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Only the Brave, Mel Sherratt18/05/2015 - 6:13pmThe third in the DS Allie Shenton series, readers might be best served to have at least read one of the earlier books (this reviewer has read FOLLOW THE LEADER only and that helped make sense of a lot of the sub-plot elements). Whilst the main plot of ONLY THE BRAVE is the bashing, then stabbing murder of a notorious local identity, his connections to the underworld family that forms a big part of Shenton's background might need a bit of filling from the earlier books to make sense. There are complications aplenty in this death - and not just the missing ... 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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Blurline, TW Lawless13/05/2015 - 1:01pmThe third in the Peter Clancy series, BLURLINE takes Clancy to swinging London and the edges of the "red-top" newspaper world. Granted he headed there with high hopes of getting a job in slightly more salubrious circumstances, but needs must and when the money starts running low, a reputation built on the back of The Truth newspaper in Melbourne isn't going to help when it comes to "serious newspapers". When Clancy lands himself a job on one of the even lesser of the lesser scandal rags, he ends up posing as a biographer ghostwriter, supposedly helping well known, and ... 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 |
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Cooper Bartholomew is Dead, Rebecca James29/04/2015 - 1:45pmNominated as a young adult novel, COOPER BARTHOLOMEW IS DEAD is one that's readable for that age group and those of us for whom "young" is but a vague memory. Whilst there is a death at the centre of this book, in many ways it is less of a crime mystery than one about the mysterious, and quite scary things that confront many of us when we are young. To be fair though, the reasons for Cooper Bartholomew's death aren't glaringly obvious from the start, although some informed speculation is available to the reader at various points throughout the narrative. ... Read Review |
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Medea's Curse, Anne Buist22/04/2015 - 4:58pmWhen they say "write what you know" Anne Buist seems to have taken that advice very much to heart, especially when it comes to the clinical and working experience of her central character - Dr Natalie King. Hard to say about the Ducati, history of mental health problems and clothes sense. MEDEA'S CURSE starts out in extreme acceleration mode with the back story of a contretemps on the steps of the Court, followed by an encounter with Crown Prosecutor (and later sex interest) Liam O'Shea, and the disappearance of a child. The father of the missing child was also the father ... Read Review |
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Bad Seed, Alan Carter21/04/2015 - 11:27amFrom the first book featuring Cato Kwong this has been a series to follow closely. A police procedural that's moved him from Coventry (aka the Stock Squad in remote WA) back to Perth and right into the middle of a shocking murder scene. Made worse by his old friendship with the dead family. Not that it was a current friendship. Kwong and the Tan family had drifted apart many years ago, but the reason for that separation is part of the problem for this investigation:
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Cold Deception, D.B. Tait14/04/2015 - 1:44pmThe author of COLD DECEPTION has had many years experience in the Criminal Justice system, and that knowledge shines through in this debut crime fiction offering. Julia Taylor's release from prison, her struggles to re-establish life and normality, and the way that she balances that struggle with parole responsibilities, the problems with finding a job and the problems in inserting herself back into her family and her community have a strong sense of reality about them. Julia's crime provides the author with a chance to explore a number of aspects - how will ... Read Review |
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The Pallampur Predicament, Brian Stoddart26/03/2015 - 6:45pmThe second book in the Superintendent Le Fanu series set in 1920's India, THE PALLAMPUR PREDICAMENT follows on closely from THE MADRAS MIASMA. So closely it would be worthwhile reading both books in order, although not absolutely necessary. In the reasons why column, in true police procedural style, Le Fanu is hampered by a difficult boss who hates him and his methodologies. At the end of the first book this boss is promoted even further up the chain, and the results of that are played out in this second story. Without the background many of the twists and turns in that ... Read Review |
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Amnesia, Peter Carey25/03/2015 - 3:09pmThe blurb on the back of AMNESIA reads exactly like that of a really good thriller. A threat that unleashes something frightening in the world, and the battle to find the perpetrator. Which seemed, by the end of the book, to be written for another AMNESIA, somewhere in a parallel universe. One where the book we were reading actually addressed the major plot elements, rather than immediately meandering off into something or other about an ex-journalist / ghost writer who had a bit of a hump up with the world who ... something. It's certainly possible to see ... Read Review |
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Avenger, Chris Allen06/03/2015 - 2:25pmAVENGER is the third book in the Alex Morgan, INTREPID series of thriller, action style novels. Whilst the earlier books (HUNTER and DEFENDER), were enormously enjoyable entrants in those categories, this third book has more to offer again. Alex Morgan is an ex-soldier, now black ops spy for Interpol's INTREPID (Intelligence, Recovery, Protection and Infiltration Division). He's been at this for quite a while now, and frankly, he's burning out in one hell of a hurry. Despite assurances that there's a break from active service after his current assignment, he's immediately ... Read Review |
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Gun Control, Peter Corris03/03/2015 - 1:11pmThe 40th book in the Cliff Hardy series, GUN CONTROL takes on a very current issue in the style that we've all come to expect from Peter Corris. It's worth taking a moment to consider that 40 book history. When Cliff Hardy first made an appearance on the Australian landscape (THE DYING TRADE, 1982), Crime Fiction had been working prolifically in the pulp fiction days (Carter Brown etc) for a very long time. Hardy, as a hard-boiled, quietly spoken, high action, take no crap from anybody type PI might have felt like a rather American "type". But Hardy was then, and has always been very ... Read Review |
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The 45% Hangover, Stuart MacBride13/02/2015 - 5:06pmA perfectly formed piece of glorious over the topness featuring Logan McRae, DCI Steel and the recent Scottish independence referendum. Which of course isn't going to bode well. I mean it's part of the world that gave us Whisky. And people who drink whisky. When they are happy, sad, or stressed. All of which DCI Steel manages to be during the lead up to, and the night of the count. Not that McRae particularly cares. As usual he's just trying to get a shift under his belt, and maybe find a missing 'No' campaigner. Which, well, it ends hilariously. And vaguely disturbingly ... Read Review |
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Elizabeth is Missing, Emma Healey13/01/2015 - 11:02amReading a lot of crime fiction can sometimes get a little groundhog day"ish". Not so when a book like ELIZABETH IS MISSING comes along. Not only is the styling of this mystery very unusual, the central character is outstanding and different. Maud is an eighty-two-year old independent woman, living in her own home, slowly losing her memory. Devastatingly she sometimes knows she's losing touch with reality, she certainly knows enough to recognise that the notes that are liberally dotted throughout her home, in her pockets and her bag are an important aide-memoire. ... Read Review |
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Crucifixion Creek, Barry Maitland06/01/2015 - 2:39pmBarry Maitland's Brock & Kolla series is notable for, amongst many things, the way that he always takes a location in London and builds it into the story, almost as another character. In the first of the Harry Belltree trilogy, CRUCIFIXION CREEK, set in Sydney, there is a similar approach, this time with a location of notorious reputation. Crucifixion Creek is the scene of a massacre of Aboriginal people by early colony British marines. Extending that history into the current day, Harry Belltree is the son of Sydney's first Aboriginal Judge, and a veteran special forces soldier ... Read Review |
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The Missing and the Dead, Stuart MacBride05/01/2015 - 5:09pmSure Logan McRae's now an Acting Detective Inspector, in uniform. In the backend of nowhere, with a good team working with him, especially when you realise the number of cows they have to chase off roads. His girlfriend has improved a little, she's now in a care home, still uncommunicative, her nursing being paid for by McRae which is creating certain "problems" in his personal lifestyle. To make matters worse, his role in a high profile arrest causes a court case to collapse which brings the higher-ups down on his head and everything he does, says or has is questioned. Except for the ... Read Review |
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Bent, James Morton & Susanna Lobez01/12/2014 - 2:53pmJames Morton and Susanna Lobez have written a number of Australian true crime books together now, many of which are in anecdotal format. Whilst BENT tends towards that style again, it is considerably more detailed and employs a much clearer narrative connection than many of the earlier books this reviewer has read. As a result of this, it's a much stronger, considerably more informative read than originally expected. Even when you realise that there's been an extensive culture of corruption throughout not just the Police in Australia since First Fleet Days, BENT really ... Read Review |
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Bad Blood, Casey Kelleher26/11/2014 - 5:18pmQuite a few crime fiction books use the life and crimes of a Gangster type as their central premise, with a sideline of the impact that has on family and friends. BAD BLOOD looks at this scenario with the affected firmly at the centre of the action. Starting out with a series of chapters that introduce a central character or scenario, readers will need to pay attention. As they will to the prologue which looks at the past of central character Harry Woods and his young, pregnant wife. In the present time, Harry's much loved wife is dead, his children grown and the family ... Read Review |