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Broken Silence, Helen Vivienne Fletcher28/03/2019 - 3:08pmBROKEN SILENCE is the story of seventeen-year-old Kelsey, a kid who has had a lot to deal with in life. Confused and very vulnerable, she cared for her gravely ill mother until she had to go into care. Her remarried father has disappeared from her life, and Kelsey finds herself living in a scruffy flat with her brother Pete and a couple of his mates. She feels rejected by her father, in her brother's road, and she's hiding the physical signs of abuse that her boyfriend regularly doles out. Her life is a mess, and she's hurting, physically and emotionally. The character of ... Read Review |
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The Scholar, Dervla McTiernan28/03/2019 - 2:40pmThis second novel in the DS Cormac O’Reilly series cements Irish-born, Australian-resident Dervla McTiernan as one of the up and coming stars of crime fiction in both countries. ... Full review at Newtown Review of BooksRead Review |
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Tess, Kirsten McDougall20/03/2019 - 1:49pmA psychological suspense novel with touches of paranormal, TESS is a beautifully balanced, chilling, claustrophobic and clever novel. Set in small town New Zealand, at the turn of the millennium, TESS is, as the blurb puts it "a gothic love story about the ties that bind and tear a family apart." It's also a story of how rewarding an unlikely friendship can be, and about the power of connecting with the other. It's about reaching out to somebody for the sake of kindness, contact and being a human being in a world that sometimes seems committed to the other direction. ... Read Review |
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Mr Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, Robin Sloan19/03/2019 - 2:33pmMR PENUMBRA'S 24-HOUR BOOKSTORE actually wasn't a book I was planning on reading, although there were whispers about it everywhere I looked. Then a friend mentioned that they'd enjoyed it and their observations are always spot on, so I thought I'd take a look. And I must admit I found it absolutely fabulous. Of course there are a lot of elements that would appeal to somebody like me - a passionate love of books, and secrets, and the secrets that books can contain, a geeky sensibility where the solving of puzzles is regarded as perfectly normal, and the realisation that ... Read Review |
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Painted, Kirsten McKenzie18/03/2019 - 12:05pmHorror isn't a sub-genre I spend a lot of time reading, so PAINTED, being a mystery with a horror overlay, wasn't a book that came with much in the way of preconceptions or expectations. The premise is that when an extremely reclusive artist instructs a law firm on the manner in which is vast art collection is to be distributed after his death, it turns out that the original lawyer that Kubin was used to dealing with has also died, and the firm is now run by his arrogant, money-hungry, insensitive son. Who decides that the instructions from his client aren't worth bothering with, and ... Read Review |
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The Courier, Kjell Ola Dahl17/03/2019 - 3:20pm
Outside of Norway, Kjell Ola Dahl is perhaps best known for the Oslo Detective Series of novels, the first of which was published in 1993 and afterwards, there were five more novels in the series. The Courier is Dahl’s latest novel and in it he tackles the very difficult subject of the Nazi ... Read Review |
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Hot Flush, Rosy Fenwicke16/03/2019 - 2:58pmComedic crime fiction has to be one of the hardest sub-genre's to pull off. Comedy is so subjective, and crime fiction often tackles tricky subject matter. Add to that a hefty supernatural component and HOT FLUSH is a book that's appealing to a specific sub-set of readers. The central character here is the main voice, Euphemia Sage. She's a menopausal woman whose first hot-flush triggers a genetic switch that gives her supernatural powers. So the idea is that she gets super hearing ability post menopause, which then allows her to track down nefarious goings on. ... Read Review |
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The Contest, Carne Maxwell16/03/2019 - 1:37pmI have never seen a single episode of any Survivor style reality TV program so the idea behind THE CONTEST is quite intriguing as a result - a sort of ultimate Survivor, where a dying man leaves his surplus fortune as the prize for a content held on his tropical island. Survivor come James Bond with a touch of Austin Powers built in? The concept is a group of families / couples who go up against each other, arriving simultaneously on the island - building a life for themselves, literally from the ground up. The action of the novel switches around between each group, ... Read Review |
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Agatha Raisin and the Wellspring of Death, M.C. Beaton14/03/2019 - 6:22pmThe reader of this site may recall that I had a flurry of listening to Agatha Raisin audio books a while ago, when seemingly trapped in never-ending long driving days. They were fun, repetitive sure, a bit on the bitchy side occasionally, and it turns out nothing like the TV series made of the same books. Which made for some amusement and confusion as THE WELLSPRING OF DEATH and THE WIZARD OF EVESHAM were aired on TV whilst I was listening to them in the car. Needless to say TV Agatha is nothing like book Agatha, and I kind of got to the stage where I preferred the TV version. Even ... Read Review |
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No Limits, Ellie Marney14/03/2019 - 2:24pmHarris Derwent has run the full gamut of disappointment and loss in his nineteen years and is not sure if he’ll ever find the means to turn things around. Running from one disaster to the next, it takes a bullet to slow him down and even the circumstances in which Harris came to be injured were just more mistakes made in a drama that Harris was never meant to be part of. Harris is one person who needs to find a little light in the dark as he is completely without direction let alone the bus money to get there. Amita Blunt definitely remembers Harris. All the girls in ... Read Review |
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The Hidden Room, Stella Duffy14/03/2019 - 1:18pmStella Duffy was absent from the crime writing scene for a long time until THE HIDDEN ROOM was released in 2017. The book then made the shortlist for the 2018 Ngaio Marsh Awards, because, in a nutshell, Duffy knows how to develop strong, realistic characters, and weave them into a plot that's clever, well paced and intriguing. Classified as "domestic noir", this is a story about things very close to home. In this case Laurie (born in China / adopted by a US family) spent her childhood in the American desert, her family members of a secretive cult. Years later, she and her ... Read Review |
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Agatha Raisin and the Wizard of Evesham, M.C. Beaton14/03/2019 - 12:25pmThe reader of this site may recall that I had a flurry of listening to Agatha Raisin audio books a while ago, when seemingly trapped in never-ending long driving days. They were fun, repetitive sure, a bit on the bitchy side occasionally, and it turns out nothing like the TV series made of the same books. Which made for some amusement and confusion as THE WELLSPRING OF DEATH and THE WIZARD OF EVESHAM were aired on TV whilst I was listening to them in the car. Needless to say TV Agatha is nothing like book Agatha, and I kind of got to the stage where I preferred the TV version. Even ... Read Review |
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The Lost Taonga, Edmund Bohan13/03/2019 - 4:58pmTHE LOST TAONGA and A SUITABLE TIME FOR VENGEANCE by Edmund Bohan were both entered in the 2018 Ngaio Marsh Awards, with THE LOST TAONGA making it onto the longlist. Both these books are from Bohan's Inspector O'Rorke series (six and seven respectively), historical crime fiction set in New Zealand in the 1880's. Bohan's is known in his native land as an accomplished biographer and novelist, and singer, having published a range of historical non-fiction as well. Needless to say in both these novels, the historical aspects are delivered in a comprehensive manner, delivering ... Read Review |
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Rusted Off, Gabrielle Chan13/03/2019 - 1:53pmParticularly interesting to look back over RUSTED OFF, in light of the current rural Australian political landscape.Read Review |
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Painting in the Shadows, Katherine Kovacic13/03/2019 - 1:50pmKatherine Kovacic's Alex Clayton series (all two books of them so far...) could be used as a teaching tool for aspiring Australian crime novelists on achieving balance between personal backstory and plot, and how to craft a realistic strong female lead character, because they are both extremely good examples of that and much more. There's always been a bit of chatter about second novel syndrome and it's hard to ignore as there have been some amazing debuts followed up by something that's not as strong, confident or unsurprisingly as original, but PAINTING IN THE SHADOWS has none of ... Read Review |
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The Easter Make Believers, Finn Bell13/03/2019 - 1:37pmWhen Finn Bell entered his first two novels in the Ngaio Marsh Awards (PANCAKE MONEY and DEAD LEMONS - which won the 2017 Best First Novel), he cemented himself pretty firmly in favourite author stakes. Mostly because there was something very different about both of those novels, but both presented strong storylines; brilliant, flawed but balanced characterisations; strong dialogue and he plays more than fair with the reader who wants to guess along. So when THE EASTER MAKE BELIEVERS popped up on the 2018 list I was more than a bit pleased to revisit his work. Again Finn ... Read Review |
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A Suitable Time for Vengeance, Edmund Bohan13/03/2019 - 1:15pmTHE LOST TAONGA and A SUITABLE TIME FOR VENGEANCE by Edmund Bohan were both entered in the 2018 Ngaio Marsh Awards, with THE LOST TAONGA making it onto the longlist. Both these books are from Bohan's Inspector O'Rorke series (six and seven respectively), historical crime fiction set in New Zealand in the 1880's. Bohan's is known in his native land as an accomplished biographer and novelist, and singer, having published a range of historical non-fiction as well. Needless to say in both these novels, the historical aspects are delivered in a comprehensive manner, delivering ... Read Review |
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Six Degrees of Assassination, M.J. Arlidge13/03/2019 - 11:11amA radio play available on Audible, this was one of those "why not" picks from the list when I was looking for something to listen to a while ago. Told in a series of short episodes with lots of lead in music, lots of noise and drama, and a reasonably good cast in terms of being distinguishable in audio format, and believability in their parts. Of course Andrew Scott (who plays the main character - Alex Cartwright) does have a delivery style which is low key, almost velvety for want of a better description, which will work well for some listeners. I thought it made the ... Read Review |
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The Rookie's Guide to Espionage, Dave Sinclair12/03/2019 - 4:30pmSlapstick, silly, 1.5 (novella) in the series which is now up to book 3, I'm reviewing this out of order, although by a minor miracle I've been reading them in order. Lot's could be said about the fact that this is a fun series, featuring Australian Barista, MI6 Agent Eva Destruction as she keeps the world safe from the bad guys, and tries desperately to find a decent coffee. Instead of those lot's of things, let's go with - if you like high energy, wacky humour, silly action, kick-arse hero's then the Eva Destruction series should be on your radar: ... Read Review |
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Into The Night, Sarah Bailey09/03/2019 - 5:23pm‘I know. My truth radar is all over the place.’ Fleet smirks but he cuffs me gently on the shoulder. ‘Truth radar. We don’t have those in the big smoke, champ. We just assume everyone is lying. Statistically it’s more likely.’
Sarah Bailey’s award winning debut novel, The Dark Lake, is one of a number of crime novels set in rural Australia which have been published in the last few years. In her second novel, Into The Night, Bailey takes a giant leap and transplants her main character, Detective Sergeant Gemma ... Read Review |