A husband and father is betrayed, a son chases a ghost through the decades, a Russian arms dealer wants his hands on a priceless ruby, a young woman disappears with the keys to the mystery, and a female insurgent fights for her life. The Past and the Present are on a collision course....Read more
A VIP Protection job goes wrong, the brutalised body of a young man is found in the jungle, a triad wants its $2.5 million back, a girl goes missing and a friend is murdered. Galahad Jones’ world is about to tilt.
When a simple VIP Protection job goes horribly...Read more
A woman wants her errant husband tracked, an undocumented Cambodian girl is found dead, the city’s two biggest criminal societies vie for power, a loan shark wants his money back, and a corrupt cop is pulling strings from the shadows. It’s just another day in Hong Kong.
Former...Read more
'Isn't it your job to stop people being murdered?'
1911, on a winter's night in arid New South Wales wool country, mounted trooper Augustus Hawkins discovers the bodies of three young people. They are scions of the richest family in the district, savagely murdered on a...Read more
A difficult setting, and a difficult task for the debut novelist. Bronwyn Parry does a fine job with bringing a small Australian bush town to life and this is the great strength of the read. You can taste the dust in the air and truly really picture everyone talking out the sides of their...Read more
I have been promising myself for a few years now to go back to some of the older classic Australian Crime Fiction books and reread them with a view to noting something about them on the website. Mostly because all of these books were read a long time before I started writing my own reviews...Read more
In Zero at the Bone, the second book in this series, Frank Swann has moved more sideways than on. Working as a PI, he finds himself dragged into the suicide of geologist Max Henderson, whose wife Jennifer enlists Swann’s services to find out the reasons for his death – there is no doubt...Read more
From the first book featuring Cato Kwong this has been a series to follow closely. A police procedural that's moved him from Coventry (aka the Stock Squad in remote WA) back to Perth and right into the middle of a shocking murder scene. Made worse by his old friendship with the dead family...Read more
Taking a central theme of "is there really such a thing as an innocent person?" and asking a combination of well known and emerging Crime Fiction Writers from Australia to address the question, has culminated in the creation of CRIME SCENES - a short story collection which works on a number...Read more
Anybody who knows about this series will be aware that this novella has been a gift from the author to fans, a little taste of the ongoing series, as a thank you, and a filler in a bit of a gap between novels. It has the added benefit of fleshing out the back-story of Rowland Sinclair and...Read more
Australian author Emma Viskic depicts a community well used to living with constant tension, disappointment and outright hostility. It’s a unforgiving world for sure, and we are reading of people who are not living their best lives by a long shot. The summer heat and the threat of...Read more
• TRILOGY - Three of British-Australian author Fergus Hume's mysteries are in this Kindle book: The Crowned Skull & The Silent House & The Mystery of a Hansom Cab
The Crowned Skull
A classic murder mystery involving the occult. Sir Hannibal Trevick, a...Read more
GUNSHOT ROAD is the second Emily Tempest novel from Australian author Adrian Hyland. Set in the outback of Australia, GUNSHOT ROAD has one of those magnificently authentic Australian voices that you just know comes from an author who knows his place, and his characters very very well....Read more
“The best of Cliff Hardy, Australia’s legendary PI, with exclusive unpublished writing from Peter Corris on the art of crime fiction…”
You may consider yourself a well-read reader of crime fiction, even of Australian crime fiction (a slimmer yet more determined beast...Read more
DEATH IN THE LADIES' GODDESS CLUB is set in post World War I Sydney, in the 1930's at a time of great social and political upheaval in Australia's past. Women are just starting to fight back against the constraints society has placed on their lives and behaviour, and the bohemian lifestyle...Read more
Small towns, big secrets, inter-generational trauma, unquestioned deaths, fractured families, kids moving away and never returning, all the sorts of things that sound so very familiar to many of us who grew up in rural Australia from more recent history, back, unfortunately, for generations...Read more
The first novel in what one hopes will be a very long series, MASALA AND MURDER introduces Melbourne-based, Anglo-Indian ex-cop / private detective Samson Ryder to the world.
The author, Patrick Lyons, is Anglo-Indian himself, and his view of life obviously informs the way that...Read more
I'm not good with the end of things that I've really loved but when it came to the Caleb Zelic series by Emma Viskic, it turns out there was only so long I could hold out.
The earlier books in the series, RESURRECTION BAY, AND FIRE CAME DOWN, and DARKNESS FOR LIGHT, introduced...Read more
In the author's notes at the back of A DISAPPEARANCE IN FIJI, Nilima Rao provides background to the thinking behind this novel, including the structure of the Indian indentured servitude program, established by the British overseen, Indian government, coming into its own when slavery was...Read more
Book Two in the DS Lucas Walker series sees him away from his family home in the dry, arid interior of Queensland, working on the Gold Coast. He's under investigation / threat of his job after the events in the first book, OUTBACK, and temporarily doing some training there. He's been lucky...Read more
Over at: The State Library of NSW, there's a delightful little short story, IN THE COMPANY OF RATS, by Sulari Gentill featuring a very young version of her redoubtable character Rowly Sinclair, who even at the tender age of 14 was...Read more
The second novel in the Schalk Lourens series, SHADOW CITY uses his home of South Africa as one location for the story, introducing a new character, Sergeant Jackie Rose to lead the action in Sydney. The story begins with the discovery of the body of a battered and tortured young woman in a...Read more
A slow burner novel, THE GRAPEVINE is the tale of a murder from the perspective of its fallout in a small suburban community in Canberra, in 1979.
It's also a breathtakingly clever takedown of much of what remains flat out stupid - xenophobia, racism, homophobia, misogyny, and...Read more
The Hal Challis series is really growing into something particularly interesting, as well as entertaining. There's a distinct edge to this story, there are obviously some issues which the author wants to talk about, and he's cleverly worked a number of elements of social observation and...Read more
I really shouldn't get all impressed by a new cover, but having no idea whatsoever of who Essie Davis is, I was really pleased to see her popup on the re-release of Kerry Greenwood's first Phryne Fisher book COCAINE BLUES. I think the casting people for the upcoming ABC TV series may just...Read more
A HAND IN THE BUSH is the second of Jane Clifton's books re-released as ebooks. Cleverly, albeit loosely connected to HALF PAST DEAD by one of the supporting characters, the focus of this book is Decca Brand, psychologist, divorcee and woman with attitude.
Whilst all of Clifton...Read more
When they say "write what you know" Anne Buist seems to have taken that advice very much to heart, especially when it comes to the clinical and working experience of her central character - Dr Natalie King. Hard to say about the Ducati, history of mental health problems and clothes sense...Read more
In 2013 Aoife Clifford was awarded an Australian Society of Author's mentorship to help bring this debut novel - ALL THESE PERFECT STRANGERS - to fruition. To be fair to those who have read it and are finding the idea that this is a debut novel hard to believe, she has form. Shortlisted for...Read more
A DONATION OF MURDER is book number five in this excellent historical series from WA based author Felicity Young. Built around the central characters of Forensic surgeon Dody McCleland and her love interest Chief Inspector Matthew Pike, there are some important historical aspects to these...Read more
If anybody could point me in the direction of a good condition Chrysler Airflow I'd be very grateful. I know there was one in the 1953 Redex Trial and there were a few in Australia at the time, so surely, somewhere, in somebody's shed... frankly I'm lusting... But I digress, and that's the...Read more