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The Beijing Conspiracy, Shamini Flint
Another one of those books that I should have loved, really enjoyed the plot of, but had to abandon because the narrator didn't work for me on the audio version. (Have I mentioned before - very fussy listener). Will need to find this in eBook format. |
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Poison at Penshaw Hall, G.B. RalphThe 2nd in the Milverton Mysteries featuring Addison Harper, this is a series that's on the cosier, English Village styled end of the mystery scale. Although that setting is delivered with a dry, very wry tone, and a great sense of petty politics in a pretty village. It's definitely the tone of this that sets it a little outside the standard traditional cosy fare. In this, the second of what is now a series of 3 novels, Milverton is the village at the centre of the action. In the running for the Terrific Town Award, so a dramatic, opening ceremony death is, as the blurb ... Read Review |
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The Old Woman with the Knife, Gu Byeong-moSometimes a little gem pops into your listening orbit, THE OLD WOMAN WITH THE KNIFE by Gu Byeong-mo being just such a surprise. Borrowed from the libraries audiobook list on a whim, narrated by Nancy Wu, there some just something about this that worked for this deeply fussy listener. Set in Korea, this is the story of a sixty-five-year-old contract killer who has experienced loss, grief and many complications in her life, not just because of the job she's done for many years. Nearing the end of her career, her life is starting to lose meaning. It's really down to her and ... Read Review |
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Southern Aurora, Mark BrandiEvoking a particularly poignant sense of the time period in which it is set, SOUTHERN AURORA is yet another pitch perfect book from Mark Brandi exploring intergenerational damage, domestic violence, small town and rural life and young boy's experiences - good and bad. Raw, visceral and unrepentantly confrontational, SOUTHERN AURORA explores the life of young Jimmy, a charismatic, complicated little boy, committed to holding the threads of his little family together. A borderline alcoholic mother (Jimmy instantly knew what his mother was feeling based on the weight of the ... Read Review |
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Kill Yours, Kill Mine Katherine KovacicKILL YOURS, KILL MINE (aka SEVEN SISTERS) is a standalone novel from Katherine Kovacic, a beautifully written, powerful, provocative take on the concept of justice and vengeance, coming from a place of grief, guilt and the failure of the justice system. It's based around the deaths of women at the hands of domestic partners, and their sisters, left behind to pick up the pieces and make sense of the past. Mia is a psychologist with a practice specialising in grief counselling. It's called "The Pleiades", named for the seven sisters of Greek mythology, companions of the ... Read Review |
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Leave the Girls Behind, Jacqueline BublitzLEAVE THE GIRLS BEHIND is the latest offering from Jacqueline Bublitz, after the absolutely fascinating BEFORE YOU KNEW MY NAME. This is a different beast entirely, although it's again set in the USA, featuring a strong, unusual central female character. Ruth-Ann Baker is a college dropout, bartender and amateur detective who lives in an apartment owned by a much loved uncle, with only her beloved dog for company. She's a tormented, complicated character, not at all helped by her obsession with the murder of her best friend, nineteen years earlier, by a suspected serial ... Read Review |
Shadow City, Natalie ConyerThe second novel in the Schalk Lourens series, SHADOW CITY uses his home of South Africa as one location for the story, introducing a new character, Sergeant Jackie Rose to lead the action in Sydney. The story begins with the discovery of the body of a battered and tortured young woman in a food court in Sydney's Chinatown. To Jackie Rose, initially it looks suspiciously like yet another drug murder, but there is an odd tattoo on the young girl and some complications when it comes to identifying her. What Rose doesn't know is around the same time, in Cape Town in South ... Read Review |
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Butter, Asako YuzukiI (tried) listening to this much acclaimed Japanese book, which is very much focused on cooking and food, with a sideline inspired by the true story of a convicted con woman and serial killer. An unusual sort of a story, it's all a long slow build up, which hints at, but doesn't necessarily provide any indepth commentary on, the position and treatment of women in Japanese society. Those later aspects, had they been concentrated on a lot more, might have provided some connection for this listener with the central journalist character, and the serial killer at the heart of ... Read Review |
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Every Time I Go on Vacation Someone Dies, Catherine MackTo be honest - read the blurb on this and nearly made it a hard pass. But I do love Only Murders in the Building, so I am relieved I paid no attention to my initial reservations, started reading and a few chapters in, was highly amused and very engaged. On one hand it's all a bit silly - Eleanor Dash is a breathless, disorganised, needy writer who finds herself on a book tour surrounded by a busload of groupies (known as the BookFace ladies), a number of other authors somewhere on the unpleasant to unmemorable scale, an ex-flame, an ex-boyfriend (two different men), a ... Read Review |
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The Crag, Claire SutherlandIn Claire Sutherland’s debut crime novel, a body is found on an isolated track on the Wimmera Plains, where Mount Arapiles towers over all. Full Review at Newtown Review of BooksRead Review |
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Unblessed, Roger SimpsonUNBLESSED is the latest in the Jane Halifax series of books, featuring the TV series character of the same name. A forensic psychologist, Halifax has worked with all sorts of criminal types - from serial to opportunistic killers, and in the last book, herself, when she suffers from sudden onset amnesia as a result of a car accident. You don't need to have read the earlier books in the series necessarily, although Halifax has got a bit of baggage that she's carting around with her which is not always fully revisited in each outing. In UNBLESSED she's in the US visiting her ... Read Review |
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The Chasm, Bronwyn HallThe second novel from author Bronwyn Hall, THE CHASM is set in and around a fictional small town in Victoria's rugged mountains. Andy King has returned to Stonefield 10 years after her boyfriend, Will Hoffman, disappeared without a trace, something all the locals blamed her for. Despite the animosity, King promised an old friend in a nearby town that she would help out at his veterinary practice so he could take a break, which means she's busy with the day to day activities of a country vet, so she's nearby "technically" but not quite back at the scene of the disappearance. ... Read Review |
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The Lonely Australian of the Asian Night, Gregory PakisA short story, THE LONELY AUSTRALIAN OF THE ASIAN NIGHT packs a punch in a few pages. With the proviso that you're going to be spending some time in the head of a deeply miserable bloke - one who was a boxer, a grafter and a bit of a loser to be honest. In Melbourne, in his teens, he'd been a chancer, then was a boxer with a bit of promise. But the gym he went to closed, and he slid. Back into nothing, a bit of petty crime, some standover work, and a life on the run from Melbourne. Running as far as Asia he tried India and hated it, tried Vietnam and couldn't settle, ... Read Review |
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The Call, Gavin StrawhanTHE CALL is a debut crime novel from NZ author Gavin Strawhan and I checked that statement more than a few times whilst reading. It won the Allen & Unwin Fiction Prize in 2023, I did not need to check that. THE CALL is such a strong debut it's hard to know where to start, but let's echo the blurb "Gripping and suspenseful with a killer ending, THE CALL propels the reader into the world of a terrifying new kind of gang..." Gripping - this is a story featuring Auckland cop DS Honey Chalmers, who, after surviving a very nearly deadly attack by members of a ruthless gang ... Read Review |
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The Body at Back Beach, KJ SweeneyK.J. Sweeney's debut novel is set in a tight-knit seaside community in New Zealand, when, after some stormy weather, Helena Statham comes across a skeleton that's been exposed because of a coastal landslip. It's turns out to be the skeleton of a young woman, likely to have been buried for around 30 years, a period of time before Helena and her family moved to this area, but a timeframe in which many of the locals are still alive, and can remember what was going on around then. The police are called, a taskforce is established and an investigation gets underway, but Helena ... Read Review |
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The Kamogawa Food Detectives, Hisashi KashiwaiNothing like Japanese crime fiction to remind you to expect the unexpected, although to be fair, I wasn't too sure what to expect when I plucked this book from the want to read lists. I also, freely confess, I have no memory of it going onto that list so something must have tweaked interest more than once. Published in 2013 it's obviously been lingering for quite some time, there are now 11 books in the series, but it looks like only the first two have been translated so far. This first novel, THE KAMOGAWA FOOD DETECTIVES, introduces the reader to Koishi Kamogawa and her ... Read Review |
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The Sentence is Death, Anthony Horowitz2nd in the Hawthorne & Horowitz story, THE SENTENCE IS DEATH continues the author's insertion of themselves into a fictional detective story, featuring the investigative skill of PI Daniel Hawthorne and Horowitz's sometimes less successful conclusion drawing. If you're new to this series, and the concept, then it would be well worth going back to the opening salvo, THE WORD IS MURDER. That should help with the background, even if a tendency for "What the" / "Why the" moments continue. Best not to reason why and just press on is my motto, because even with this whole ... Read Review |
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Death Under a Little Sky / Death in a Lonely Place, Stig AbellHaving read these books pretty much one after the other, I'm going to do a combined review. This is a new series, DEATH UNDER A LITTLE SKY was released in 2023, and DEATH IN A LONELY PLACE in April 2024. Both book feature recently resigned Police Detective Jake Jackson whose leaving the force was precipated by a couple of major life changes. Firstly his uncle died, leaving him a remote property in the middle of the countryside, a place that is offgrid, offroad and very much out of the world he's been used to in London. At the same time a teetering marriage lurched to divorce, a ... Read Review |
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Double Jeopardy, Stef HarrisStef Harris is an award winning indie filmmaker and policeman in his native New Zealand, so it's probably not surprising that he's had a bit on, making it longer than I can remember since his earlier releases. DOUBLE JEOPARDY is worth the wait though, as a good solid crime fiction thriller, inspired, it would seem, by time spent in Boston, where it's set. Frank Winter is a retired county sheriff and Boston police detective whose daughter was murdered many years before. Bruno Krupke was acquitted of Evelyn's death, but found guilty of others, and at the time of the ... Read Review |
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The Hitwoman's Guide to Reducing Household Debt, Mark Mupotsa-RussellYou know the type - small time crims / druggies / fringe dwelling bikers who cause havoc. Only this time the violent robbery they've just committed gets a lot worse when they kill the very young daughter of a family who were just out on a bit of a day trip. Turns out the law catching up with them might have been their only way to survive. Olivia Hodges is not your average Dandenongs dwelling, PR company running, vaguely harassed mother of two. A lot of her life is pretty normal, but the company was originally formed as a blind for laundering a lot of money. Money she ... Read Review |