Sleuth Astrid The Mind Reading Chook

Sleuth Astrid is a hi tech, mind-reading chook who rides a Harley, uses a z-com and solves mysteries like finding the magician’s lost sense of humour.Read more
Sorted on book title (not in series order)

Sleuth Astrid is a hi tech, mind-reading chook who rides a Harley, uses a z-com and solves mysteries like finding the magician’s lost sense of humour.Read more

It was the Grand Final on Saturday. Carrot the Parrot was the Coach for the Birds' team. But he'd lost his voice. Sleuth Astrid had to find it, in time for the Grand Final because the team needed the Voice of the Coach. Was the Voice captured in the TV 'Footy' studio? Lost down his throat?...Read more

Slough House is Jackson Lamb’s kingdom; a dumping ground for members of the intelligence service who’ve screwed up: left a secret file on a train, blown surveillance, or become drunkenly unreliable. They’re the service’s poor relations – the slow horses – and bitterest among them is River...Read more

It seemed a simple request. ”Can you find my daughter who has run away?” But for professional gambler O’Malley, life isn’t that simple.
There is the murder of one of his poker partners, the attention of drug dealers, money launderers, the police, the gangs, and just to top it...Read more

Stockholm swelters in an unrelenting heatwave, tensions between fascists and communists simmer past boiling point, and the city feels like a pressure cooker.
Harry Kvist wants out.
Before he can leave, his old friend and former lover Reverend Gabrielsson is...Read more

Brutha is the Chosen One. His god has spoken to him, admittedly while currently in the shape of a tortoise.
Brutha is a simple lad. He can't read. He can't write. He's pretty good at growing melons. And his wants are few.
He wants to overthrow a huge and corrupt...Read more

Returning home from a visit to a client late one summer's evening, antiquarian bookseller Adam Snow takes a wrong turning and stumbles across the derelict old White House. Compelled by curiosity, he approaches the door, and, standing before the entrance feels the unmistakeable sensation of...Read more

Half the retirees in Vigata have invested their savings with Emanuele Gargano. But now the financial wizard has disappeared, along with their money. Has Gargano flown the coop or, this being Sicily, did he run afoul of the Mafia?Read more

Ace detective Brad Chen is lured back to work by the double murder of a Whitlam government minister and the editor of his political memoirs. Solving the crimes, while searching for a missing friend, Chen is plunged into the murky worlds of international espionage and organised crime. The...Read more

After a day paddling about on the waters of the old gravel pit, two boys pull into the side to eat and spot the pale white hand of a dead man. Terry Brett, a personable con-man who has "befriended" Alice Armitage - an elderly and lonely widow - finds himself accused of a murder he did not...Read more

Never has Inspector Montalbano's character – a unique blend of humor, cynicism, compassion, earthiness, and love of good food - been more compelling than in Andrea Camilleri's third Montalbano novel, The Snack Thief.
When an elderly man is stabbed to death in an elevator and a...Read more

Vernon and Penelope Moore never want to see their son Caleb again. Not after he hit his wife and ended up in gaol. A lifetime of careful parental love wiped out in a moment.
But when retired teacher Vernon hears that Caleb is being regularly visited and savagely bashed by a...Read more

'One of the most consistently busy of Britain's home industries during the past fifty years has been the manufacture of crime fiction. Some three hundred writers now contribute, more or less regularly, to the satisfaction of the public's appetite for books about murder, theft, fraud,...Read more

When a little boy is found with his neck broken, Lhasa detective Shan Lia leaves her broken past behind and throws herself into the investigation. He is the fifth child to die the same way in as many weeks.
But Lia’s superiors don’t want her looking for a serial killer. They...Read more

Siglufjörður: an idyllically quiet fishing village in Northern Iceland, where no one locks their doors – accessible only via a small mountain tunnel. Ari Thór Arason: a rookie policeman on his first posting, far from his girlfriend in Reykjavik – with a past that he’s unable to leave behind...Read more

Oslo in November. The first snow of the season has fallen. A boy named Jonas wakes in the night to find his mother gone. Out his window, in the cold moonlight, he sees the snowman that inexplicably appeared in the yard earlier in the day. Around its neck is his mother's pink scarf. Hole...Read more

Sam Vimes is on a well-deserved holiday. But for the commander of the City Watch, a vacation in the country is anything but relaxing. The balls, the teas, the muck - not to mention all that fresh air and birdsong - are more than a bit taxing on a cynical city-born and -bred copper. Yet a...Read more

The return of Maggie Byrnes, heroine of Murder in the Telephone Exchange, finds her married, with a young son, and living in an outer Melbourne suburb. But violent death dogs her footsteps even in apparently tranquil Middleburn. It’s perhaps not that much of a surprise when widely disliked...Read more

"...and then, one Thursday, nearly 2,000 years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, a girl sitting on her own somewhare in Rickmansworth suddenly realised what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she...Read more

Actor Charles Paris features in a fringe show at the Edinburgh Festival, with a murder to challenge him in So Much Blood. Edinburgh and the Festival are background and foreground with Charles, flitting between a re-visualized Midsummer Night's Dream, a mixed-media satire, a late-night revue...Read more

In April 2002, wealthy socialite Margaret Wales-King and her husband Paul King left their home in a leafy eastern suburb, dined with her son and his family and then disappeared into thin air. Twenty-five days later, after an investigation that swamped the front pages, their bludgeoned...Read more

A gripping short crime story featuring Darian Richards by Australia's 2012 bestselling debut crime writer Tony Cavanaugh. Includes previews of his two full-length novels.
Darian Richards is a retired homicide investigator. He was one of the best. But chasing monsters eventually...Read more

The Gold Coast swelters in record temperatures, and car salesman Gary Braswell’s feeling hot under the collar. His sales are at rock bottom, and he’s up to his neck in debt to loan shark Jocko Mackenzie. Gary’s sweating on a fat commission from a mysterious Russian couple. If the loan’s not...Read more

The dashing Captain Daniel Rawson - spy, linguist, duellist, ladies' man and career soldier - can charm a woman as well as he can parry a sword. And whether it is extracting information from the wife of a French general or leading his soldiers in a Forlorn Hope, Rawson proves himself...Read more

Breen sometimes thought sourly that Tiger Jackson would have made a good fascist. He told unreliable stories, he liked power and admiration, and he had all three military virtues- self-belief, luck, and an eye for the main chance. Despite all this, Breen liked him. Somehow it was impossible...Read more

It is 1969 and James Bond is about to go solo, recklessly motivated by revenge.
A seasoned veteran of the service, 007 is sent to single-handedly stop a civil war in the small West African nation of Zanzarim. Aided by a beautiful accomplice and hindered by the local militia, he...Read more

A girl's body is found near the site of a rock festival. The only clue for Wexford is her connection to the festival's star.
For a while, the rock festival at "Sunday's" went well. The sun shone, the bands played, and everyone — except a few —- seemed to enjoy themselves....Read more