Book Review

Final Curtain, Kjersti Scheen

03/10/2007 - 5:48pm

FINAL CURTAIN is the first of Kjersti Scheen's books to be translated into English and is also the first in a series of books feating ex-actress turned private investigator Margaret Moss.

Margaret's had a go at quite a few things in her life and hasn't really been able to settle to anything much - being a PI at least means she is her own boss, and can quite comfortably do everything "Her Way". Living with her daughter Karen (she of the bright green hair and teenage passions), in an apartment in the same house as Margaret's elderly aunt, Margaret drives a beat old Renault ... Read Review

The Brotherhoods, Arthur Veno

02/10/2007 - 3:21pm

This book is sub-titled "Inside the Outlaw Motorcycle Clubs" and it reads as written by somebody who has sort of got inside the Outlaw Motorcycle clubs but isn't really. The author is an academic who has made a reputation studying Outlaw Motorcyle Clubs and as an "official" observer of their activities. He has performed this role as "official" observer on a number of major motorcyle runs - reporting on both the bikies and police activities.

Interesting as an observational report both from the point of view of the policing strategies used in various locations, and from the ... Read Review

Death in Dreamtime, S.H. Courtier

02/10/2007 - 1:19pm

Death in Dreamtime was published by Wakefield Crime Classics in 1993. Originally published in 1959, S H Courtier is one of the classic crime fiction authors in Australia who is little known / commented on. Which is a pity.

In Death in Dreamtime Jock Corless ends up at Ungimillia, home of The Alchera or Dream Time Land - a sort of "theme park" of Aboriginal mythology. He's travelled through to New South Wales in response to a very cryptic letter from his cousin who, as Jock arrives, is found dead on the road.

Death in Dreamtime certainly reads like a novel ... Read Review

Colour Scheme, Ngaio Marsh

02/10/2007 - 12:48pm

I was prompted to re-read this after an absence of 3(cough) something years (good grief when did those years happen), by a discussion on 4 Mystery Addicts (the best online crime fiction discussion group that I've ever found).

Colour Scheme is one of Ngaio Marsh's books actually set in her homeland of New Zealand and was, I think, originally released in 1953 or 1943. Despite the age of the book it still holds up pretty well. There's a lovely underlying sense of humour about it, a bit too much stuffed shirt middle class English twit in some of the characters maybe, but ... Read Review

Hidden, Katy Gardner

02/10/2007 - 12:05pm

Mel Stenning has been a victim most of her life. Adopted by very conventional parents, she rebelled (but hated herself for doing it), getting into all sorts of situations and ultimately ending up in Australia, pregnant with no chance of having anything to do with her daughter Poppy's father. Returning to England she's a single mother, working for a living, finding it hard to cope, when she meets Simon. Never really convinced that Simon loves her, and constantly obsessed that he's remained involved with his last girlfriend Rosa, Mel is pregnant again. When Simon proposes, they marry ... Read Review

The Coroner's Lunch, Colin Cotterill

01/10/2007 - 6:36pm

In 1975, and in the middle of Laos' new communist regime's teething problems, septuagenarian surgeon Dr Siri Paiboun finds himself dragged back to work. This time as the chief coroner, a post he has absolutely no training for and little or no equipment, staff, forensic support or resources of any kind.

When the wife of a Party leader dies suddenly and the bodies of three Vietnamese soldiers are discovered, seemingly tortured and thrown into a local reservoir, Siri uses a very strange combination of autopsy results and assistance from his friends (living and dead) to ... Read Review

The Shape of Water, Andrea Camilleri

01/10/2007 - 5:03pm

THE SHAPE OF WATER is the first in Camilleri's series of books featuring Inspector Salvo Montalbano. Set in Vigata, a fictional seacoast town in southern Sicily, The Shape of Water finds Montalbano investigating the death of a local influential in the very insalubrious surrounds of "The Pasture".

The Pasture, once a goat grazing site is now the place to pick up a drug deal or a prostitute. Montalbano is already a bit suspicious about Luparello's death but when pressure starts being applied by a politician, a judge and a bishop he digs his heels in and insists that an ... Read Review

Behind the Night Bazaar, Angela Savage

01/10/2007 - 3:46pm

Angela Savage won the Victorian Premiers Literary Award for Best Unpublished Manuscript by Emerging Author in 2004 for this book, then called Thai Died.

Jayne Keeney is an expat Australian woman who, in order to avoid a predictable life, left Australia and started teaching English in Thailand. Whilst helping out a student by doing some surveillance on a cheating partner she discovers she has quite a flair for detecting, and that there is a demand for this type of service. She gives up teaching and sticks to working as a private detective in Bangkok doing a good trade in ... Read Review

Fags and Lager, Charlie Williams

01/10/2007 - 3:22pm

Taking up from DEADFOLK (a debut with a punch if there ever was one), FAGS AND LAGER finds out just how far Royston Blake, head doorman at Hoppers and self-confessed hard man of Mangel, will go for free stack of tinnies and fags.

It seems it's a fair way, as long as you don't mind that Blake does everything his own way (even though he's singing the theme tune from Minder - you just can't help thinking a karaoke version of My Way would be better).

Mangel is a grim little town full of grim little individuals and Blake rules (or at least he thinks he does). ... Read Review

Fabulous Nobodies, Lee Tulloch

01/10/2007 - 3:19pm

Not a formal review, more a bit of a comment. I read this because I've been trying to make sure I plug some gaps in my Australian author reading.

Fabulous Nobodies isn't crime fiction, I think if I was trying to find a "category" it would be cringe fiction :)

Reality Nirvana Tuttle, known to her friends and fans as Really is a tad obsessed with fashion. Actually tad's probably not the word: utterly, completely, obsessively, dangerously, weirdly obsessive is probably better.

This is a book about one girls life in New York, working as a door bitch ... Read Review

Hoddle Street, Peter Haddow

01/10/2007 - 3:10pm

This was published some considerable time ago, but for some reason in the last few weeks I've been drawn towards some True Crime books. This was a particularly harrowing read, all about the events of Hoddle Street in 1987 - told as short snippets from the viewpoint of many of the people involved - the dead, the injured and the police desperate to get the manic situation under control. I think it was that method of telling the story that made it all the more stark. Excellent book to give you a true feeling for how the unimaginable and unexpected affects everyone.Read Review

Spider Trap, Barry Maitland

01/10/2007 - 2:54pm

The bodies of two young girls are found, shot and discarded in an old abandoned warehouse in the Cockpit Lane district in Brixton, London. Nearby the activity of the police investigation sparks the interest of a young schoolboy who is obsessed with a school myth about "Brown Bread" and an abandoned wasteland near the warehouse and his school. Nobody really knows what "Brown Bread" is, but the whole school has known for years that it's hidden on that bit of wasteland. The problem is that the wasteland reveals 3 skeletons and they don't seem to be the "Brown Bread" that everyone's been ... Read Review

City of Animals, Alan Mills

01/10/2007 - 2:51pm

CITY OF ANIMALS is set in Sydney, in and around the Royal Prince Albert Zoo, which actually doesn't exist but bears a striking resemblance physically to the real Taronga Zoo. Let's hope that the resemblance ends there.

New zoo director, Dr James Rivers is struggling with his board of Governors and the competing priorities of zoos to be financially successful and maintain their primary objective of care of the animals within the zoo, alongside the increasing push for research, breeding programs and protection for endangered species. BBC TV Producer Nikiya Adams is ... Read Review

Immediate Action, Andy McNab

01/10/2007 - 2:49pm

Published after Bravo Two Zero, in IMMEDIATE ACTION McNab takes us back to his early life. He starts, albeit briefly, with being raised by his adoptive parents after being found as a baby on the steps of Guy's Hospital.

In McNab's very matter of fact style he relates how, as a juvenile delinquent, he decided he had a choice between jail and a nothing much of a life, and the Army. After fighting against the IRA in South Armagh McNab decides that the SAS is where he wants to be and he goes in for "Selection" as the process is known. Selection is a gruelling physical and ... Read Review

The Blood-Dimmed Tide, Rennie Airth

01/10/2007 - 2:42pm

The mutilated body of a young girl is found hidden in a wood by ex-Scotland Yard Detective Inspector John Madden. Her face has been brutally battered and she has been raped. Whilst the local police are concentrated on searching for a tramp known to be in the area at the time, Madden is not convinced this is a one-off opportunistic killing.

THE BLOOD-DIMMED TIDE is the second book in a series based in the 1930's, incorporating now retired DI Madden and his wife, Helen. John Madden now works as a farmer and his wife has a local GP practice in the small village just down the ... Read Review

An Uncommon Murder, Anabel Donald

01/10/2007 - 2:37pm

First in the series "The Notting Hill Mysteries" originally published in 1992, An Uncommon Murder introduces Alex Tanner is another entrant in a long tradition of accidental investigators, although working, as she does, as a freelance researcher - this time for a possible magazine article - she's got some good reasons to get herself into the situations she finds herself in.

An interesting character, An Uncommon Murder was a good investigation / character based story with a well carried out complication at the end.Read Review

A Tale Etched in Blood and Hard Black Pencil, Christopher Brookmyre

01/10/2007 - 2:36pm

DS Gillespie suspects they are not dealing with the sharpest pencils in the box when she's called to the discovery of two partially disfigured, roughly hidden bodies in the forest. The reputation of the killers is not enhanced greatly when they leave the receipts for all the gear they bought for disposing of the bodies behind, but the whole thing moves further into the surreal for Gillespie when she can identify both the victims as locals and people she knows all too well from her own school days.

A TALE ETCHED moves between school days in the 1970's and the current ... Read Review

Easy Meat, John Harvey

01/10/2007 - 2:35pm

A fifteen-year-old tearaway is obviously heading for a whole lot of trouble, but when he seemingly commits suicide in a youth detention centre after nearly bludgeoning an elderly couple to death, there just seems to be something more to this than originally meets the eye.

When the senior policeman put in charge of the enquiry into the boys death is then found bludgeoned to death, things start to take on a more sinister feeling and rapidly becoming increasingly complicated. Charlie Resnick is put in charge of the death of the enquiry into the death of a senior officer, ... Read Review

Hell's Kitchen, Chris Niles

01/10/2007 - 2:33pm

From the book:

"Cyrus - is a millionaire recluse. Oh and a serial killer. His first victims are Gus and Susie Niedermeyer, a newly married couple who knew apartment hunting in New York would be hell, they just didn't think it would end their short lives.

Tye - is a beautiful young woman from London, who imagines she can trade her cover-girl looks for a free stay in a downtown loft.

Quinn - is a writer who's out of ideas and running out of luck. He wants to keep a foothold in Manhattan without losing his shirt - and his girlfriend.

... Read Review

Lang, Kjell Westö

01/10/2007 - 2:32pm

Kjell Westo is a Swedish speaking Finnish author, who has previously published poetry, short stories and three novels. LANG is his first suspense / crime novel.

The central character, Lang, is a twice divorced, well-known novelist and host of a TV discussion panel show in Finland. He's a very self-obsessed, slightly pretentious man who totally loses personal control when he meets Sarita - a very self-contained, distant woman. Lang and Sarita develop a complicated and tortuous personal relationship which is not helped by the presence of Sarita's ex-husband Marko. Lang ... Read Review

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