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After the Circus, Patrick Modiano, Mark Polizzotti (Translation)25/02/2016 - 2:59pmIn the middle of the sixties, in Paris, a young man being questioned by the police is released and a waiting girl called straight in. He has no idea who she is and yet he then waits for her in a nearby café. They return to his apartment and spend the night in his room. Why is really not explained or explored. Nor is there any explanation of who these two are. Instead the reader is pulled immediately into something infused with doubt and restrained in its menace. Whilst the blurb does clearly indicate that Patrick Modiano's writing style is to revisit motifs and episodes, ... Read Review |
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Crime Scenes Stories, Zane Lovitt (editor)23/02/2016 - 3:55pmTaking a central theme of "is there really such a thing as an innocent person?" and asking a combination of well known and emerging Crime Fiction Writers from Australia to address the question, has culminated in the creation of CRIME SCENES - a short story collection which works on a number of levels. Short story collections like this provide a reader with glimpses into an author's style and voice, sometimes presenting something very different from known series books or previous works. In the case of previously known authors, this can confirm a liking for their work, or ... Read Review |
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Give the Devil His Due, Sulari Gentill29/01/2016 - 1:18pmSulari Gentill’s award-winning historical crime series is written with verve and spirit, the fiction woven seamlessly into actual events of the time. Review of Give the Devil His Due, and the entire Rowland Sinclair series at Newtown Review of BooksRead Review |
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A Certain Malice, Felicity Young (aka Flashpoint)01/12/2015 - 12:28pmBefore WA based author Felicity Young commenced her extremely good Dr Dody McCleland series, she published a series of police procedural novels one of which built around the central character of Sergeant Cam Fraser in it. FLASHPOINT, originally out in 2005, has recently been re-released in ebook format. Years ago this reader did read FLASHPOINT and some of the elements remained and obviously a lot didn't (the first version of this review muddled up the Cam Fraser and Stevie Hooper series utterly - with apologies to Felicity Young). FLASHPOINT looks back to recent events ... Read Review |
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Birthdays for the Dead, Stuart MacBride26/11/2015 - 3:46pmSomething went wrong in the reading universe a while ago and I missed that this had been sitting in the unread list, when I picked up and enjoyed the second in the series - A SONG FOR THE DYING. Which weirdly turned out to be a good thing as an introduction to a new character and a new series, BIRTHDAYS FOR THE DEAD is not without problems. MacBride is not the sort of writer who shilly-shally's around with reader sensitivities. So the fact the (fictional) victims here are children and the way that ... Read Review |
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The Heat, Garry Disher18/11/2015 - 5:14pmThe 8th in the Wyatt series, the resurgence of the best unrepentant, unapologetic and very demanding professional crook in Australian Crime Fiction is something to be very pleased about. Wyatt is not a man who plays well with others, and his danger radar is on high alert after he’s pulled into early planning of a heist by some rank amateurs. A move to Noosa and a commission to steal a particular painting comes at a time when absenting himself from Melbourne and all chance of being connected to that group is particularly welcome. Not only is the intended heist a nice ... Read Review |
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Running Towards Danger, Tina Clough22/10/2015 - 2:11pmThe central premise of RUNNING TOWARDS DANGER is a fascinating idea. What would you do if the flatmate that you knew very little about, and saw even less of, is suddenly gunned down in front of you, and the investigation into his death starts to reveal some very worrying facts about his life? Which again, you knew nothing about, but everybody, including the police, don’t believe you. Would it be to suddenly go into hiding, head off into a small community and try to settle into that world using a different name (Cara), in the hopes that dropping off the radar will ease the ... Read Review |
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On A Small Island, Grant Nicol08/10/2015 - 3:06pmA New Zealand born, Australian and Northern Ireland dwelling, now Iceland based author has written a book set in his adopted city of Reykjavík, with a central female character whose life is turned upside down in a very short space of time, that really works. Read ON A SMALL ISLAND so you can tick one off from your most unlikely working scenario list or simply read it because this is a really good book. Ylfa Einarsdóttir has a relatively predictable, quiet life in downtown Reykjavík, even allowing for the friction between her elderly, grumpy farm dwelling father and her ... Read Review |
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Resurrection Bay, Emma Viskic25/09/2015 - 2:48pmA deftly handled plot, strong characters and a sly, dry humour make this an outstanding debut crime novel. - Review at Newtown Review of BooksRead Review |
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The Tokyo Zodiac Murders, Soji Shimada15/09/2015 - 3:30pmHonkaku is a subgenre of Japanese Crime Fiction that came into being sometime in the early 1920's. The original definition was "a detective story that mainly focuses on the process of a criminal investigation and values the entertainment derived from pure logical reasoning". The term was coined to clearly differentiate Honkaku mystery fiction from other subgenres and it was used for both local and Western writers, although a distinct Japanese form became increasingly common in the 1950's. Adding depth to long tradition, the author of THE TOKYO ZODIAC MURDERS, Soji Shimada ... Read Review |
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The Insanity of Murder, Felicity Young20/08/2015 - 5:37pmThis is the latest in a series of intelligent, well-researched and engagingly written crime-fiction novels set amid the suffragette battles of early 1900s England. http://newtownreviewofbooks.com.au/2015/08/20/crime-scene-felicity-young...Read Review |
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A Time to Run, J.M. Peace13/08/2015 - 5:14pmThere's a lot of crime fiction out there that is all about the investigator and the protagonist, but A TIME TO RUN tips that right on it's ear, setting up a scenario in which an investigator (cop) is the next victim of a mad, dangerous man who makes a sport out of hunting down the women he's abducted. So, not a book for those readers that find that concept of the randomly selected victim and the barking mad, vicious killer too much. Particularly as this killer is appalling and very clever about it. It's not until a cop goes missing that a very dedicated policewoman sees ... Read Review |
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Australia's Most Murderous Prison: Behind the Walls of Goulburn Jail, James Phelps12/08/2015 - 2:09pmA book where the title is utterly unambiguous, AUSTRALIA'S MOST MURDEROUS PRISON is about Goulburn Jail. It refers to events in the jail as much as many of it's inmates crimes. It is also provides a brief history of the construction, background and management of the jail, where the worst of NSW inmates invariably end up. Written in a light style that initially might seem almost irreverent, it works incredibly well when it comes to relating many of the events that occur within the jail, and in particular when discussing the "activities" of some of the more notorious ... Read Review |
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Before It Breaks, Dave Warner10/07/2015 - 4:34pmSometimes the world is very kind to a dedicated fan of Australian Crime fiction, particularly when two new books from authors that we've not heard from for a very long time arrive. Peter Doyle and Dave Warner each played their part, many years ago, in engaging an interest in our own stories and voices. The release of BEFORE IT BREAKS caused excitement and slight trepidation. Slight trepidation because Warner's earlier Andrew "Lizard" Zirk series (Murder in the Groove, Murder in the Frame and Murder Off-Season) has always been a nostalgic ... Read Review |
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After the Crash, Michel Bussi26/06/2015 - 3:24pmAFTER THE CRASH opens with private eye Credule Grand-Duc preparing to take his own life after spending nearly eighteen years failing to discover the truth behind the miracle of the baby who survived a plane crash. Preparing his papers for handover, and setting the scene for his dramatic final act, he contemplates once more the front page from the local newspaper the day that the crash happened. And suddenly realises he finally knows the answer. Occurring at a time well before the advent of DNA testing, any chance of establishing the parentage of the baby at the ... Read Review |
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Drowned Vanilla, Livia Day22/05/2015 - 5:05pmSlightly girly, crazy comic crime fiction is not my normal cup of tea, and add a plethora of recipes and this reader should, by rights, be groaning and moaning and whinging. But not with The Culinary Crime / Café La Femme series of which DROWNED VANILLA is the second book. (As opposed to THE BLACKMAIL BLEND 1.5 which is a collection of short stories). Pitched at a very particular market this isn't indepth, psychological analysis of crime and consequences. If anything more time and effort is devoted to the search for the perfect Ice-Cream recipe than is expended on the ... Read Review |
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Already Dead, Jaye Ford15/05/2015 - 12:53pmWhen Miranda Jack is car-jacked on a motorway in Sydney it's just one more thing to go wrong in a life littered with bad times. As the story progresses and you find out how many hurdles Jack has jumped in her life you'd be forgiven for wondering why she keeps getting up in the morning. When something in her background and training as a journalist makes her seek to empathise with her abductor, that idea of keep them talking and engaged and they may develop some connection with you, it means she finds out quite a bit about Brendan Walsh. Including that they have met before, but not who ... Read Review |
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A Time of Secrets, Deborah Burrows04/05/2015 - 3:11pmNobody could be more startled than me when declaring that A TIME OF SECRETS was a most enjoyable book to read. Startled because ostensibly it looks, feels, smells like a romance. With an historical bent, and some mystery within. Certainly in reading this book the romance is foremost in the narrative, equalled by the difficulties of living within war-footing Melbourne, followed eventually by the mystery of the traitor within the ranks of the Australian Intelligence Bureau. What makes that balance work is probably the historical background though. Romance in that day makes ... Read Review |
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Duck Season Death, June Wright01/05/2015 - 2:52pmJune Wright is one of the early writers who forged a way for the current vibrant Australian crime fiction scene. Reviewed at Newtown Review of BooksRead Review |
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A Compulsion to Kill, Robert Cox30/04/2015 - 11:52amA COMPULSION TO KILL is one of those true crime books that reads like a ripping great yarn. It's an engaging method of delivering history, telling the stories of (in this instance) a range of Tasmania's earliest serial killers, setting them in a vivid example of the landscape in which their actions played out, creating a chillingly realistic version of early white Australia. As outlined in the blurb it covers a series of cases beginning in 1806 with the first documented serial killers Brown and Lemon, finishing with the unresolved Parkmount case in 1862. The cruelty and ... Read Review |