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Bella's Run, Margareta Osborn22/07/2016 - 3:51pmBELLA'S RUN is definitely not the sort of thing that I would normally read, but working with Margareta Osborn on her website made it nearly impossible not to notice a certain buzz around this book, which frankly, intrigued me. And every now and then, a little step away from the well worn path isn't going to kill me. Is it? Starting BELLA'S RUN, I had no idea what to expect, and a combination of my personal disinterest in romance themes, and the amount of acclaim for the book did have me a little worried, as I am a bit of a curmudgeon who suffers from hype-hypersensitivity ... Read Review |
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Blood Med, Jason Webster21/07/2016 - 4:25pmThe 4th book in the Max Cámara series, which means if, like this reader, you've missed the first three, there's something to look forward to. Set in post financial meltdown Spain, BLOOD MED is part crime fiction, part police procedural, part analysis of a society that's bottomed out. The King's illness seems to have provided yet more impetus for riots and thugs roaming the streets. Against this backdrop the brutal murder of a young American woman, and the suspect suicide of an ex-bank clerk seem oddly dwarfed. Not helped by the Machiavellian games being played by Cámara's ... Read Review |
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Black Teeth, Zane Lovitt18/07/2016 - 4:07pmWhen THE MIDNIGHT PROMISE won the Ned Kelly Award in 2013 it was impossible not to agree wholeheartedly with the judges' decision. That book telegraphed clearly here was an author to be followed closely. Three years on, BLACK TEETH is worth the wait. Unusual, dark, often funny, always disquieting, this is an intriguing novel. In it, the lives of two loners, slightly lost men, collide as they search for the same man. One, Jason Ginaff is a technical wiz. He earns his living researching job candidates, finding out the things that people don't want discovered. Raised by a ... Read Review |
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Salaryman Unbound, Ezra Kyrill Erker17/07/2016 - 3:54pmIwasaki Shiro is a hard-working, Japanese family man. With a controlling wife, disrespectful children, and a murder fantasy. Most of what Shiro does is somehow never quite right. Whether it's his suggestion for changes at work that is rapidly turning out to be a disaster in the making, or his initial attempts to become a murderer. There's a bit of thought, a lot of fantasy and an inability to actually achieve much. Except that whilst planning a killing, somehow he becomes more confident, and actually sets some rules for the family. For somebody as ineffectual as Shiro, he's ... Read Review |
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Cold Hard Murder, Trish McCormack13/07/2016 - 6:18pmThe third book in the Philippa Barnes series, COLD HARD MURDER is set in a spectacular region on the West Coast of the North Island of New Zealand. In the earlier books Philippa worked as a glacier guide, but the fragile state of her home area means that she has to seek work elsewhere. She gets a temporary posting as a tourist track maintainer in the Paparoa National Park, which means a move away from her younger sister and her home, to a new group of colleagues who from day one are tense. The plot relies very much on that tension generated within a group of workmates - ... Read Review |
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Boom and Bust, Angus Gillies05/07/2016 - 4:01pmIn the process of researching the background to BOOM AND BUST I found some information on a trilogy of books Angus Gillies has written about the 1985 to 1990 terror campaign of a Maori sect calling themselves the Rastafarians - in Ruatoria on the East Coast of New Zealand's North Island. Needless to say I got slightly distracted, this review has taken longer to appear than it should have. I've now got the first of those 3 lined up to be read. But back to BOOM AND BUST which is fictional crime, set on the cusp of the GFC in New Zealand. One man, hit by debt, struggling to ... Read Review |
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Dark Fires Shall Burn, Anna Westbrook28/06/2016 - 3:10pmInspired by the true events surrounding an unsolved murder, Dark Fires Shall Burn is set in Sydney’s Newtown in the aftermath of World War II. - Full review at Newtown Review of BooksRead Review |
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Elementary: The Ghost Line, Adam Christopher27/06/2016 - 3:05pmThe book of the TV show, ELEMENTARY: THE GHOST LINE is based around the characters of Sherlock Holmes and his sidekick Joan Watson. Set in New York, and having never seen the show, it seems that likely that the TV show is a reworking of the recent English reboot of Sherlock. Which probably raises the biggest question in my mind... Why? Anyway, back to the book, which is undeniably engagingly written. Catching a lot of the colour and movement from the rebooted Sherlock (the one I've actually seen with Benedict Cumberbatch in it), there's high energy and high risk in this ... Read Review |
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Black Sails, Disco Inferno, Andrez Bergen23/06/2016 - 6:52pmDisco from the late 1970's / early 1980's being a formative part of my early years, some of the sheer enjoyment that BLACK SAILS, DISCO INFERNO provided could be put down to nostalgia, but there's a lot more to it than that. Based on the ancient story of Tristan and Isolde, with a pulp / noir sensibility, there is a strong sense of homage and a deep understanding of the original medieval romance. The setting employed here is an unnamed city, sectioned off into the territory of rival crime families the Holts and the Cornwall's. Issy (Isidor Junior) is the playboy heir of ... Read Review |
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Eraserbyte, Cat Connor22/06/2016 - 3:10pmERASERBYTE is the 7th in the "byte" series from NZ author Cat Connor. The characters are all part of a crack team of special agents, operating out of Washington D.C., led by Ellie Conway. Conway is a classic all-action hero, capable of absorbing massive amounts of physical punishment (including injuries in a helicopter accident), and just keep on keeping on. There's romance, and the extra twist of visions, and a psychic in-head connection with the new man in her life. Having managed to come to this series originally with DATABYTE (which I think is the 6th overall), I will ... Read Review |
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The Mistake, Grant Nicol20/06/2016 - 2:09pmThe novella THE MISTAKE is short, sharp, packed with a punch crime fiction set in Iceland, written by ex-pat New Zealander Grant Nicol. Set in Reykjavik, there's a lot that's laid on the line, as you'd expect in something constrained by length. There's been a brutal murder and the clear suspect is on the scene. A troubled man, prone to blackouts, discovers a body in his own yard and it looks like it's done and dusted. Especially when the suspect, Gunnar Atli, has secrets to hide. On the other side of the equation is a cop who is determined to prove beyond reasonable doubt, and a ... Read Review |
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The Legend of Winstone Blackhat, Tanya Moir (Reviewed by Deb Wood)15/06/2016 - 5:51pmIn The Legend of Winstone Blackhat, Tanya Moir takes the reader, in a sustained and authentic way, into the world-view of an abused 12 year old. She writes powerfully about a boy, Winstone, (named after a NZ concreting company) who comes from a neglectful and damaging home life. The novel segues effortlessly between Winstone's day to day existence as a run away in the hills of Central Otago and his cowboy fantasy of a journey of revenge across the plains of the American West. Moir's evocation of the physical landscape is vivid and tactile – a place where the very ... Read Review |
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The Legend of Winstone Blackhat, Tanya Moir15/06/2016 - 5:50pmThe Crime Fiction genre is a broad church. Delivery styles, subject matter and purpose can vary wildly from the light-hearted to the darkest noir, from purposely vicious and cruel to accidental and panicked. There's even shades in terms of how or why. Investigation and resolution with all loose threads neatly bundled through to something that concentrates more intensely on the why. Why did the victim(s) die, why did the killer take the action they did, even to a certain level why do the investigators do what they do? When that shift to the why became particularly marked ... Read Review |
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Blood, Wine & Chocolate, Julie Thomas15/06/2016 - 2:28pmLife growing up in the United Kingdom wasn't a bed of roses for Vinnie Whitney-Ross, what with gangland family connections, childhood friend problems and general law and disorder. Whitney-Ross found himself in the role of sort of reluctant hard-man, but the chance to escape to New Zealand and a life of Wine and Chocolate with his chocolatier wife feels like a chance for him to start again, make good, and live happily ever after. When BLOOD, WINE & CHOCOLATE starts out in the United Kingdom, in Vinnie's early life, there is a strong sense of the nastiness of life in ... Read Review |
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Death of a Friend, Desmond L. Kelly14/06/2016 - 2:48pmBuilt around the worlds of art fraud, forensic accounting, law and the European Mafia DEATH OF A FRIEND is the debut novel of Australian author Desmond L Kelly. There's an interesting concept at the centre of this book - two men, friends since their schooldays, different backgrounds, different career choices but stayed in touch. When one of them is killed, the friend left behind feels desperate guilt. The reason he is feeling guilty is his own doubts over his best friends integrity, and the opening chapter in particular, at the funeral of Catlin, is very evocative of the ... Read Review |
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Harry's World, A.B. Patterson07/06/2016 - 1:30pmAn open homage to the noir stylings of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, with a decidedly Australian sense of humour, HARRY'S WORLD is the story of PI Harry Kenmare, told in a series of episodes. For this reader some aspects of the humour in this book really worked, and others were less successful. If you're already struggling with the stereotypical female portrayals and the tacky sexual urges of Harry, by the time Club Mammary makes an appearance it could be possible, like this reader, that you start to notice a tendency to be somewhat distracted by external things ... Read Review |
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The Falling Detective, Christoffer Carlsson03/06/2016 - 4:53pmTHE FALLING DETECTIVE is the second Leo Junker book written by Swedish author Christoffer Carlsson. Not having read the first was a minor irritation (with myself) in reading this because Junker is complicated, challenging, slightly off-beat and utterly charismatic. In an odd, shadowy, slightly blurry sort of way. Hence the irritation with not having read the first book as there's obviously more to this portrayal than is declared in this outing. Perhaps because of that slightly off-camera feeling, THE FALLING DETECTIVE was also a book that felt like it took a while to get ... Read Review |
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Clinch, Martin Holmén27/05/2016 - 1:37pmUltra-gritty describes the 1930's Stockholm that Harry Kvist occupies, as well as Kvist himself. To say nothing of the people that he mixes with. It's a beautifully evoked world of dark and despair, littered with violent sexual encounters, drinking, and oddly, an unexpected love affair of sorts. Told from his point of view Kvist is nothing if not brutally honest about himself, his situation, even the way he looks. And as an ex-boxer he's well suited to his now role of debt-collector, and general intimidating presence. It's the role of debt collector that sees him become ... Read Review |
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A Straits Settlement, Brian Stoddart24/05/2016 - 6:51pmThe Le Fanu series from author Brian Stoddart is one of those extremely elegant combinations of mystery fiction and historical lesson that also provides entertainment for readers. There's even a bit of good old fashioned romance from the male point of view. In short, there's something for all readers within these pages. The third book, A STRAITS SETTLEMENT sees Le Fanu promoted above his desired wishes to acting Inspector-General, buried in paperwork and oddly behaving subordinate officers, increasingly desperate to resolve his ongoing faltering love affair with a local ... Read Review |
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Amplify, Mark Hollands19/05/2016 - 3:16pmWhat a little gem AMPLIFY turned out to be. A debut novel from journalist Mark Hollands, introducing musical impresario Billy Lime and his world of sex, drugs and rock and roll. So much potential for cliché so very nicely dodged here. The women are not all sex objects or madder than meat-axe fans, the rock and roll is slightly on the older and might not be quite up to it any more side, the muso's an interesting combination of old and wise, and still living the dream types. Then there's the daring deeds of Lime himself liberally laced with martial arts, some aches and ... Read Review |