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Life, Keith RichardsI've had this book in the queues for such a long time, one to dip in and out of at those moments when a bit of amusement was required, I thought. Until the day I wasn't dipping, and couldn't put it down. Told very much in his own voice (I think there was a ghostwriter involved / not sure), this is a rollicking roam through the life, times, trials, triumphs and tribulations of the (to my ears at least) greatest band ever. Full of very funny one-liners and some utterly brutal honesty about a life that's been lived to the edges always. There's plenty here for ... Read Review |
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Echo Lake, Joan SauersECHO LAKE is the debut thriller from screenwriter, producer and author Joan Sauers. Set in the sleepy, scenic vista of the Southern Highlands of New South Wales, Rose McHugh has just moved to the area, as a result of a tumultuous divorce. This is an area she loved to visit when younger, and the little, slightly wonky cottage she's bought is just the sort of picturesque scene that she can imagine living out her days in, her faithful canine by her side. The cover of this book has a few clues about the styling here - with one quote referring to it is a compulsive cosy, ... Read Review |
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Marshall's Law, Ben SandersThe Marshall Grade series is American noir of the minimalist, dark kind, bought to you by New Zealander Ben Sanders. The first book AMERICAN BLOOD (reviewed at http://reviewingtheevidence.com/review.html?id=10540) introduced the central character of Marshall Grade. Grade is a classic lone wolf, vigilante machine, with no discernible soft spots and a past littered with dodgy characters. Hence his long list of enemies and a contract killer on his tail. Flushed out of hiding when somebody as close to being a ... Read Review |
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Poor People with Money, Dominic HoeyFast paced, heart-wrenching, darkly comic, Dominic Hoey’s new crime novel is dark and unrelenting. Full Review at Newtown Review of BooksRead Review |
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Keep Her Sweet, Helen FitzgeraldIt must take real writing skill to create a novel around 3.5 of the most unpleasant, conflicted, dysfunctional and frequently flat out awful people you'd ever read about, and make it as compelling and downright fascinating as KEEP HER SWEET. The premise is quite the undertaking. Parents Penny and Andeep Moloney-Singh (two of the most self-centred and delusional people you'd ever not want to meet), downsize to an inner city building in Ballarat with Penny wanting them to find themselves again, and turn their lives around (not sure Andeep was ever fully onboard with that ... Read Review |
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Lowbridge, Lucy CampbellIn 2018, Katherine Ashworth is struggling. The death of her daughter has precipitated a major falling apart, which she's self-medicating with sleeping pills and vodka. A move to the small town of her husband's childhood - Lowbridge - is the beginning of the fight for Katherine to regain a purpose to her life, and stop the self-destruction. That search for meaning, precipitated particularly by husband Jamie's threat to force her into rehab if she doesn't take immediate steps to straighten herself out, leads to a chance meeting at the local Historical Society, and her interest in the ... Read Review |
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The Decagon House Murders, Yukito AyatsujiPublished in 1978, THE DECAGON HOUSE MURDERS is credited with launching the shinhonkaku movement, a return to Golden Age style plotting and clue provision for the reader to discover along the way. It's often described as a subgenre of the honkaku style - which can best be described as whodunit's rather than why or howdunits. The timeframe of the emergence of both of these styles is particularly interesting, with honkaku mostly considered to have been at its most prolific from the late 1880's to the mid 1950's and shinhonkaku styled novels prevalent from the late 1980s through to ... Read Review |
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Double Lives, Kate McCaffreyHarrowing and insightful, DOUBLE LIVES by Kate McCaffrey is a very topical exploration of issues around gender, identity, acceptance and truth. There is, for some readers, some confrontational and topical subject matter being addressed here, revolving as it does around the murder of transgender woman Casey Williams, her self-confessed killer (and love interest) Jonah Scott, and a radio station opting to use their story as the opening foray into an ongoing true crime serial. After a Perth Radio station decides to air some sort of serial programme that would win back their ... Read Review |
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Blood Matters, RenéeSteeped in a sense of culture, people and place, Blood Matters is crime fiction set at the heart of a family and community. Full review at Newtown Review of Books.Read Review |
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Problem Solved: True Stories from a Blind Private Eye, Andrew ChambersFans of crime fiction, raised on a diet of lone wolf PI's, limping the dark and rainy backstreets in pursuit of justice for the downtrodden, or retribution for wrongs that nobody else cares about, might find the tales in PROBLEM SOLVED a bit of a surprise. Most of the cases that PI Andrew Chambers and his team take on are insurance fraud, embezzlement, workplace harassment and corporate espionage. On the more unsavoury side there were cases involving very tacky unfaithful spouses, and a child prostitution ring that was just awful, but despite the international travel, and the ... Read Review |
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Mole Creek, James DunbarPete McAuslan is Vietnam Vet, and retired police officer, now holed up in the family's remote cabin near the small Tasmanian town of Mole Creek, writing his memoir. His grandson Xander is a Sydney based journalist, and they are close. So close that the shock of the death of Pete, and the suicide note found with him, is profound, and worrying. Xander drops everything at home and heads for Tasmania, and the cabin where he spent so much of his life with both his grandfather, full of questions. Even before he's met at the airport by local police, and taken to the scene where ... Read Review |
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The Darkest Sin, D.V. BishopSet in Florence in 1537, The Darkest Sin is the second novel featuring Cesare Aldo, an officer of the feared Otto di Guardia e Balia. Full review at: Newtown Review of BooksRead Review |
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Pet, Catherine ChidgeyUnable to put down Catherine Chidgey's PET, I struggled to sleep last night as I thought long and hard about the "conventions" of society. If you're of a similar age to this reviewer, you'll have probably lived through the experience of the manic house clean, the wearing of "the good clothes" and the general heightened buzz that went with contact with social elites - the doctors, banks managers, religious leaders and teachers that we were told to look up to. So many of those supposed "leaders" turning out to have been people that systematically used their power and influence to ... Read Review |
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The Wife and the Widow, Christian WhiteTHE WIFE AND THE WIDOW is a standalone thriller from Australian novelist and screenwriter Christian White. It was released in 2019 and just goes to prove what a massive mess my reading life has become. This unbelievably clever, stylish book has been sitting on my to be read mountain WAAAYYY too long. Set on a strange little island that only comes alive in summer, the timeframe for this work is the dead of winter. Dead referring to the weather - it's cold, wet and miserable in the main, and to the level of activity as the population dwindles to a small number of locals, ... Read Review |
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The Satsuma Complex, Bob MortimerRecently we lucked upon one of those fabulous episodes of Would I Lie To You? in which David Mitchell has to guess if Bob Mortimer is telling the truth or not. Regular viewers of the show will realise that this is the stuff of minor legend now, with Mitchell doubting his own sanity in these moments, because no matter how outrageous, he simply can't tell whether the yarns that Mortimer is able to spin are the truth or a lie. And to be fair, most viewers would have a similar experience (perhaps without the existential shouty angst that Mitchell now displays). Needless to say, the tales ... Read Review |
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Mirror, Mirror, Who's the Killer?, Kura Jane CarpenterVery very niche, set in a fairytale world (Wyld Enchantment Woods) MIRROR, MIRROR WHO'S THE KILLER? is a non-romantic, paranormal, cozy mystery for adults with talking cats and quirky characters. Needless to say - you're going to have to be the sort of reader that likes this sort of thing for it even to get close to working for you. Basically the story revolves around a suspended Fairy Godmother, living in a frozen kingdom where magic is strictly forbidden. There's a henchman (isn't there always) with a stolen magic mirror in his pocket (okay so that's maybe not so common ... Read Review |
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Antiques and Assault, Rodney StrongThe fourth entry in the Silvermoon Retirement Village series, ANTIQUES AND ASSAULT is part of what's overall a cozy, fun series, with 98 year old Alice Atkinson at the centre of a maelstrom of murder, vice and goings on that would do more than rock a retirement home - but Alice, and the retirement village she secretly owns, are made of much sterner stuff. Just. As always with this series, it's all about Alice, although this outing is also about her granddaughter Amanda. When Amanda was 12 she was targetted by somebody at school for reasons that she can't work out. Right ... Read Review |
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A Virtuous Lie, Christina O'ReillyThe third novel featuring DSS Archie Baldrick and DC Ben Travers, A VIRTUOUS LIE follows on from INTO THE VOID and RETRIBUTION. This is a series that might be best read in order, which shouldn't be a trial for anyone new to it - the first two are tightly plotted, engaging and only 160 and 180ish pages long. One of the main reasons for reading the series from the start is that Baldrick and Travers do have some major things going on in their personal lives, and whilst this outing does go back through their histories, and experiences, RETRIBUTION is possibly the entry that ... Read Review |
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Everything to Hide, K.V. MartinsIt's going to come as no surprise to any readers of EVERYTHING TO HIDE, that author K.V. Martins is a fan of historical crime fiction, in particular, the work of Dame Agatha Christie. It should also come as no surprise that she has a background in history and archaeology. This is a novel set in 1933 Sydney, Australia, with a strong hat tip to some of the well known interests and themes of Christie, set within the world of Egyptology, wealthy families, tyrannical fathers, weekend house parties, and a locked room scenario. In this case Detective Senior Sergeant Harold ... Read Review |
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Winter Time, Laurence FearnleyFamilial love, tension, friendship and interconnections are all part of Laurence Fearnley's novel WINTER TIME, set in New Zealand's MacKenzie Basin, a location which absolutely stars in this story. A place in which breath frosts, mists are all encompassing, peaks are starkly white, snow slopes glow silver-blue, and the lakes are black and dark. It's the place that central character Roland returns to after the unexpected death of his brother, back to the landscape, the people, and the family home. Roland is alone in that cold house, with his thoughts and doubts for the ... Read Review |