Her parents in the middle of a fraught divorce, Tracie's behaviour had changed in the leadup and despite her mother's protestations to the contrary, police have basically dismissed her as a runaway. Part of the local neighbourhood watch, Tracie's high school English teacher, and neighbour, starts digging into her disappearance, ... Read Review |
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Dark Mode, Ashley Kalagian Blunt09/03/2023 - 4:50pmThis fierce, unflinching thriller asks timely questions about threatening behaviour. Why don’t we recognise it? Stop it? - Full Review at Newtown Review of Books.Read Review |
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Crows Nest, Nikki Mottram28/02/2023 - 12:06pmThis latest offering of Australian rural noir contrasts urban and small-town sensibilities from the perspective of a child protection officer. Full review at Newtown Review of Books. |
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This Much is True, Miriam Margolyes21/02/2023 - 5:16pmSometime around 2012 we were lucky enough to catch Miriam Margolyes performing Dickens' Women at Her Majesty's Theatre in Ballarat. A one person show, with pianist, written by Margolyes and Sonia Fraser, she commanded the stage, effortlessly shifting through 23 different characters, based on or inspired by 21 women and 2 men in Dickens' novels. An admirer of Dickens work, at no stage did the performance shirk from the less savoury aspects of his life, his obsession with youthful beauty, his "odd" relationships with sister-in-law, and, in Margolyes' own words from an interview in The ... Read Review |
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The Death of John Lacey, Ben Hobson15/02/2023 - 11:47amAs I was reading this novel, I was finishing the autobiography THIS MUCH IS TRUE by Miriam Margolyes in audio form and I was struck by the coincidence of some of the things that she says most powerfully and pointedly, about dehumanisation, the utter and abject cruelty of "Empire" and the way that it empowered, and continues to empower, entrenched racism. Add to that the question from Songlines: the Power and Promise, edited by Margo Neale - "What do you need to know to prosper as a people for 65,000 years?" - and you have a review of THE DEATH OF JOHN LACEY. Nobody, for ... Read Review |
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The Cane, Maryrose Cuskelly14/02/2023 - 11:55amMaryrose Cuskelly's novel seems to have taken Arthur Conan Doyle’s maxim to heart: ‘When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’ Full Review at: Newtown Review of Books |