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Amongst the Dead, Robert Gott08/02/2019 - 3:07pmAMONGST THE DEAD is the third novel in Robert Gott's William Power series. William is an "aspirational" but failed Shakespearean actor, turned Private Investigator who finds himself in very unusual circumstances in the Top End of Australia during World War II in AMONGST THE DEAD. William and his brother Brian are called upon by Australian Military Intelligence to find out the truth behind the suspicious deaths in a crack, very secret squad. William, of course, thinks, that they need him for his superior powers of detection, and because they are to be infiltrated into ... Read Review |
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Terror of the Innocent, Mike Boshier01/02/2019 - 3:16pmSomebody called Jess Lowther has been demanding that I post reviews of a couple of Mike Boshier's books that were entered in the 2018 Ngaio Marsh Awards. These reviews have been queued up on the site for sometime now, and I've been resisting posting them as there's nothing much I can contribute to discussion of the books. My apologies to the author, I had intended leaving it at no comment. ------ Originally drafted in 2018: TERROR OF THE INNOCENT is the second book in the John Deacon action adventure series, which shows some improvements over the first from a ... Read Review |
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The Jaws of Revenge, Mike Boshier01/02/2019 - 2:07pmSomebody called Jess Lowther has been demanding that I post reviews of a couple of Mike Boshier's books that were entered in the 2018 Ngaio Marsh Awards. These reviews have been queued up on the site for sometime now, and I've been resisting posting them as there's nothing much I can contribute to discussion of the books. My apologies to the author, I had intended leaving it at no comment. ------ Originally drafted in 2018: Flagged as thrillers in the John Deacon action adventure series, THE JAWS OF REVENGE is the first book. As a fan of fast-paced, exciting ... Read Review |
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Crossing The Lines, Sulari Gentill24/01/2019 - 4:38pm"In the beginning she was a thought so unformed that he was aware only of something which once was not." Edward McGinnity is a successful novelist who wants to write a novel about a crime writer. His character’s name is Madeleine d’Leon, a writer of the popular period crime novels. Madeleine wants to write a modern crime novel. Her novel’s character is also a writer. "She called him Edward McGinnity. His friends would call him Ned." Sounds simple so far, it’s not. Crossing The Lines is a work of Meta Fiction and the characters of Edward ... Read Review |
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River of Salt, Dave Warner24/01/2019 - 12:55pm"Mile after mile of bush. Gum trees standing straight and silent along the side of the road like ghosts sitting in judgement on the living: on him. It was amazing you could drive so far and see so few people. With each passing minute, the sun sunk lower, as if embarrassed by the outcome of the day. Light that had been pale, almost white when he set out, turned the colour of urine. My life is like this, Blake thought. I keep driving on in my car, removed. I don't get out and touch what's around me. Little by little, things get darker and you don't really know where you are any ... Read Review |
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The Coves, David Whish-Wilson22/01/2019 - 2:40pmDavid Whish-Wilson is best known for his historical crime fiction set in Perth and surrounds, but The Coves takes us to 1849 San Francisco, gold fever and the Australian gangs who controlled the part of it known as Sydney-town. The Coves is partly the story of a lawless San Francisco in the grip of a gold rush, with gangs controlling their own areas of the growing town, ramshackle buildings, gold fever and the struggle to survive. It’s also the touching, and sometimes worrying, story of 12-year-old Sam ... Read Review |
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I Always Find You, John Ajvide Lindqvist22/01/2019 - 2:20pmSwedish author John Ajvide Lindqvist takes us back, way back, to the teenage years when the world was just an open sky of endless opportunity. In the capable hands of a best-selling horror writer, we know that this particular new world of discovery is shortly about to evolve into something truly frightening. Lindqvist has inserted his aspiring teenage self into a narrative that will be somewhat recognizable to anyone who struck out on their own after school. The poverty, the fickle friends, the grotty apartments, the dodgy jobs. Most of us have been there, making all the usual ... Read Review |
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All The Tears in China, Sulari Gentill21/01/2019 - 1:19pmBy the time a series reaches book number nine, there are many elements that a reader can expect, and ALL THE TEARS IN CHINA delivers on them with aplomb. Rowly and his band of colleagues are as close as they always were; Milton is still quoting other people's poetry with Rowly providing the attributions; Clyde is still the sensible one; Edna is obsessed with something (this time it's her newly discovered interest in film); Rowly is still quietly in love with Edna (and he will be beaten up by various lurking types with metronome like regularity); and this little band of artistic types ... Read Review |
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An Iron Rose, Peter Temple17/01/2019 - 1:49pmAnd every favour has its price Paid not in coin But in flesh Slice by slice Sometimes a favourite novel by a much loved author isn’t their best, welcome to my latest Summer Favourites review, Peter Temple’s An Iron Rose. If you were to ask the question ‘which novel is Peter Temple’s best?’ then most would answer A Broken Shore or Truth. If I was to choose I’d say A Broken Shore, just, but neither are my favourite Temple, mine is his second novel An Iron Rose ... Read Review |
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Cedar Valley, Holly Throsby13/01/2019 - 2:46pm“On a normal morning, a lone police car would be parked out the front of the station, waiting for something illegal to happen.” Cedar Valley, Holly Throsby’s second novel, begins with the arrival of two strangers on the first day of summer in 1993. One, Benny Miller, has come to live in a house which an old friend of her recently deceased mother has offered to her. The other, a man dressed in a suit, tie and jumper, clothes which are wholly unsuitable for a hot Australian summer. When the man sits down outside Cedar Valley Curios & Old Wares and quietly dies ... Read Review |
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Preservation, Jock Serong11/01/2019 - 2:45pmI've been trying to think of somebody else that could write books about abalone fishing quotas, cricket, asylum seekers and now early white Australian settlement, convicts, rum runners and shipwrecks and make them all equally compelling, memorable, and ... crime fiction. Jock Serong is one of those writers whose books induce a spot of awkward happy dancing when they arrive - you're guaranteed of something different and unusual after all. Whilst each of the settings, and approaches have varied, at the core of Serong's books is a tale of people being people. Good, bad, ... Read Review |
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Missing Pieces, Caroline de Costa11/01/2019 - 10:55amThe second in the Cass Diamond series MISSING PIECES is set in far North Queensland, with Cass Diamond investigating connected cold case disappearances. In 1992, toddler Yasmin Munoz went missing from a picnic spot near Cairns. In 2012 local businessman and former mayor Andrew Todd dies, leaving directions in his will to search for the missing child, by now a young woman if she's still alive. Yasmin is the daughter of Todd and a local mixed race woman, who has since died. Once Diamond starts digging around she discovers there's another mysterious disappearance in the Todd family - the ... Read Review |
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Crime Scene Asia : when forensic evidence becomes the silent witness, Liz Porter08/01/2019 - 1:55pmThere's a quote on the back of this book from Stephen Cordner, Professor of Forensic Pathology, Monash Universay Australia:
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The Promised Land, Barry Maitland08/01/2019 - 10:50amTHE PROMISED LAND is the 13th Brock and Kolla police procedural from Barry Maitland. The first novel in the series, THE MARX SISTERS, was originally released in 1994, and here we are at the 13th outing, and Maitland is still writing as assured, elegant and entertaining a police procedural series as you'd want. Always with that little quirk that his designer / architect mind obviously identifies with most strongly - choice of location. This time the location is Hampstead Heath, the case is the investigation of three brutal murders of women, and the quick identification of ... Read Review |
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Flight Risk, Michael McGuire07/01/2019 - 1:42pmPost 9-11 it's hard to think that there hasn't been speculation about the next shock and awe campaign. I bet nobody thought there'd be an Australian, rough and tumble ex-commercial pilot, come spy at the centre of it all. The theory that Michael McGuire proposes in his thriller FLIGHT RISK is, however, just believable enough to make you feel decidedly twitchy about the possible reality. Right from page one FLIGHT RISK is out of the starter's gate at a hefty clip, moving quickly through the back story of Ted Anderson: disgraced former pilot, widower and estranged father, former a lot ... Read Review |
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Invisible Women, Kylie Fox & Ruth Wykes07/01/2019 - 1:19pmStacked up in every corner of this house are piles of books that I should have read by now, with INVISIBLE WOMEN being one of them. As the sub-heading puts it: "Powerful and Disturbing Stories of Murdered Sex Workers". The tardiness was regretted even more once I finished the book. A lot of the power behind these stories is down to the sheer numbers. The index lists 65 women's names - murdered or gone missing since 1970 (the book was published in 2016). To put that into perspective, 46 years, 65 women listed. God knows how many more died during that period, how many more ... Read Review |
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The Bush, Don Watson05/01/2019 - 5:01pmWay too big a conceptual book for a month's lead in reading to a bookclub gathering, this is one that many of us agreed needed to be on the shelves, for dipping in and out of. I loved so much about this book, but need to think, reread, consider and probably rethink much of it. Definitely one for the to be bought stakes now though.Read Review |
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An Elderly Lady Is Up To No Good, Helene Tursten31/12/2018 - 5:28pm“Barely a week later, the doorbell rang, loud and long. In Maud’s world it felt as if her visitor had only just left.” When Swedish crime writer Helene Turston was asked to write a short story for a Christmas anthology she created the character of Maud, an 88 year lady who has no qualms about committing a murder. Since writing An Elderly Lady Seeks Peace At Christmas Helene Turston has written another four short stories featuring Maud. All five Maud stories, which have been translated by Marlaine Delargy, are now available in a single volume entitled An Elderly Lady Is Up ... Read Review |
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The Quaker, Liam McIlvanney26/12/2018 - 11:35amIn 1977 William McIlvanney released Laidlaw, a novel which is widely regarded as being the first Tartan Noir novel. Following his death in 2015 the award for the best Scottish crime book was renamed the McIlvanney Prize in his honour. This year the prize was awarded to William McIlvanney’s son Liam for his novel The Quaker which is loosely based upon the three Bible John murders in Glasgow in the late 60’s. Fans of Ian Rankin will recognise Bible John from the 8th Rebus novel Black and Blue. After a Prologue and the first of three disturbing chapters telling the murders ... Read Review |
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Country of the Blind, Christopher Brookmyre24/12/2018 - 2:48pm“But Parlabane, tears welling in his eyes as knelt trembling on the carpet, knew exactly what they meant. They meant black was white, white was black, something was very, very wrong- and only he could prove it.” When I started my summer favourites series of reviews I knew it wouldn’t be too long before I picked up a Chris Brookmyre novel, the question always going to be, which one? After the release of his debut novel, Quite Ugly One Morning, Brookmyre wrote three equally excellent novels, Country of the Blind, One Fine Day in ... Read Review |