The second in the Reggie da Costa Mystery series from local author Laraine Stephens, DEADLY INTENT is set in Melbourne, in October 1923.
In this outing, heavy rains have battered Melbourne, and local crime reporter Reggie da Costa finds himself at the centre of a story when he...Read more
Author of THE GALLERIST, Michael Levitt, is a surgeon and health bureaucrat with a considerable list of scientific articles, medical books targeted at the general public and chapters in medical textbooks to his name. He's also an art collector, and has written numerous articles about art...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
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
The 4th novel in the Reggie da Costa series, LIES AND DECEPTION is a nicely twisty tale of the just desserts served up to a serial conman and his accomplices by a determined crime reporter and his ... accomplices.
If you're new to this lovely series, set in the early 1920's in...Read more
For somebody who claims to prefer the darker end of the Crime Fiction spectrum, I've been thoroughly enjoying some cosies recently. Although I did originally try to "read" this one via the audio book, but that didn't work, so I switched to the printed form and found myself happily enjoying...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
The third book in The Tea Ladies Mystery Series, sees Hazel, Betty and Irene take on one of their most dangerous challenges yet, with a real threat to Hazel's life on more than one occasion, Betty finding herself naked in front of a lot of strangers, and Irene hoicking a Molotov Cocktail...Read more
J R Carroll writes a really lively combination of gangster thriller crime fiction. Set in and around Melbourne there have been a few books which are a series - using the same characters and a lot that are standalone.
CHEATERS is one of the standalones thus far, or at least,...Read more
Frank Calder is a bit of a maverick. Ex-cop / ex-soldier - current day "mediator". He's the sort of bloke that gets called in to sticky situations where unusual solutions are required. He's worked for the Carsons before. When a crazed gunman took store staff hostage, Frank wandered into...Read more
There are simply not enough of these short novella books being published these days. Not only do they give you a real taste of (frequently) lesser known writers, they are perfect little handbag books - stocking stuffers if you want. FEDORA WALKS could definitely stuff the stocking of a...Read more
DARK MIRROR is a first rate police procedural. The author plays fair with the reader. The clues are all there, it's up to you to sort out which are red herrings and which are genuine. He also strikes a nice balanace between the private lives of the characters and their work.
A...Read more
Despite constantly "bragging" that we live about an hour from just about anywhere... it does mean that every trip in the car do to anything takes a while. We've recently turned to audio books to fill in the hours of dodging kangaroos and potholes and the most recent that we've been...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
ANTIDOTE TO MURDER is the second Dr Dody McCleland book from WA based author Felicity Young. If this is a series that you are yet to catch up with, then all I can say is get to it. Immediately.
Set in Edwardian London, McCleland is a qualified doctor, fighting a society that...Read more
According to her bio author Karen M Davis was a New South Wales police officer for twenty years. Starting her career on the streets of Newtown, she went on to work as a detective and undercover operative in a variety of sections, all of which specialised in the investigation of organised...Read more
"The Honest Conman" (aka Nicholas J Johnson) used to do a warning segment on scams and frauds on ABC Local Radio, but it was a pleasant surprise to find he'd written a heist / scam novel. Needless to say his debut novel, CHASING THE ACE, reads like the author knows a lot about the subject...Read more
When Miranda Jack is car-jacked on a motorway in Sydney it's just one more thing to go wrong in a life littered with bad times. As the story progresses and you find out how many hurdles Jack has jumped in her life you'd be forgiven for wondering why she keeps getting up in the morning. When...Read more
Right from the commencement of HADES, the first Archer / Bennett book by Candice Fox, it was obvious that this was a series to be watched. Dark, confrontational, emotional and compelling, that book started a journey into the consequences of human damage, and EDEN picks that up, twists it...Read more
What a little gem AMPLIFY turned out to be. A debut novel from journalist Mark Hollands, introducing musical impresario Billy Lime and his world of sex, drugs and rock and roll.
So much potential for cliché so very nicely dodged here. The women are not all sex objects or...Read more
Current readers of TWO DAYS will be greatly relieved to know that DRAINLAND (Book 1) was released in early August 2016 because this novella is the prequel and it would be very unfair if we had to wait for the full show.
Iain Ryan does a particularly good job when it comes to...Read more
If two Ned Kelly Awards and one short-listing hasn't given you a big enough hint already, CRIMSON LAKE should absolutely confirm that Candice Fox is an Australian writer of immense ability.
Always on the darker side, Fox's books incorporate clever plots with strong characters....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
Cold-case detectives are everywhere these days, but the latest creation from Garry Disher, Alan Auhl, is not as straightforward as some might expect. Full review at ...Read more
Julian Edermont lives at the Red House with his ward, Dora Carew and his old friend, Lambert Joad. But things are amiss at the House. First, Edermont suffers a panic attack at church, during the section of the Litany that prays for deliverance from murder and sudden death. Then, he has a...Read more
“…last night’s dreams had slipped into waking hours again, plucking at his thoughts with their blood-stained fingers.”
With her first novel, Resurrection Bay, Emma Viskic not only announced herself as a novelist to watch she also created a lead character in Caleb Zelic...Read more
As per the blurb, this is a series that started out with THE HOLIDAY MURDERS, then came THE PORT FAIRY MURDERS and now THE AUTUMN MURDERS. At this point it's very much a series that needs to be read in order, as the back story here is really going to be important to a reader understanding...Read more
A comment often made about BRUNY is that readers going in did not know it was going to be such a political read. BRUNY is one of those works that very effectively puts the frighteners on for many fronts; climate change, politics, foreign investment, cultural divides – swing the proverbial...Read more
The third book in the Alex Clayton Art Mystery series sees a shift of setting to the Western District of Victoria and one of those big pastoral leases that were such a part of the landscape down there. The title of the novel "The Shifting Landscape" is quite cleverly pitched referring as it...Read more
Jack Furey is 100 years old, in a nursing home, and not a happy man. In the introduction to FUREY'S WAR it quickly becomes apparent that Jack is his own man, not somebody to be trifled with, and definitely not somebody to underestimate, even after a devastating stroke. Inside his head, Jack...Read more