All the Reviews

The Arsonist, Chloe Hooper

Chloe Hooper has, yet again, taken on difficult terrain and a complex subject matter in THE ARSONIST. As in THE TALL MAN, there are victims, family members, affected communities and people still trying to get on with their lives, Black Saturday being ten years ago this month / year in the one of the most fire prone areas on the planet. As rural dwellers the potential of fire is never far from mind. We live for long, hot, draining months in each year sniffing the air, watching the horizons, analysing weather forecasts and planning actions and survival. We do that knowing that fires can ... Read Review

The Echo of Others, S.D. Rowell

Opening up with a duck hunting scene that will stay with readers for a while, THE ECHO OF OTHERS is a debut novel set in my part of the world - Central and parts of Western Victoria. There's a heap of potential here - from a good solid, cleverly structured plot; some excellent characters - including Detective Rachael Schlank who finds herself working on old cases, leading her back to her early days in Vic Police and a particular fellow officer who she worked with out of the main Bendigo police station.

The plot revolves around a series of what appears to be vigilante ... Read Review

Straight and Level, Penelope Haines

STRAIGHT AND LEVEL is the second in a series of novels based around central character, commercial pilot Claire Hardcastle, which fall into the crimance category. Part crime fiction, part romance, with a bit of adventure thrown in courtesy of the locations and the situations into which the author can put a pilot. In this case, the relationship aspects are high on the agenda, the adventure comes by way of a kidnapping and enforced fight, and the crime element is all about murder and corruption in developer circles. Solid plot set up, and the use of the commercial pilot aspect is well ... Read Review

The Carlswick Deception, SL Beaumont

The Carlswick Mysteries are a series of young adult novels (THE CARLSWICK AFFAIR, THE CARLSWICK TREASURE, THE CARLSWICK CONSPIRACY, THE CARLSWICK DECEPTION and THE CARSLWICK MYTHOLOGY), this one being the fourth in the series. There is some back-story woven into each of the books to assist readers in not needing to start from the very beginning, although my advice would be to go back to the start as there appears to be a lot that's happened between Oxford student Stephanie Cooper and her rock-star boyfriend, James.

Young adult styled, with the emphasis leaning slightly ... Read Review

The Cleaner, Paul Cleave

The Cleaner is Christchurch, New Zealand based Paul Cleave's debut novel. Set in Christchurch where at one point Joe, the central character, muses that the biggest crime in Christchurch City - apart from the fashion and the Old English Architecture, glue-sniffing, too much greenery, bad driving, bad parking, lack of parking, wandering pedestrians, expensive shops, the winter smog, the summer smog, kids riding skateboards on footpaths, kids riding bikes on footpaths, old guys yelling Bible passages at anybody passing by, stupid policemen, stupid laws, too many drunks, too few shops, ... Read Review

The Port Fairy Murders, Robert Gott

The first book, THE HOLIDAY MURDERS marked a change in series, but not style, for author Robert Gott. Much of this author's crime fiction writing has concentrated on historical time periods, in particular around the second world war.

This reader was very impressed with the first book. It introduced a range of new characters in the newly formed Homicide department of Victoria Police, from Inspector Titus Lambert (and his wife), Detective Joe Sable and Constable Helen Lord. Events from that book physically and mentally scar Joe Sable, scars that he carries forward, along ... Read Review

The Writing on the Wall, Gunnar Staalesen

Originally published in Norway in 1995, Gunnar Staalesen's The Writing on The Wall is set in Bergen Norway in the early '90s. Private Eye Varg Veum returns from the funeral of his ex-wife's most recent husband to find the distressed mother of missing 16 year old girl Torild waiting to see him. Around the same time Bergen is buzzing with rumours about the death of Judge Brandt after he is found dead in a hotel room wearing flimsy female underwear.

Veum starts digging into the last known sightings and movements of Torild and her few friends - all of which seem to centre ... Read Review

Trust No One, Paul Cleave

For reasons that escape me, Paul Cleave doesn't seem to have the profile, or the world-wide awareness that he absolutely and utterly deserves. He's one of those authors that consistently turns out something different, something that is designed to challenge the reader, and always something that's absolutely impossible to put down.

With TRUST NO ONE he's come up with an absolutely stunning plot: an author of crime fiction, with early onset Alzheimer's who has now been moved to a nursing home, somehow connected to an ongoing series of murders. As the blurb puts it: ... Read Review

And Fire Came Down, Emma Viskic

“…last night’s dreams had slipped into waking hours again, plucking at his thoughts with their blood-stained fingers.”

With her first novel, Resurrection Bay, Emma Viskic not only announced herself as a novelist to watch she also created a lead character in Caleb Zelic who you hoped could be sustained through a series of novels. That hope does however place a weight of expectation on subsequent novels and when I sat down to read And Fire Came Down, the second Caleb Zelic novel, I wondered if it would carry that expectation? I certainly think it does, and ... Read Review