Sorted on book title (not in series order)
Stay with me here, this is going to get complicated. THE MYSTERY OF THE VENUS ISLAND FETISH is a satirical, comic crime novel set within the realms of Sydney Museum. Written, supposedly by museum curator of worms, Dido Butterworth, the first complication is that the story comes straight...Read more
In Sulari Gentill’s new novel, aspiring writer Theo and her brother Gus become embroiled in increasingly bizarre conspiracy theories. Full Review at Newtown Review of BooksRead more
If you’ve ever wondered what a crime novel written by Noel Coward might be like, Naked Ambition could provide some clues. Review at Newtown Review of BooksRead more
The third book in the Jack Emery series of thrillers from Melbourne based author Steve P. Vincent, NATIONS DIVIDED picks up the ongoing storyline of a special agent that's happier than he's been in a long time. Because nobody has tried to shoot him or blow him up for years, and despite his...Read more
The second outing for Heloise Chancey, A NECESSARY MURDER follows on from the promising debut SHE BE DAMNED. In that novel we were introduced to Heloise Chancey, courtesan, independent woman and occasional detective. A combination Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poroit in an 1800's V.I....Read more
Don't ask me what's going on. NEFARIOUS DOINGS, the first book in the Nell Forrest series released in digital format by Momentum Books, is the sort of accidental female PI thing that I seem to have been reading lately. The only reason I can come up with is that the ones I have stuck with...Read more
The 4th book now in the DS Lucas Walker series, those who are new to it might need a tiny bit of background. Walker is with the Australian Federal Police, but it was on his personal home territory, in outback Australia where he first met Barbara (in book one to be precise), when she heads...Read more
NEST OF VIPERS is the second book in the Empress of Rome series. Author Luke Devenish has a resume that seems to hint at an ability to build a fantasy world. A novelist, screenwriter, playwright and Lecturer, Devenish was a Script Producer with Neighbours and a writer on Home and Away....Read more
Wonderfully evocative and beautifully delivered, NEST was utterly mesmerising.
I'm very grateful that the inclusion of NEST in the 2015 Ned Kelly Submissions meant that this wonderful book by Inga Simpson came to my attention. I'm not sure that I'd call this a...Read more
James Patterson has been working with a number of crime writers recently, producing these co-authored books, so it's hard not to read each one playing a sort of "who wrote what" game in your head. Candice Fox, as Australian's all know, is the author of a brilliant series of crime fiction...Read more
Every now and then a book sneaks into my reading pile that absolutely and utterly defies this reader's ability to describe it, the affect it had, and the experience of reading it. A NEW NAME FOR THE COLOUR BLUE was simply amazing. Beautiful, moving, haunting, fragile and deceptive: actually...Read more
Australian author Shane Maloney wields the pen like no other writer imaginable, stripping each social veneer away in such a terribly effective fashion that we cringe as we recognize the creatures dwelling beneath. The Murray Whelan novels, of which NICE TRY is number three, are bitingly...Read more
Recently busted back down to the rank of Constable, Mick Goodenough is the newest cop in town. Once a detective always a detective though, and it’s impossible for the experienced investigator not to speak up when it appears that his new colleagues are ignoring the sinister signs of an...Read more
Fast paced, heaps of action, a lot of lurking baddies, a flawed hero and comparisons with the work of Tom Clancy and Matthew Reilly are going to be coming in droves.
NO FREE MAN is the debut thriller from ex-RAAF member Graham Potts, taking it's protagonist, Stepan Volkov...Read more
NO GOOD DEED is a very welcome Australian crime fiction book, written by one of the leading local writers in Katherine Kovacic, set in the stinking hot outback, featuring Rena - a 60something retired geologist on a trip through the area that is partly fulfillment of a long standing plan,...Read more
Harris Derwent has run the full gamut of disappointment and loss in his nineteen years and is not sure if he’ll ever find the means to turn things around. Running from one disaster to the next, it takes a bullet to slow him down and even the circumstances in which Harris came to be injured...Read more
A thriller that features surfing and a special operative anti-terrorism order, based on Eastern mysticism, is not exactly "expected territory" even with the best will in the world. Which makes NO MAN'S LAND by Australian author Roland Fishman an interesting prospect.
For...Read more
It is just possible that a book about a middle aged, female, technical writer working for a software company might, just, perhaps be set in a world that feels more than a little bit comfortable (sans daughter of course). I will admit that when NO SAFE PLACE arrived I was more than a little...Read more
NO TIME TO LOSE is Matt Baak's debut novel, set in the high-tech, high octane world of bank robberies in the current day. Which are considerably less about fronting the bank waving a gun around, and more the very high-tech way in which time locks, centralised security, and automatic systems...Read more
Four Pufferfish novels were never ever going to be enough for dedicated fans of this wonderful, quirky Police Procedural from Tasmanian based author David Owen. There was always a real sense of disappointment that Owen didn't appear to have been given the opportunity to publish more of...Read more
It's hard not to have certain expectations of crime fiction when it's written by a former Victorian Assistant Police Commissioner, as unreasonable or unfair as that may seem.
The first expectation is that the plot should have a strong sense of realism about it. NO WITNESS, NO...Read more
NORFOLK tells a story that has particular resonance in Australia at present - asylum seekers arriving by boat. The substance of the story is covered by the blurb, but in essence, desperate people quickly overwhelm the idyllic community, and government responses are heavy handed enough to...Read more
A murderer is identified by a team of oxen. A dead man rises from a watery grave to indict his killer. A phantom hearse gliding through Melbourne’s slums foretells violent death. A seamstress turns detective to avenge her friend’s homicide. A locked-tent mystery. ...Read more
Between 1865 and 1910 Mary Fortune wrote over 500 crime stories, set in the Victorian goldfields, Melbourne and the outback. Published initially in newspapers and the like, they form the first detective fiction series written by a woman, although she was published under a series of pseudonyms hiding both her real identity and her gender from the wider world.Read more
There must be such a delicate balancing act involved when you're writing crime fiction about some of the worst possible crimes. In NOW YOU SEE ME Bedford has tackled the question of child abuse and child murder, and she's opted, bravely to do that in a most unusual manner.
The...Read more
Morally flexible best mates and private investigators Alice and Teddy pride themselves on fixing every kind of mess imaginable, no questions asked. So, when they're tasked with locating the recently-stolen ashes of long-dead celebrity tennis player Ashley “Perry” Perrineau, it should be a...Read more
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...Read more
As I was reading this book I couldn't help but create a checklist of the things that make up seriously good crime fiction for me, and apply it as I went.
A sense of place that puts you right on the spot, without turning into a travelogue. Something that gives you a sense of...Read more
It would seem that there is a rich vein of corruption, vice and criminality to be mined in 1970's and 80's Perth, if the ongoing involvements of Frank Swann, disgraced cop, now private eye from the pen of local author David Whish-Wilson, are anything to go by.
OLD SCORES is the...Read more
Cosy mysteries are so far from my comfort zone we could be classified as sworn enemies. Which is not to say that some haven’t worked for this particular reader. But to be fair, those that have worked normally deploy a sly, dry sense of humour, a huge dollop of self-awareness and preferably...Read more