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The Hypnotist, Lars Kepler31/08/2012 - 3:17pmOn the face of it, THE HYPNOTIST should be a book that's right up my alley, and yet, somehow it's taken quite a few attempts to get to the end of, and the feeling left has been one of vague confusion and a little disappointment. Dr Erick Maria Bark was once a renowned hypnotherapist, doing ground breaking work with people with deep psychological issues. Until something went wrong, and Bark vowed never to use hypnosis again. A vow he keeps until many years later, when he's asked to use his technique on a young, teenage boy, horribly injured in a two part attack that has ... Read Review |
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Bunker, Andrea Maria Schenkel28/08/2012 - 12:13pmYou could not, ever, accuse Andrea Maria Schenkel of wordiness. Her books are masterpieces of succinct, pointed fiction, leaving a lot to the readers imagination, conclusion or simply confusion. Which is part of what I love about these books - that feeling, when finished reading, that you might just not have the whole picture. That there are things that you may have to think about, that not everything is black and white, and that the grey is often very dark, very cloudy, very textured grey. BUNKER is a particular example of that wonderful act of leaving the reader to ... Read Review |
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Bereft, Chris Womersley24/08/2012 - 1:12pmThe frustrating thing about discussing a book like BEREFT is the reason Womersley's the author, and I'm the reader. How do you put into words something as moving, involving, immersing as BEREFT and make it intelligible? No idea, so let's go with the next best option. "A searing gothic novel of love, longing and justice" sounds, to be frank, not my sort of thing. It's probably the juxtaposition of "gothic" and "love" that somehow or other has my befuddled brain thinking "regency" / "romance". No idea to be honest, but, regardless of why, if THE LOW ROAD hadn't been such a ... Read Review |
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A Deniable Death, Gerald Seymour23/08/2012 - 4:51pmYou'd think, on the face of it, that this would be a book that would be right up my dark and twisty alley but for some reason A DENIABLE DEATH took an age to read, and I came away from it with a mild sense of disappointment. And try as I might, I can't quite put my finger on why, as there was much about the book that I did like. It's very much a contemporary thriller, with a very strong idea as the central plot, delivered with pace and authority. I suspect what didn't quite work for me was the contrivance of the classic lone wolf - Badger - trudging through a very ... Read Review |
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Babylon, Stephen Sewell27/07/2012 - 4:54pmA young English backpacker gets into a car with an older Australian man somewhere in the Australian outback, and the violence, threatening, rape, pillage, murder and general mayhem commences. Somehow young, innocent, a bit wet Mick the backpacker stays. Despite the drugging and rape of a couple of under-age girls by Dan, despite the weird behaviour, despite the somewhat over the top sense of menace and madness, and especially despite Mick's somewhat wishy washy assertions that "he" didn't rape those girls... but. And that's possibly the big problem with BABYLON. There are ... Read Review |
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All My Enemies, Barry Maitland26/07/2012 - 4:27pmAllen & Unwin have re-released Barry Maitland's ALL MY ENEMIES, the third book in the Brock and Kolla series. Given that the book was originally published in around 1996 there were a few things intriguing me. Obviously, whether or not it would stand the test of time, but also, what would it be like going back to a book so early in a series that has since become a favourite. Interestingly I could still remember this book from the first time I read it, mostly because of the way that it starts to build this ongoing team, partly because of the interesting setting in which ... Read Review |
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Cue the Easter Bunny, Liz Evans25/07/2012 - 2:44pmGrace Smith has always been one of my favourite of the fraught, vaguely madcap female private detective sub-genre for a bunch of different reasons. Firstly I love Grace herself. Slightly bats definitely, sometimes refreshingly stupid, often times bordering on out of control, there's something refreshingly real and unmanufactured about Grace. She's the sort of girl you could see yourself having a drink with and whilst you might be a bit worried about the state of your shoes at the end of the night, your personal ego's not going to come away feeling somewhat underbaked. ... Read Review |
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Devil-Devil, Graeme Kent16/07/2012 - 2:27pmWhen it comes to convoluted reasons for picking up a book I suspect this is not a bad one. I've had DEVIL-DEVIL on the piles here for quite some time, but I suddenly realised it was the perfect book to read as a comparison with a manuscript I was looking at. Love it when you have a win-win like this. Set in the Solomon Islands, Ben Kella is a man steeped in island tradition, educated in western tradition. He's worked in London and Manhattan, and is now a sergeant in the Islands' police force as well as holding the hereditary role of Aofia, a peacekeeper of the Lau people ... Read Review |
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Dougal's Diary, David Greagg (review by Madelyn)10/07/2012 - 2:20pmDougal is an ordinary cat, living an ordinary life as a household pet. His diary tells the story of his life, beginning as a newborn kitten and ending as a happy household cat. Along the way he has several visits to the pound and shares adventures with fellow adoptee Shadow. You discover what Dougal thinks of all the things that happen to him and exactly how he sees the people and other creatures he interacts with. I think this is a very good book. I love how the cats don’t play when human are around, and then play for hours when they are gone. It’s interesting to read ... Read Review |
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Dougal's Diary, David Greagg (review by Chloe)06/07/2012 - 2:21pmDougal’s Diary is about a kitten that tries to be a good cat for his humans but his little sister Shadow doesn’t make it easy. I loved the book from the start and it was very humorous. I would also like to read it again. I, for one, would recommend other children my age to read this book and hope they would like it just as much as I did. Dougal’s Diary kept me interested the whole time. It was also very hard to put it down because I liked it so much. The purpose of the story is to definitely entertain people and also see a cat’s point of view. On every ... Read Review |
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Paving the New Road, Sulari Gentill20/06/2012 - 5:31pmThe reader of my reviews will know I've become a bit of a fan of the Rowland Sinclair series (which is quite surprising for somebody who normally prefers to lurk deep on the dark side), so PAVING THE NEW ROAD was a welcome arrival. Basing the story in 1933, sending Sinclair and his companions to Germany all sounded rather interesting. Although I will confess that one of my pet peeves - the inclusion of high profile real-life figures in fiction - made me somewhat nervous. Having said that, if you're going to include a real-life figure, then why not somebody famous for being around ... Read Review |
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Blackwattle Creek, Geoffrey McGeachin14/06/2012 - 1:14pmFollowing on from the excellent THE DIGGER'S REST HOTEL, BLACKWATTLE CREEK sees Charlie Berlin and now wife Rebecca, 10 years on. Married with two kids, they are struggling to make ends meet on a policeman's wage, living in the glaringly new suburbs of Melbourne. With a solid but unremarkable career in the police behind him, Berlin's refuge from the demons that continue to haunt him after WWII, is his happy little family unit, despite his sometimes fractious relationship with his son Peter, despite their ... Read Review |
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Hell's Fury, PD Martin12/06/2012 - 2:31pmBeing a bit of a fan of thriller's, I was very intrigued by PD Martin's HELL'S FURY. Not just because it has a central female protagonist, and there simply aren't enough good, strong female characters in thriller fiction (particularly spy or military style thrillers), but also because there's a very current story thread at the central core - a CIA operative captured by the Taliban, disowned by the CIA, saved with a price to pay for that rescue. I was possibly less intrigued by the concept of "The Committee", being somewhat twitchy about mercenary, outside the law, ... Read Review |
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Zero Hour in Phnom Penh, Christopher G Moore31/05/2012 - 2:46pmSet mostly in Phnom Penh, ZERO HOUR IN PHNOM PENH is based in the early 1990's, at the end of the civil war that tore Cambodia apart, in the wake of the appalling Khmer Rouge regime. UN peacekeeping forces are on the streets, gunfire is regularly heard, and PI Vincent Calvino is looking for an American man - a farang - who has friends in Thailand keen to get in touch with him. With a distinctly noir sensibility, ZERO HOUR takes Calvino from where he is based in Thailand into the dangerous, unpredictable, unstable and decidedly seedy world of underground Phnom Penh. It's a ... Read Review |
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In Her Blood, Annie Hauxwell09/05/2012 - 1:18pmWhilst it's not particularly unusual to have a flawed central protagonist, unapologetic ones are less common. Add being female, and that makes IN HER BLOOD's Catherine Berlin a rather rare beast, and a very welcome one. Set in London after the Global Financial meltdown, Berlin is a government investigator who receives a tip-off about a local loan shark, then finds her informant floating in the Limehouse Basin, brutally killed. The first complication is that her female informant has been anonymous, and even the police seem to have trouble identifying her. The second ... Read Review |
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After the Darkness, Honey Brown20/03/2012 - 3:49pmThe problem I had with an earlier book of Honey Brown's was that whilst the thriller aspects of the book really worked, I was less convinced by the post-apocalyptic scenario and the happy ever after ending. AFTER THE DARKNESS solved those personal prejudices, and presented me with a thriller that worked on just about every level. I just love thrillers that make the hair on the back of my neck stand up, that present a scenario that's unexpected, quietly disconcerting and extremely worrying. Particularly where the tension ramps up, the outcome's not immediately apparent, ... Read Review |
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Die Twice, Andrew Grant14/03/2012 - 1:53pmI probably should sit down and give a detailed, reasoned and careful analysis of DIE TWICE by Andrew Grant. But can I just go with "I really liked this book". Because "I really liked this book". I'm not sure why to be frank. Perhaps it was the structure - I liked the opening of chapters laying out a principle that the central character David Trevellyan learnt in basic training, which he then went on to demonstrate. Perhaps it was the level of action which was fast paced, tight and very nicely done. Perhaps it was the character of David Trevellyan, a bit of a later ... Read Review |
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A Dissection of Murder, Felicity Young29/02/2012 - 5:29pmA DISSECTION OF MURDER is the first in a series of books from Western Australian author Felicity Young. Set in London at the turn of the twentieth Century, featuring Dr Dody McCleland, the first female autopsy surgeon, the action in this book takes place in the midst of the Suffragette struggle, with the crime being investigated the death of a prominent suffragette during a rally that turned particularly violent. More historical crime fiction, in other words. Not so long ago I'd have been dodging this particular sub-genre. Particularly when it comes with a hefty mixing ... Read Review |
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Blacklands, Belinda Bauer22/02/2012 - 1:51pmWhilst reading BLACKLANDS by Belinda Bauer it was a bit hard to get your head around the idea that this was a debut novel. it's so assured It wasn't at all surprising to find it had won a CWA Gold Dagger. It's the story of how the very determined, engaging and just a bit naive Steven Lamb decides to sort out the mess in his family. As the blurb puts it: "Dear Mr Avery I am looking for WP. Can you help me? Sincerely SL, 111 Barnstaple Road, Shipcott, Somerset. He was only twelve, he reasoned: he couldn't ... Read Review |
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A Noble Killing, Barbara Nadel16/02/2012 - 12:55pmAnother series that I really should be doing a better job keeping up with as Barbara Nadel writes about Turkey in a way that's vivid, believable and extremely entertaining. A NOBLE KILLING is the 13th book in the Inspector Cetin Ikmen series, although it might be fairer to combine that with Inspector Mehmet Suleyman who seems to have raised his profile in this book. (Needless to say I'm behind, so I'm not sure if this is a phenomena in this book or something that's been ongoing). Not, I suspect, would Suleyman be that thrilled with his starring role here as most of the ... Read Review |