| Book | Review |
|---|---|
|
|
Dr Jekyll & Mr Seek, Anthony O'Neill08/08/2017 - 2:16pmThere is something of a huge comfort in picking up a book that possesses that air of gentility which was common to works written in the latter part of the 19th century. The first pages of DR JEKYLL AND MR SEEK instantly catapult the reader into a murky world where deception and nefarious acts are committed by intelligent yet desperate men. DR JEKYLL & MR SEEK is a delightfully immersive read that quickly draws us into a world we never knew we had been missing. A relatively short foray back to 1800’s England, this book wastes no pages in being overly descriptive and ... Read Review |
 |
Burn Patterns, Ron Elliott08/08/2017 - 2:14pmPartly a story around Iris Foster, partly a story around arson, BURN PATTERNS puts a complicated woman at the heart of a story about complicated offenders. Known as "The Fire Lady" Foster is a psychologist with a messy past that she's tried to put behind her. Until mid consultation with patients nothing to do with fires, she's hauled out by the police and taken straight to the site of a bomb planted at a local school. It doesn't matter how hard Iris tries to step away from her role as "Fire Lady" she's dragged back in - particularly as the initial bomb explosion leads to a range of ... Read Review |
 |
Ruby and the Blue Sky, Katherine Dewar07/08/2017 - 2:42pmComing at an eco-thriller from the point of view of the activists, RUBY AND THE BLUE SKY is part thriller, part exploration of "celebrity" culture, and part do good chick lit novel. The idea at the core is that fame can be used in positive ways - in this case a pro-environment, anti consumer-culture stance with a hefty dose of women's rights and empowerment. To that end the central character Ruby is band leader, conscience and activist, pursued by eco-groupies, determined to ensure she uses a sold-out tour as a venue to push the messages. Needless to say message is a ... Read Review |
 |
Crossing The Lines, Sulari Gentill03/08/2017 - 4:39pmKnown for her Rowland Sinclair historical crime series and her YA Hero trilogy, Sulari Gentill delivers something very different with this new novel. Full review at Newtown Review of BooksRead Review |
 |
Romeo's Gun, David Owen28/07/2017 - 2:13pmHate it when a new book from a much loved series lingers too long on the reading pile simply because of competing priorities. No disrespect intended at all in how long it took me to get to this entry, and much pleasure when I finally did. Anyway they come, I'm quite a fan of the Pufferfish books. For readers unaware of the Pufferfish series, Detective Inspector Franz Heineken is a gruff, grumbling bear of a man wont to stalk the mean streets of Tasmania with a glare and a stare for anybody who steps outside the bounds of propriety. His very particular brand of propriety ... Read Review |
 |
Wimmera, Mark Brandi25/07/2017 - 3:39pmIn 2016 the unpublished manuscript of Wimmera won the UK Crime Writers’ Association debut dagger – now it’s published and we can see why. Reviewed at Newtown Review of Books - this is mandatory reading.Read Review |
 |
Busted, Keith Moor16/07/2017 - 11:52amSlightly fuzzy focus as it moves from the gang behind the haul, the ecstasy haul itself and then into much more info about the Calabrian mafia. Not 100% convinced by the style of storytelling which is very disjointed and frequently disorientating.Read Review |
 |
Blood Money, Clive Small & Tom Gilling07/07/2017 - 4:30pmBLOOD MONEY, written by Clive Small and Tom Gilling, looks at the world of organised crime in current-day Australia - New South Wales in particular. Post the demise of the better known gangs, post the demise of the "gentleman" criminal, this book looks closely at a new wave of gangland bosses, and the ruthless way in which they will form alliances and break the old rules to gain or hold onto power. The book starts off providing a cast of the major characters and the gangs that they belong to. It then moves into a series of chapters based around particular people and their ... Read Review |
 |
A Briefcase, Two Pies and a Penthouse, Brannavan Gnanalingam04/07/2017 - 3:52pmThere's something deliciously intriguing about the idea that a top spy could lose a briefcase, which, rather than chock full of official secrets and classified documents, instead contains three mince pies, two fruit pies, the NZ Listener, a Penthouse magazine, and unfortunately a diary chock full of gossip. In a particularly unfortunate twist the briefcase is discovered by the son of a prominent journalist and, well things go decidedly pear-shaped. Needless to say A BRIEFCASE, TWO PIES AND A PENTHOUSE is high farce. Right from the opening as poor Rachel McManus tries to ... Read Review |
 |
The Student Body, Simon Wyatt29/06/2017 - 1:05pmIn case you hadn't noticed there's a number of debut novels recently out of New Zealand, often written by authors with a policing or related background, many of them telegraphing potential for interesting things to come. THE STUDENT BODY is Serious Fraud Office investigator Simon Wyatt's first novel, written while on sick leave recovering from a rare, and potentially life-threatening autoimmune disorder. The central character in this novel, Detective Sergeant Nick Knight, is a little bit different from current day crime fictional norms in that he's a young, not yet ... Read Review |
 |
An Isolated Incident, Emily Maguire27/06/2017 - 2:09pmWouldn't be too quick to classify this one as a psychological thriller as there is very little simmering tension in watching the lead character disintegrate a little day by day. The whole tone of the book is rather desultory, which fits in well with the remote country town setting where things take a while to happen. The death of Bella is a killing without purpose and the struggle that Chris feels in carrying on with normal life is both relatable and genuine. AN ISOLATED INCIDENT has an excellent sense of place and is very easy to project yourself into the setting of the small town ... Read Review |
 |
A Moment's Silence, Christopher Abbey26/06/2017 - 5:27pmThere's a particularly interesting idea at the heart of A MOMENT'S SILENCE. A holidaying New Zealander makes a chance sighting out of a bus window, subsequently connecting the dots between the car he saw, and a subsequent bomb explosion. Originally reporting his suspicions in the Cotswolds village he's staying in, it's rapidly escalated to Scotland Yard when the bomber is subsequently identified but not caught. Which puts Martyn and the information he can attest to in the firing line of a very determined serial killer. The set up of this is very cleverly imagined - the ... Read Review |
 |
A Reluctant Warrior, Kelly Brooke Nicholls06/06/2017 - 3:30pmThere's something especially sobering about crime fiction that is obviously set in such a real, contemporary and frightening scenario. A RELUCTANT WARRIOR takes the reader right into the middle of Columbia's drug wars. It takes the reader into the world of a young woman who is trying to avoid rape, murder, torture and degradation, while she also tries to keep those left in her small family alive - after the paramilitaries and the drug cartel's have already unleashed havoc upon them. As the blurb says, the story and the characters in A RELUCTANT WARRIOR are fictitious, but ... Read Review |
 |
Something for Nothing, Andy Muir30/05/2017 - 4:23pmAs Australian as a dingy, and dead set likely to get himself into bother, Lachie Munro is a good bloke. Sure he's an abalone poacher, but only to pay off a lapse of concentration gambling debt. And sure he and his best mate Dave don't report the giant heroin haul they find when they are out poaching off the coast of Newcastle. Of course they seem to have just enough street smarts to finagle a possible connection for flogging the heroin off as an unexpected windfall. Dave's got kids he wants to set up after all, and Lachie? Lachie wants out of this current version of his life, which ... Read Review |
 |
How I Became the Mr Big of People Smuggling, Martin Chambers30/05/2017 - 3:02pmThere must be a group of readers out there that are a sucker for a fabulous book title (or it could be a group of one) but HOW I BECAME THE MR BIG OF PEOPLE SMUGGLING is one of those eye-catching titles that luckily coincides with a terrific story. We've all done it, or dreamed of it. An adventure, a break from the day to day, and for Nick Smart it seemed like working as a jackaroo on a remote station was the perfect solution. Away from everything, a chance to save some money, maybe even some quiet time to get his head together. "I drove out of Victoria via ... Read Review |
 |
Dead Again, Sandi Wallace08/05/2017 - 3:40pmDEAD AGAIN is the second novel in the Georgie Harvey and John Franklin series. Harvey is a Melbourne based journalist and Franklin a Daylesford based cop, and whilst it's not absolutely necessary that you've read the first book - TELL ME WHY, it would help a lot to understand why there is a connection between these two characters, and ultimately the two main locations in this book. Set around a fictionalised fire storm called in this book Red Victoria, a potential article about a small town in recovery becomes a private quest for Harvey to track down a man believed killed in the fire ... Read Review |
 |
The Breakdown, B.A. Paris15/04/2017 - 3:12pmThere is only a small cast in THE BREAKDOWN so our suspicious eyes are trained on characters that don’t have anywhere to hide; they are all close to Cass’s life and are becoming increasingly aware that her life is in disarray. Cass becomes more hemmed in by her memory glitches and is desperate to regain control of a life that is being puppet mastered by someone who must be close to her. THE BREAKDOWN is a very suspenseful read, tempered with periods of time where you alternately feel desperately sorry for Cass in her struggles, or frustrated with her as she seems to be going around ... Read Review |
 |
Big Little Lies, Liane Moriarty30/03/2017 - 4:39pmAfter a few attempts, managed to finish BIG LITTLE LIES over the weekend. There's a reason this has been a bit of a chore explained below. Funny and quite cleverly constructed, BIG LITTLE LIES is about every day lives. If you're a mother, an ex-wife, a daughter, a second wife or possibly if you've ever been in a schoolyard or involved in the grass roots "political" movement that those environments seem to be, then there could be resonances throughout this book. There's a light-hearted, slightly tongue-in-cheek tone used to tell this story, that even finishes chapters with ... Read Review |
 |
Saigon Dark, Elka Ray28/03/2017 - 2:46pmIt's taken an age to get this review to the point where it can be published, because it's it's been so hard to clearly identify what about SAIGON DARK really worked for this reader, and why there were some niggling doubts remaining. A seemingly straight-forward story where Lily, a competent, respected surgeon has returned to her native Saigon, two children with her - leaving behind a failed marriage to an American Vietnamese man. When her young daughter dies in a drowning accident, she buries the body in her garden - never telling anyone what happened. Then grief-stricken ... Read Review |
 |
Born to Run, John M. Green27/03/2017 - 4:40pmave to be the short version of this review. The blurb on BORN TO RUN didn't bode well to be honest. Politics in thrillers, a bit of pushing the envelope with the chance of the first woman to win the White House. An Australian software whiz, a TV journalist digging for dirt, and terrorists working on a daring attack on New York City and I'll be honest, I felt an urge to yawn. Never got a chance. It is undoubtedly the mark of a very good thriller that all of the unlikely elements of the plot, all of the potential cheap targets of the scenarios disappeared. Okay - so you get ... Read Review |