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Dead and Kicking, Geoff McGeachin10/09/2016 - 3:47pmYou have just got to love a book that has an opening scene that takes you deep into the Vietnam jungle, right into the conflict and deep into the complicated politics of the war. Or at least that's what it could have been like. Some things are just never what they seem and Alby is now working as a still photographer whilst serving a suspension from the "day job" - photographer and spy with a covert Australian government department. He is never going to get on with the bureaucracy. The problem is that the movie he is working on is based on the life of a dead ... Read Review |
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Little Star, John Ajvide Lindqvist09/09/2016 - 4:15pmThe problem, if there is one, with the receipt of a new book by John Ajvide Lindqvist is the vague worry that one day there just could be a book by this author that doesn't quite work for me. If there is such a book in Lindqvist's imagination, LITTLE STAR isn't it. I don't quite know what it is about Lindqvist's writing but he consistently takes this reader into territory that I'd normally run a mile from - be it vampires in LET THE RIGHT ONE IN, zombies in HANDLING THE UNDEAD or mysticism and profound parental attachment in HARBOUR, so nothing much has changed as I found ... Read Review |
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Thrill City, Leigh Redhead09/09/2016 - 4:05pmTHRILL CITY has arrived. The fourth Simone Kirsch book from Australian writer Leigh Redhead has been much anticipated by fans of this fantastic, Melbourne-based, stripper turned Private Investigator series. Mind you, it's not just Simone that I was pleased to see back, but Chloe, Sean, Alex, Curtis, all the other strippers, the bars and the way that the streetscape comes alive. When bestselling crime author Nick Austin pays Simone to let him follow her on a few jobs - to get the feel of how a female PI works - that leads to a writers festival, a crime panel, a couple of ... Read Review |
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Let the Right One In, John Ajvide Lindqvist08/09/2016 - 4:06pmOskar is a timid and lonely little boy, living in a high-rise building in one of those suburbs of Stockholm that was built with great fanfare in the 70's and ignored from then on. Oskar likes to eat sweets, collects murder stories in a scrapbook and fantasises about stabbing the boys in his class that torment and bully him constantly. Oskar is also a resilient and surprisingly self-sufficient little boy. His tormentors beat him, but they certainly aren't defeating him. But lonely little boys tend to watch what is happening around them, and Oskar is intrigued by the people that quietly ... Read Review |
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Cinderella Girl, Carin Gerhardsen07/09/2016 - 4:11pmCINDERELLA GIRL is the second Conny Sjøberg book from Swedish author Carin Gerhardsen, the English title of the first book being THE GINGERBREAD HOUSE. Having missed that one when it came out in the middle of 2013, there's some catching up required. It did seem to take a very long time for anything much to happen here. A lot of time is spent introducing the reader to two teenage sisters, living with their alcoholic mother, in less than satisfactory circumstances. Borderline neglected, these two girls are very used to looking after themselves, and some of their methods are ... Read Review |
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Blood Wedding, Pierre Lamaitre07/09/2016 - 2:06pmWe've all done it - lost the car keys and then found them again. Misplaced the notebook, torn the place apart, then found it weeks later exactly where we thought it should have been. We've had emails go missing, meetings reset, appointments changed. There have been times when most of us have contemplated the possibility that we're starting to go slightly mad. Which is exactly the reaction that Sophie has when weird things start happening to her. Although the fuzziness in her head, the strange losses and reappearances, and the peculiar mistakes are nothing at all compared to blacking ... Read Review |
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Traces of Red, Paddy Richardson06/09/2016 - 4:10pmThere are a precious few Paddy Richardson books tucked within the stacks of unread novels around here - sort of like secreted Easter eggs, to be unearthed and devoured when required. Needing something that would be reliably good recently, TRACES OF RED was just the thing as Paddy Richardson is a particularly talented writer of psychological thrillers. Even if a twist can be seen coming, there's an emotional wallop that comes with it to keep the reader engaged. When the twist isn't so obvious, it still comes with a side serve of something to really make you think. And everyone of her ... Read Review |
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The Secret Scripture, Sebastian Barry06/09/2016 - 3:06pmNope - didn't, just didn't work for me. Even after the usual vigorous and fascinating discussion at f2fbookclub.Read Review |
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Bad Blood, Gary Kemble05/09/2016 - 1:08pmGary Kemble's first book SKIN DEEP was shortlisted for the 2016 Ned Kelly Award for a very good reason. It was a hands on, in your face, blood, guts and glory paranormal crime mashup with a quintessentially Australian bloke central character that worked incredibly well. So well that a reader would be excused for wondering where Harry Hendrick could be taken next. Straight into the web of a dominatrix with an overwhelming ability to manipulate her clients wasn't quite what I was expecting. Yet again, in BAD BLOOD, we have something that just shouldn't work for this reader ... Read Review |
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Severed Past, Anthony R. Jansen03/09/2016 - 7:59pmAs a reader and reviewer, the thing that stays always in the back of my mind is how incredibly hard it must be to write a book. To get from the opening line to "the end" resolving all of the threads, keeping track of all of the characters, getting everybody to where they have to be to resolve the story. This review for SEVERED PAST has been a long-time in the making because it sometimes takes a lot of careful thought and some re-reading to finally straighten out my observations and thoughts. It's particularly difficult to be coherent when you've had some issues with a book ... Read Review |
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Dead Girl Sing, Tony Cavanaugh03/09/2016 - 4:53pmFollow up to PROMISE, DEAD GIRL SING again takes Richards out into the field, away from his retirement, all in the defence of somebody he feels he owes. Triggered by a phone call from Ida, a girl he never expected to hear from again (even though he left that phone on / charged / ready), Richards is suddenly not just responsible for the life of a missing girl, but also a dead cop and two dead girls. Somehow in the middle of the notorious schoolies week on the Gold Coast, in the middle of that seething mass of hormones, alcohol and crazy that descends every year, Richards ... Read Review |
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City of Lost Girls, Declan Hughes02/09/2016 - 4:19pmOkay, so having finally worked out that this review has never actually made it into the light of day, for reasons which, well no reason. Let's just say idiocy on my part and move on. CITY OF THE LOST GIRLS deserves much better attention than I've given it. The fifth book in the Ed Loy series, Loy is one of those rumpled Irish PI types, part philospher, part hardman, and in this book he's walking the mean streets of Dublin and LA. Quintessentially Irish in the descriptions and observations sprinkled throughout the book, it comes as no surprise to recently (did I ... Read Review |
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Medical Murder, Robert M. Kaplan02/09/2016 - 4:15pmI've been meaning to read this book for a while now - the subject being doctor's who kill. It's a smallish book that summarises a number of medical murders - including the best known from recent times - Dr Harold Shipman in the UK. But it doesn't just concentrate on Shipman. The book also looks at the cases such as the Australian experience with Deep Sleep Therapy at Chelmsford; Dr William Palmer who poisoned people for the insurance money; Dr Marcel Petiot in 1944 Occupied Paris; Dr Radovan Karadizic the psychiatrist who led the genocide in the Bosnian war and a number of other ... Read Review |
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Black Water Lilies, Michel Bussi02/09/2016 - 3:27pmMichel Bussi is a renowned crime fiction writer and winner of many awards in his native France, BLACK WATER LILIES being the second of his books translated into English. It would appear from both of them (the first was AFTER THE CRASH) he is particularly good at unusual, absolutely enthralling scenarios. Start reading BLACK WATER LILIES and you could be forgiven for double-checking the classification of this book. It doesn't read at all like a ... Read Review |
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The Murder Trail, Leonie Mateer01/09/2016 - 3:59pmThe third book in the Audrey Murders series, THE MURDER TRAIL is set in a very picturesque location in the far north of New Zealand. Audrey owns a beautiful holiday cabin property perched on a rural mountain top. She's been unlucky in love and she's a serial killing psychopath. Not having read either of the earlier books in the series, this reader relied heavily on the blurb to set up the scenario. From the psychopathic serial killer, through to the likelihood that this property is remote, and the whole drug cartel moved into one of the cabins bit. Pretty soon the sketchy ... Read Review |
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Burial Rites, Hannah Kent01/09/2016 - 1:14pmRead by our f2f bookclub, this turned into a fascinating discussion. Reading BURIAL RITES I will admit to ambivalent feelings. On the one hand obviously extensively researched, and carefully crafted, there was something slightly distant and worthy about it that frequently made it feel a little like hard work. Having said that, deeply admiring of some of the choices this author made - to not sugar coat an ending and to leave plenty of elements to the reader's imagination. It turned out to be a great book to discuss, around a table with a few bottles of wine. Some ... Read Review |
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Bold Blood, Lindy Kelly31/08/2016 - 3:50pmLindy Kelly is an experienced eventing rider in New Zealand and she's taken the idea of write what you know to heart. BOLD BLOOD is set deep in the world of horse eventing - although for the author's sake, you have to hope that some of the action in this book is made up! Dr Caitlin Summerfield was raised with horses. By a mother that she most definitely does not get on with, who she still blames for the premature death of the father and brother she adored. Called back to the family farm after her mother has an accident and is in hospital, deep in a coma, Caitlin has to ... Read Review |
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In the Cold Dark Ground, Stuart MacBride31/08/2016 - 11:30amWriting a long term series has to create some issues for authors that probably some of we fans rarely consider. All we want is the next book. IN THE COLD DARK GROUND is the 10th in the Logan McRae series from Stuart MacBride, and I'm really sorry about this but I want the 11th pretty well now. As in straight away. It goes without saying that I've always been a huge fan of this series, and aside from the wonderful, strong, often slightly eccentric characters, the reason for that is the constant changes in circumstance that McRae, DCI Steel and those around them find ... Read Review |
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The Love of a Bad Man, Laura Elizabeth Woollett30/08/2016 - 4:16pmIt's a question that has preyed on a lot of people's minds over the years - why do women fall for, and stay with, the worst possible men? What author Laura Elizabeth Woollett has done is imagine her author's pen into the minds and lives of some of these women in her series of short stories - THE LOVE OF A BAD MAN. Which ends up presenting the reader with an interesting series of fictional looks inside real women's minds that feel very real. The range of women is historically and geographically varied, and the style of storytelling beguiling enough to have reader's ... Read Review |
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Two Days, Iain Ryan30/08/2016 - 1:47pmCurrent readers of TWO DAYS will be greatly relieved to know that DRAINLAND (Book 1) was released in early August 2016 because this novella is the prequel and it would be very unfair if we had to wait for the full show. Iain Ryan does a particularly good job when it comes to noir set in unlikely places. He's also particularly good at action scenes, a constant level of menace and threat, creating good twisty plots, and putting it all together with a good sense of time, place and some engaging characters. What more, after all, could the thriller reader want. ... Read Review |