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Feet of Clay, Terry Pratchett25/08/2020 - 4:16pmNumber 3 in the sub-series of Discworld based around the City Watch, Sir Samuel Vimes has a lot on his hands when somebody tries to poison the Patrician and seems to be murdering harmless old men. Summed up beautifully by the tagline at the end of the blurb :
Who indeed. Definitely ... Read Review |
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Sticks and Stones, Katherine Firkin24/08/2020 - 3:30pmJournalist Katherine Firkin has written her debut crime novel, inspired, according to the blurb, by the many criminal trials she has covered. You can't help but spare a thought for the sorts of things trial attendees have to sit through when finishing STICKS AND STONES. It's difficult not to assume that this is intended as the beginning of a series, particularly as there's quite a hefty dose of personal and back story here, and for quite a while, readers might be a bit confused about who the central character is intended to be: recently promoted Head of the Missing ... Read Review |
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The Lost Dead, Finn Bell24/08/2020 - 3:03pmAll novels by Finn Bell have guaranteed two things. Wonderful sense of place, and morally ambiguous characters. As it is with THE LOST DEAD where we have three Maori boys, wanted criminals, on the run, barely one step ahead of the cops and the gangs they have annoyed along the way. There is also a missing, young woman, somebody one of these young lads is thoroughly infatuated with, and determined to find. Then there's the huge earthquake, that causes massive landslides across the isolated Southern Alps region of New Zealand. Everyone is scrambling around looking for victims trapped by ... Read Review |
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A Murder at Malabar Hill, Sujata Massey21/08/2020 - 5:49pmA MURDER AT MALABAR HILL introduces Miss Perveen Mistry, a young lawyer-turned-sleuth in 1920's Bombay. This novel is the winner of (amongst other awards), the 2019 Mary Higgins Clark Award, the 2019 Lefty Award for Best Historical novel and the 2018 Agatha Award for Best Historical Novel. It is, needless to say, from the cosier side of the genre equation. The debut novel in a series, a lot of focus in this outing is on setting up the character and experience of Perveen Mistry. She's India's first female solicitor, a young woman in her mid twenties, working alongside her ... Read Review |
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Shadow of Doubt, SL Beaumont21/08/2020 - 1:04pmI will admit to having been a bit of a Brexit junkie, addicted to the podcast Brexitcast from the BBC, which meant SHADOW OF DOUBT arrived at a particularly pertinent time, set as it is in the time of Brexit, with a very interesting central premise - would the overwhelming Remain vote in Scotland push people there to an IRA like terror campaign in England. Starting out in London, against the backdrop of big international banks, trading floors and highly specialised financial departments, there's a real sense of the friendship that close working partnerships build, that ... Read Review |
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How To Pronounce Knife, Souvankham Thammavongsa20/08/2020 - 3:56pmAn understated set of short stories, reading this collection reminded me that the range of difficulties encountered when settling in a foreign country, one that you don't speak the dominant language of, and in which the culture, food, and acceptable behaviours differ so much from your native land, are about as wide ranging and complex as they possibly can be. The title story makes a light-hearted, but pointed, exploration of learning to pronounce the simplest of things in English. Many native English speakers will have tales to tell of spectacular mispronunciations (I've ... Read Review |
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Life Before, Carmel Reilly20/08/2020 - 3:06pmIn her first full length novel for adults, educational and children's writer Carmel Reilly has delivered a crime fiction book that tackles sibling relationships and family secrets full on. Set in two main timelines, in 2016 Lori receives a visit from a policeman to tell her that her estranged brother Scott is in hospital, seriously injured in a hit and run accident. Back in 1993 we meet Lori and Scott as teenagers, and discover the secrets that tore the family apart. Is it this that triggered the hit and run, or was it simply an accident? Given that this is a ... Read Review |
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The Unreliable People, Rosetta Allan19/08/2020 - 1:35pm
So starts one of the most unusual books I've had the privilege of reading in quite a while. Set across three distinct timeframes, the present is mostly in St Petersburg in the mid 90's. Katerina's arrival, and the unexplained and really odd ... Read Review |
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The Sisters' Lover, Lily Woodhouse19/08/2020 - 1:08pmTHE SISTERS' LOVER is an engaging, slightly quirky historical fiction novel set mostly within Australia. Starting out in post war 1950, Flis, Australian by birth, is returning to the family property after many years in Wellington, New Zealand. Flis hasn't been in contact with her younger sister since she left and Gladdie is now missing, presumed dead. Flis and her disabled husband Kip, meet up with a young man on board the ship that bought them to Australia and Roy joins them on this journey. Combining great characters, and a wonderful sense of place and time, THE SISTERS ... Read Review |
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The Fell, Robert Jenkins19/08/2020 - 11:20amThis is one of those books that the blurb will give you a very good feel for the style (and there is a lot of style here) of story-telling deployed. THE FELL I can best describe as a stream of conscious coming of age novel that's light on punctuation, and big on the angst, challenge and nail-biting heightened reality of being a teenage boy. The blurb will also give you a clear picture of the plot of the book, but not what happens after his sister's arrest - starting out for shoplifting but getting dramatically worse when she lashes out and wounds a policeman. When his ... Read Review |
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The Ash, The Well & The Bluebell, Sandra Arnold18/08/2020 - 3:03pmTHE ASH THE WELL AND THE BLUEBELL is one of those novels that's categorised as crime but takes the expectations that come with that and tips them out the nearest window. The blurb describes the scenario well:
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The Dirty South, John Connolly18/08/2020 - 2:58pmCharlie Parker walks the world alone, but in his dreams and in the thinner moments between the worlds of those who breathe and those who no longer can, there visits two particular ghosts. The Dirty South is a prequel novel, long awaited for, however may not go back quite as far in the life of Charlie Parker as a fan might expect. In 1997, the grief is fresh and a young Charlie Parker is no longer serving the thin blue line of the NYPD. Chasing leads on killings involving particularly heinous mutilations brings new widower Parker to Burdon County, Arkansas. The manner in ... Read Review |
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The Alexandrite, Dione Jones17/08/2020 - 3:08pmWhen Pamela, Lady Scawton discovers a stranger dead in the woods near the family home, Ashly House, it triggers a multi-generational, multi-timeline search for the truth. The stranger was carrying an odd stone in his pocket, along with a letter addressed to Pamela's dead husband. Pamela is a good person, generous and very down to earth, unaffected by the title although greatly attached to the estate she has called home for many years. She has, however, endured many years of abuse from her overbearing husband and a selfish, over-entitled brat of a son. The stone turns out ... Read Review |
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A Madness of Sunshine, Nalini Singh11/08/2020 - 5:02pmIt's always interesting when an author best known for non crime fiction works steps into the genre. The author of A MADNESS OF SUNSHINE is better known for her paranormal romance works, of which there are around thirty New York Times bestsellers. Fans of crime fiction specifically will probably not notice this background at all, as this novel is told in pure crime fiction style, with a touch of romance and absolutely no paranormal elements in view. Instead the sub-story is that of Anaherea, world famous concert pianist, and new cop in town, Will. Anahera is returning to ... Read Review |
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When She Was Good, Michael Robotham11/08/2020 - 12:22pmMichael Robotham’s crime novels have always had an easy grace about them, somehow managing to be dense works without appearing to be so. As with all second novels, the second novel of a new series has much on the line in proving to fickle readers that their leap of faith into new territory was warranted. We visit again with criminal psychologist Cyrus Haven in When She Was Good. Evie Cormac, the infamous ‘Angel Face’, is now approaching legal age in which she will soon be processed out of the failing model that is the British foster home system. Evie is still keeping ... Read Review |
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Bump In the Night, Colin Watson06/08/2020 - 5:02pmThe second book in one of my all time favourite series, the Flaxborough Chronicles, BUMP IN THE NIGHT, sees DI Purbright on temporary secondment to Chalmsbury after a series of monuments explode. Things get a lot more serious though when local "identity" Stan Biggadyke is blown up on the nights he normally spends with Police Chief Hector Larch's wife - the same Inspector Larch who volunteers at the local civil defence centre that is missing boxes of explosives. By this second book Watson had really hit his straps with eccentric characters, elaborate and stagey plots, a ... Read Review |
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The Shifting Landscape, Katherine Kovacic06/08/2020 - 1:47pmThe third book in the Alex Clayton Art Mystery series sees a shift of setting to the Western District of Victoria and one of those big pastoral leases that were such a part of the landscape down there. The title of the novel "The Shifting Landscape" is quite cleverly pitched referring as it does to the way that farming has changed in recent years, the way that succession creates issues for so many of those generational farming families, and the way that changing perceptions of the landscape are finally starting to come about. Along with the main thread, that of the ... Read Review |
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The Jaded Spy, Nick Spill04/08/2020 - 2:24pmTHE JADED SPY is the second in the Jaded Trilogy (the first being THE JADED KIWI), a series of stand-alone-ish (so far) manic thrillers with a strong sense of tongue-in-cheek humour and sense of place and time. Set in 1976 the earlier book concentrated on the war on drugs in New Zealand. THE JADED SPY comes from the same time period, but tackles the growing Maori Land Rights movement, student riots, a Soviet Spy Scandal and a political party with no scruples and an overwhelming desire to stay in power, no matter what (sounds familiar....). Told as the story of Alexander, ... Read Review |
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Cutting the Cord, Natasha Molt04/08/2020 - 12:37pmAn assassin thriller with a twist CUTTING THE CORD features Amira Knox, a member of a secret terrorist group - the Authenticity Movement. Raised in the group, after being adopted by the leader as an infant, Amira and her siblings have been trained as an elite group of assassins, tasked with the elimination of affluent Europeans, identified as enemies of the movement's purpose by her father. What you end up with in CUTTING THE CORD is a classic thriller styled novel, with an unusual premise in that this assassin is searching for meaning in her own life, increasingly aware ... Read Review |
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Death in the Latin Quarter, Raphaël Cardetti28/07/2020 - 4:45pmDEATH IN THE LATIN QUARTER is the first novel by Raphael Cardetti, translated from the original French, released in English in 2010. Categorised on the cover as a "treasure-hunt tale", this is a book set in the halls of academia and the world of art collection, restoration and museums. The story, as outlined in the blurb, revolves around Valentine Savi, a talented young restorer, taking in private commissions to clean and restore artwork on behalf of the great general public. She has fallen from grace, fired from a prestigious job after a mistake, which is slowly revealed ... Read Review |