All the Reviews

Dinner at the Night Library, Hika Harada

Can't remember quite how this novel piqued my interest, but I do love whimsical, gentle Japanese crime fiction and the library had a copy so...

First up, this was a fabulous read, full of whimsy and gentle humour, with a fantabulous setup: a library that only opens after dark, never allows patrons to check books out, and consists entirely of the collections of books that were once owned by now deceased Japanese authors. 

The employees are also an eclectic set of people - former booksellers and librarians who have had rocky past careers, all of whom have come ... Read Review

Ōkiwi Brown, Cristina Sanders

Cristina Sanders is a new to me author who has written a number of books in the past along the same lines of ŌKIWI BROWN - a fictionalised version of historical events that incorporate early tales (tall and true) of Aotearoa. This story is told in a series of anecdotes, incorporating the story of a man, a waler who washed up on the eastern shores of Port Nicholson many years ago, in the early days of colonial settlement. He sets himself up with a pub and makes a home with a woman found abandoned on the nearby beach, quickly developing a reputation for evil and nasty going's on.  ... Read Review

No Less the Devil, Stuart MacBride

Fans of Stuart MacBride's novels will be particularly familiar with the way that he likes to keep his police characters, in particular, at the end of their tether, under pressure from all sides, and frequently having a bit of a dummy spit by way of a coping mechanism.

NO LESS THE DEVIL starts out with a couple of very young teenagers killing a homeless man, then switches focus to a current day police team, and the search for a serial killer, dubbed 'The Bloodsmith', with two members of the team looking for him as the main focus. DS Lucy McVeigh and her colleague DC Duncan ... Read Review

Pacific Heights, S.R. White

The author bio for S.R. White reads thus:

S.R. White worked for a UK police force for twelve years, before returning to academic life and taking an MA in Creative Writing at Nottingham Trent University. He now lives in Queensland, Australia.

He's the author of the Dana Russo series (HERMIT / PRISONER / RED DIRT ROAD and WHITE ASH RIDGE), and now this standalone, PACIFIC ... Read Review

Entitled, Andrew Lownie

I don't know why I read this, but I guess these two have been in the news again recently, I have Virginia Roberts Giuffre's book on the stacks, and I realised I knew next to nothing about Andrew or his ex-wife, other than the occasional bit of gossip that passes as news. Which I kind of suspected this book might turn out to be, or even worse, a massive attempt at reputation restoration.

It was neither. Mostly it's politely scathing, although I could have done without the little bit of motivation explanation - mostly on her part at the end, although to be fair, it was ... Read Review

The Hidden, Bryan Brown

Two novels, and one collection of short stories in now and I think we can all agree Bryan Brown has a "style". Short, clipped sentences, dry as dust observations, dark and cunning humour and a sense of fringe communities that are quite content with their little eccentric weirdo selves. Although, to be fair, THE HIDDEN, also comes with a pretty hefty ick factor. If you're not a fan of ridiculously horny people behaving like ridiculously horny people with tedious consistency, then this may not be the novel for you. And if you're horrified by cockfighting and the low life scum that ... Read Review

Dust, Michael Brissenden

It's not uncommon for crime fiction from any location to address societal issues up front, and DUST by journalist / author Michael Brissenden is doing exactly that - tackling drought, and the deprivation in rural communities that goes alongside that, as well as the rise of the Sovereign Citizen / Cooker communities, who are increasingly taking root in these areas.

DUST has, as it's central character, young Aaron Love. The son of a missing, but not much missed father, he's one of those fringe-dwelling kids that has looked after himself from a very young age, living / ... Read Review

Everyone In This Bank is a Thief, Benjamin Stevenson

Ernest Cunningham is dying, in his own words, on the ice-cold floor of a steel box about the size of a fridge with, he's calculated, around fifteen hours of air left inside it. You'd think, under those circumstances, the dwindling ink in his pen would be put to good purpose, getting to the point, maybe sharing some messages for loved ones, some wisdom from his previous record of solving murders, anything but the story of a bank heist, well 10 bank heists to be precise. And a lot of information on exactly how he ended up in this predicament. But, being Ernest Cunningham, he also plays ... Read Review

The Birthmark Murders, Janus Lucky

Mikael is a young man, half Finnish, half New Zealander, who never really knew his father, or the story of his mysterious death. In search of answers - about himself as well, he teams up with Pekka Wall, an acerbic editor and translator of famous science fiction novels, as eccentric as his oldest friend, Mikael Långberg, the brilliant theatre director who had died many years ago in questionable circumstances, during the final days of a notorious Cabaret production. Officially ruled a suicide, unofficially anybody who knew Mikael Senior did not easily accept that verdict.

... Read Review