All the Reviews

A Place to Bury Strangers, Grant Nicol

Well this is surprising, and a testament to the power of a bit of a tidy up sometimes, because in the process of doing so I discovered I'd not published these notes ... a long time ago. Apologies to the author - this is a series of four books set in Iceland, from Kiwi Author Grant Nicol. The main character is Grímur Karlsson and it's well worth reading.

A dour, somewhat put upon character Karlsson is one of those dogged, downtrodden sorts of detectives that seems to specialise in falling into major cases, literally ... Read Review

Three Reasons for Revenge, Dervla McTiernan

Alexis Turner walks into a police station to report her assault by a psychologist - the same man that DS Judith Lee has taken a report about in the past. By the end of that same day Turner appears to have vanished, and Lee is dealing with the guilt that she feels over the poor advice she gave the first accuser 10 years ago. It's a job a bit outside Lee's normal remit, but nothing in Lee's life is exactly normal right now. She's also dealing with the fallout of her arrest of a fellow police officer, a nepo baby of the worst kind, a corrupt thug and a bully protected by his higher up ... Read Review

Redbelly Crossing, Candice Fox

Inter-generational trauma is explored with explosive impact in Candice Fox's latest novel REDBELLY CROSSING.

When a young woman is found stabbed to death in an upstairs bedroom of a busy pub in the small country town of Redbelly Crossing, it brings together two brothers Russell and Evan Powder. Both cops, Evan is more local to the scene, lower ranked, with a professional past in which he's made a grave error.

Russell is the older brother, parachuted in from the city, he's there because he's also screwed up more recently and has been sent to the back of beyond ... Read Review

Old Games, Fiona Hardy

The morally flexible PI team of Alice and Teddy are back in a perfectly bonkers scenario in Fiona Hardy’s new novel Old Games.

Alice and Teddy, introduced to readers in the excellent Unbury the Dead, are best mates and private investigators who work for ‘Choker’, a man with an eclectic team of people who help him keep things on his version of the straight and ... Read Review

Lenny Marks Gets Away with Murder, Kerryn Mayne

Despite the title and the cover, and maybe the tagline "Lenny Marks is excellent at not having a life", this book, it turned out is not a cozy mystery, a quirky outing nor is it a thriller or a rom-com. What it is is rather harder to pinpoint though as this debut was is an exploration of a neuro-divergent life that is complicated, emotional and sometimes heartbreaking. 

Which is why my choice of media for this - an audio book - was not the best option for this reader, because I just wanted to go back too often to check what it was I should have heard, but obviously missed ... Read Review

One True Word, Snæbjörn Arngrímsson

The author is well known in his native Iceland for translations, books for children, and as a publisher, but ONE TRUE WORD is his first thriller, and it's guaranteed to divide readers.

The premise is, on the one hand, straight forward, in that after an increasing period of snarking at each other, Júlía and her husband Gíó head off on a small boat to an uninhabited, small island in the middle of a freezing fjord as part of a research trip that Júlía claims is absolutely vital for her current work assignment. She then abandons him there in the depths of the Icelandic winter ... Read Review

The Shark, Emma Styles

A serial killer is stalking the suburbs of Perth in Western Australia, targeting young girls and women, swimmers whose bodies are later found on the shoreline. Their deaths are gruesome, the police slow to react, leaving two young women - Raych and Carmen - with feelings of disempowerment, anger and vengeance, who find themselves in the position of taking matters into their own hands. It's important to note that this is not yet another serial killer novel - it's a story of two young women who have had enough.

THE SHARK is a novel built on fury. The anger of young women ... Read Review

Left Behind, Martine Kropkowski

A mystery thriller that turns into an unresolved dystopian nightmare was not what I was expecting when I started LEFT BEHIND. Nor was it necessarily obviously where it was heading as the story of a camping trip to K'gari started out. Two couples, connected through Des and Luke's shared training as paramedics, Annabelle and Luke are married - and there are tensions. Des and Julianni are recently dating, and in the early stages of discovery and doubt. The tension between the married couple is palpable, right from the start of the story, although most of the ... Read Review

The Gambler, J.P. Pomare

Any new novel from J.P. Pomare needs to be approached with caution. You're going to have to make sure that you've cleared your calendar, stacked up the pre-made meals, and maybe set some alarms to remind you of the animal medication schedules and feeding rounds, because I can just about guarantee that the "well I don't know what's going on here" is rapidly going to suck you in and hang onto you until the final page.

He's a deceptive writer, this man. Setting up a story in THE GAMBLER that started out almost gently, creating a few doubts that the planning mentioned above ... Read Review