#AusCrime

Set in Sydney, SURVEILLANCE is billed as a cyber-thriller about government spying and corporate underhanded behaviour. A timely and really interesting subject to be explored, this was picked up with much anticipation.

Perhaps the expectations were wrongly set, but SURVEILLANCE...Read more

Dom and Donald Tolen are identical twins - in looks but not personality. Whilst Dom craves the quiet life, Donald has pushed the boundaries a lot more. But now, separated from his wife and living, as an increasingly unwelcome guest, in his brother's apartment, Donald needs to get himself...Read more

Bryan Brown is an actor synonymous in these parts with that sort of dry, pared back, quintessentially Aussie bloke character, much like the ones he's played in THE CHANT OF JIMMIE BLACKSMITH and for those of die-hard local crime fiction fans, the much missed Cliff Hardy in THE EMPTY BEACH....Read more

Fremantle Press have just released the third DSS Stevie Hooper book by WA based writer Felicity Young, TAKE OUT, following on from HARUM SCARUM and AN EASEFUL DEATH.

Starting off with a prologue that is obviously telegraphing something awful in the future of Mai, a young Asian...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

Disclaimer's First: I was one of the publisher's minions, and whilst I don't always participate in considering possible submissions, in this case I was fortunate enough to read an early draft - and well did a bit of barracking.

So think of this as less of a review and more a...Read more

The forty-first Cliff Hardy book came out earlier this year. That Empty Feeling is classic Cliff Hardy - stripped down, hardboiled, quintessentially Australian-noir ticking all the required boxes - pace, twists, turns, sex, violence and pitch-perfect dialogue. This time around, the...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

Fans of big, larger-than-life political thrillers where the threat is enormous, the conspiracy deep seated, and the need for a hero overwhelming could do worse than get on board with the Dan Taylor series.

Book three, THREE LIVES DOWN, could be read as a standalone, although...Read more

Alexis Turner walks into a police station to report her assault by a psychologist - the same man that DS Judith Lee has taken a report about in the past. By the end of that same day Turner appears to have vanished, and Lee is dealing with the guilt that she feels over the poor advice she...Read more

Whilst THE THRILL OF IT is a work of fiction, it is, as explained in the Author's Note, inspired and informed by the real-life brutal slayings of six older women on Sydney's North Shore by a man who came to be known as the Granny Killer (and god knows that's such a disrespectful moniker it'...Read more

Honey Brown moves to the city and suburbs for her new thriller, shedding light into some very dark corners. 

Psychological thrillers are an interesting reading prospect. Often very confrontational, the best of these sorts of books should generate a definite...Read more

There's a lot of crime fiction out there that is all about the investigator and the protagonist, but A TIME TO RUN tips that right on it's ear, setting up a scenario in which an investigator (cop) is the next victim of a mad, dangerous man who makes a sport out of hunting down the women he'...Read more

Little housework first - Melissa Chan is a pseudonym for Dr Jocelynne Scutt, Australian feminist lawyer, writer and commentator.  TOO RICH was published in 1991 by Spinifex Press, and I distinctly remember when reading it originally at the time of publication, feeling somewhat "cause...Read more