All the Reviews

The Missing and the Dead, Stuart MacBride

Sure 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

Bad Blood, Casey Kelleher

Quite 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

Challenge, Paul Daley

In an interview from the Sydney Morning Herald with author Paul Daley, he describes the character of Daniel Slattery from CHALLENGE as :

“a “cross between Mark Latham and Holden Caulfield”. “He's a misogynist, idealist, class warrior and economic rationalist, but he's principled," says Daley. "He cares about minorities including indigenous Australians and the poor. He has a fascination and old-fashioned respect for women, lives his political life as an allegory of sorts and likes to use his stories to illustrate how others less fortunate want to live their

... Read Review

A Murder Unmentioned, Sulari Gentill

Sulari Gentill has never pulled her punches when it comes to putting Rowly Sinclair in a spot of peril, and it turns out that she's even prepared to do that retrospectively. In the process she makes the idea of being a scion of this particular landed gentry family a rather sobering prospect. In the first book Sinclair's uncle (he of the same name) was murdered, and now, in A MURDER UNMENTIONED, it turns out that Sinclair's father had suffered the same fate.

A family secret long kept is not just that Sinclair senior was murdered, the possible involvement of the teenage ... Read Review

Claustrophobia, Tracy Ryan

Using a title like CLAUSTROPHOBIA obviously sets certain expectations for readers, which luckily, in this outing are uncomfortably well imagined. There's something incredibly claustrophobic about everything to do with this book. The enclosed, world that the two main characters Pen and her husband Derrick occupy. From their home life, working together at the same school, even when Pen finally breaks away to another job, albeit for reasons that Derrick doesn't know. It's not just circumstances though. Of course, with Pen as the main narrator of the book there is an inward focus, but ... Read Review

Chasing the Ace, Nicholas J. Johnson

"The Honest Conman" (aka Nicholas J Johnson) used to do a warning segment on scams and frauds on ABC Local Radio, but it was a pleasant surprise to find he'd written a heist / scam novel. Needless to say his debut novel, CHASING THE ACE, reads like the author knows a lot about the subject matter.

Think a dual handed TV's Hustle style scenario in which Joel, a young man with no purpose in life, hooks up with Richard, an older man, experienced in the fine art of scams and swindles. What Joel doesn't realise is that the man he's adopted as his mentor and working partner is ... Read Review

One Boy Missing, Stephen Orr

Set in the heat, dust and community of the South Australian Mallee there is much that is visceral in ONE BOY MISSING. From the opening in which a young, vulnerable boy desperately tries to avoid a pursuer, to the character of DS Bart Moy who is back in Guilderton, possibly because his elderly father needs help, but mostly because he's running away from his past. He's lost and damaged, and there really doesn't seem to be much reason for him to be in the town that hasn't had a Detective presence for years.

Until the inexplicable report of a kidnapping or abduction of a ... Read Review

After the Silence, Jake Woodhouse

Set in Amsterdam, AFTER THE SILENCE is a debut police procedural introducing, amongst a big cast of characters, Inspector Jaap Rykel. If you were looking for a single word to describe everyone in this book it would have to be damaged. They are all dealing with their own demons, to the point where there is a sneaking suspicion that there's not a happy person in the entire city. Mind you, the themes in the book will also have you wondering about where they have put their human decency into the bargain.

Rykel is a very flawed main character with a complicated past. His work ... Read Review

Cross Fingers, Paddy Richardson

Surely we've all got one of those authors. The author whose books languish on the To Be Read pile, even though you always enjoy them immensely when attention lurches into activity and you spy them sitting there. Even though they can, frequently, frighten the life out of you.

Paddy Richardson is one those authors for me, and in the past, she has frightened the life out of me, although I'm pleased to say that this time CROSS FINGER's didn't languish because of my fractured attention span, and whilst she certainly made me sit up and pay attention, this book wasn't flat out ... Read Review