Sorted on book title (not in series order)
Alan Carter is the author of the Ned Kelly Award winning Cato Kwong series (PRIME CUT won the Best First Award in 2011), but MARLBOROUGH MAN features a new character - UK born, New Zealand based cop Nick Chester and his family.
Chester's had an "interesting" working life -...Read more
One of the biggest problems with the blanding out of Australian Federal politics and society is that Political Satire seems to have disappeared around the back, probably mugged by some idiot with a bias obsession. Well that is until THE MARMALADE FILES where I cannot begin to tell you how...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
Personally I think I agree with Eddy - Mavis is a busybody. She's also a bored housewife, living in a flat with her retired husband, desperate for something to break the monotony of life. When Claudia Valentine drops in to peak through the curtains as part of her investigation in The Life...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
On page 2 of this book I kind of got the feeling that we'd be destined to get on very well....
"He's got more prior convictions than brain cells which means he won't get bail, so he's wallowing in the Metropolitan Remand Centre at Ravenhall, trying to find a
...Read more
Not sure what's weirder, talking to fictional characters, or the feeling that you actually know those fictional characters... Either way, you have to think it's quite a feat for a writer to get you to the stage where you're more than happy to regard her characters as real people. MILES OFF...Read more
The second in the Cass Diamond series MISSING PIECES is set in far North Queensland, with Cass Diamond investigating connected cold case disappearances. In 1992, toddler Yasmin Munoz went missing from a picnic spot near Cairns. In 2012 local businessman and former mayor Andrew Todd dies,...Read more
Mark Tedeschi AM QC was, until 2019, the Senior Crown Prosecutor, and the head of Chambers of the Crown Prosecutors for New South Wales. He's now a private barrister, but in 35 years with Crown Prosecution he has prosecuted many high-profile trials in Australia, some of which have involved...Read more
I still remember the profound sense of disquiet that WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN? left me with, and Wendy James has done it again with THE MISTAKE.
There's something about Jodie Garrow that I suspect is going to trigger differing responses in readers. Personally I couldn't get past a...Read more
Pete 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...Read more
Romance only appears to work for me when it includes a hefty dose of comedy. Having enjoyed the first book in this series - ROUGH DIAMOND - it felt like no trial to be back in the company of Erica Jewell. Probably because she's just ever so slightly bats (...Read more
The third Catherine Berlin novel from Annie Hauxwell takes the concept of moving a character out of their comfort zone that bit further. Berlin is one of those unrepentant flawed types. A heroin addict she's prepared to manage the addiction with prescription medications, but she's really...Read more
MOSQUITO CREEK, the first novel from Robert Engwerda is set in 1855 on the northern Victorian goldfields. It's a particularly pleasing experience to read about this area of the goldfields, deep in flood, when we've spent such a long desperate period in drought.
Engwerda has...Read more
My review of RESERVATION FOR MURDER, FACULTY OF MURDER and MAKE-UP FOR MURDER has been posted:
June Wright has faded from view, but in 1948 her novel Murder in the Telephone Exchange outstripped sales of Agatha Christie in...Read more
Lucy, like most women on the precipice of marriage, has spent some time considering not only what her new life might be like when she becomes a wife, but also how it might be to become someone’s daughter-in-law. In order to achieve her happy-ever-after with the lovely Oliver, Lucy must...Read more
It is probably no coincidence that this book is likely to appeal to fans of TV shows like CSI and Law and Order as the author says she is very fond of those shows and the book has a structure, subject matter and delivery which seems somewhat reminiscent of that style of...Read more
MURDER AT THE FORTNIGHT is set in the testing arena of the "theatre" and the arts. Showbiz commentator, Stella Pentangelli is returning from a bit of a "rest" as it's known in the trade, after a stella career as a showbusiness commentator and heavyweight. Inspector Ng is an investigator in...Read more
Originally published in 1970, this title was reprinted in 1991 by Weldon Publishing.
From the book: "When a famous, but hated, movie producer seems to have been killed by the very film technique he claimed to have invented, journalist Peter Cardiman turns detective. The tightly...Read more
In the process of getting the new AustCrime version up and running, I keep coming across books I've not read, or reviews I've forgotten to post. This fell into the later category, how I managed to miss this I'm not quite sure, but that gap has now been filled.
One of the things...Read more
MURDER IN MT MARTHA is a fictional story, inspired by an unsolved 1953 real-life murder in the Mornington Peninsula suburb of Mt Martha. Author Janice Simpson combines the real facts with a range of unconnected contemporary elements to weave a potential solution and create her fictional...Read more
In Melbourne, in 1868, theatre star Marie St Denis dies in the arms of her best friend, up and coming actress, Lola Sanchez. The accepted cause of death is suicide by laudanum overdose, something that Sanchez refuses to believe. Why would her brilliant, much admired, accomplished dear friend do such a thing? But then why would anyone kill St Denis?Read more
The indefatigable Miss Phryne Fisher returns to solve what may be her most puzzling murder.
Set in Bendigo, Victoria, it was interesting to read the acknowledgements / author's note on this one because it definitely read like...Read more
A collection of eight different short stories, many of them past prize winners, all of them featuring crime and women from differing viewpoints.
Journalists, police officers and private investigators are some of the occupations of the different central characters. Perpetrators...Read more
June Wright is one of the early writers who forged a way for the current vibrant Australian crime fiction scene.
Unfortunately the crime novels of June Wright have been largely forgotten and unavailable for many years. That situation is now being rectified,...Read more
There are a lot of reasons why I move heaven and earth to get hold of a Philip McLaren book when I hear there's a new one in the offing. Firstly, as you can probably pick from the synopsis above, there's a very dry, understated wit in McLaren's story-telling style. He's also writing about...Read more
In the previous book in the long and much loved Phryne Fisher series, DEATH IN DAYLESFORD, author Kerry Greenwood felt it was time for the younger members of the Fisher household to do some investigating of their own. Not surprisingly Ruth, Jane and young Tinker turned out to quite the dab...Read more
Latter day Australian Pulp Fiction at it's best, Murder is Never Pretty... is, well hilarious.
Part of the attraction is that it's 100% true to the style and phrasing of the pulp writers of bygone times - but it's all set in current day Perth - dare one say the mean and dirty...Read more
I'll be honest - I was keen to read this book because of the similarity in timeframe for its writing to that of Fergus Hume's The Mystery of the Hansom Cab - and because of Shane Maloney's excellent introduction to the book comments that Adam's made no particularly literary claims for this...Read more
Phryne Fisher returns in her 20th mystery, and one gets the distinct impression that the singer in Ms Greenwood has had issues with choir conductors in the past. But that's not the only thing that really stood out in MURDER AND MENDELSSOHN.
Fans will, as always, find Miss...Read more