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Cars & Girls, Evangeline Jennings, Tee Tyson, Madeline Harvey & Zoe Spencer22/07/2016 - 3:56pmThe combination of cars and girls makes absolute sense to me. Include them in a series of noir styled, dark and pointed short stories, and CARS & GIRLS from the Pankhurst Collective was both unexpected and an absolute pleasure to read. Whilst the central theme of cars and girls carries through each of the stories in the collection, they are a varied bunch, in setting, style and resolution. The exciting thing though is that no punches are pulled. This is a dark and frequently violent collection, full of explicit sex and gun battles putting the central female characters ... Read Review |
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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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Siren of the Waters, Michael Genelin21/07/2016 - 4:27pmHaving had the opportunity to read the fifth in this series a while ago I've been champing at the bit to go back to the start - SIREN OF THE WATERS. Sneaking this in amongst a lot of required reading recently was quite a treat, although now I'm wondering when I'll get a chance to read two, three and four now. Hopefully before a lot more of them come out. This series debut starts out with a car crash that has killed seven people, most of whom are prostitutes from Eastern Europe. Quickly the investigation switches to one about human trafficking, and organised crime. Along ... 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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The Twisted Knot, J.M. Peace19/07/2016 - 3:50pmThe second novel in the Constable Sammi Willis series, THE TWISTED KNOT, has Sammi returning to work after a close shave with death in the first novel (which you don't have to have read to get this one, but it wouldn't hurt). Life back at work isn't easy though, and she's currently mostly behind the desk in the station, a cause of some friction with other members of the team. It takes the death of a man, charged but never convicted of paedophilia in the past, to drag her back out in the field and what turns out to be a fraught case for the local community. ... 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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The Long Con, Barry Weston14/07/2016 - 3:58pmBarry Weston's debut novel THE LONG CON, brings Queenslander and ex-cop, now PI, Frank Cousins to the mean streets of Hobart in search of a client, good pizza, a lot of booze and coffee, and with a bit of luck, Detective Sharon Becker. In the aftermath of The Fitzgerald Inquiry into Police Corruption in Queensland, Cousins was not best pleased to discover the funds he'd salted away from the backhanders known as 'The Joke', have relocated along with his wife. An unfortunate encounter with her and her new live-in lover means that Cousins has to make himself scarce in a big hurry. ... 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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The Fingerprint Thief, Carolyn Beasley12/07/2016 - 7:41pmA debut crime novel from Australia, THE FINGERPRINT THIEF is written with the focus on the forensic technician. Not that surprising given the "CSI Effect" that so many people talk about these days. Set in Melbourne, the novel uses Melbourne's Williamstown Beach as the location of the body, with the action set within that inner-city environment, on the fringes of Melbourne's CBD, developing a somewhat dark and sombre atmosphere, quite fitting for the action and location. Reading is such a personal experience that often it's possible to find that, despite a personal dislike ... Read Review |
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Starlight Peninsula, Charlotte Grimshaw12/07/2016 - 12:19pmSTARLIGHT PENINSULA is about a young woman who, after the breakdown of her marriage, looks back at her life. Particularly to the time when her first real love, Arthur died. Needless to say there's much about this that is reflective, bordering sometimes on melancholy. To match that mood, the location fits perfectly. Eloise Hay lives on the Starlight Peninsula, in Auckland, an odd combination of modern housing and windswept marsh, occupied yet strangely deserted and isolated, it's a quiet place, the sort of place that somebody could love to be in, and yet find it's atmosphere ... Read Review |
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The Silent Inheritance, Joy Dettman11/07/2016 - 3:50pmTHE SILENT INHERITANCE strides with purpose for the bulk of the novel as the field narrows and possibilities are discarded. There are a number of separate narratives running alongside each other. The characters are somewhat of a curious yet dispassionate bunch. As a result, readers subsequently may not invest too much in worrying about their fate. It is difficult to engage with their struggles, even as they discover and connect with each other. It also means that by the novel’s end there are quite a few threads that need tidying up. Set in Melbourne THE SILENT INHERITANCE ... 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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The Mark of Halam, Thomas Ryan30/06/2016 - 2:54pmThe second Jeff Bradley novel from New Zealand author, Thomas Ryan, certainly made me really want to shunt my as yet unread copy of the first (The Field of Blackbirds) up in priority. A thriller in construction, THE MARK OF HALAM is fast-paced, big-threat, enemies on all sides, one man to save the day in style. It helps that Jeff Bradley is a reluctant sort of a hero, dragged into the conflict initially when a good friend is threatened, and ultimately because there is a terrorist plot, and then there's something much more personal. Setting THE MARK OF HALAM ... 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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The Snowman, Jo Nesbo22/06/2016 - 4:53pmBrief commentary, rather than a full review. Read for our f2f bookclub, every book by Jo Nesbø reminds you to read the rest of the series. It's partially the way that the balance between atmosphere, plot and character is maintained so elegantly. It's partially the way that Harry Hole might be an archetypal loner, but he's not with out a sense of humour, and profound confusion. It's also to do with the manner in which the plots are so cleverly constructed, even if we are dealing with yet another serial killer. Needless to say everything adds up ... 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 |