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 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
The bodies of two young girls are found, shot and discarded in an old abandoned warehouse in the Cockpit Lane district in Brixton, London. Nearby the activity of the police investigation sparks the interest of a young schoolboy who is obsessed with a school myth about "Brown Bread" and an...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
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
I am a bit of a sucker for a daft title, even though it frequently explodes in my face. Even then, it did come as somewhat of a surprise to be reading a knitting type book (no patterns ... there are limits). The reason I picked up MAD MEN, BAD GIRLS AND THE GUERRILLA KNITTERS INSTITUTE is...Read more
With tongue firmly in cheek, and only because I live in the Pyrenees wine district, yes, well why on earth WOULD somebody kill for a Heathcote shiraz??? (Kidding!)
There's nothing better than books that are set in your own stomping grounds. Places that are very familiar,...Read more
A young adult crime fiction series, the "EVERY" books from Ellie Marney are a pitch perfect example of YA that works for young and old. Particularly the old that can still remember how complicated first love was, and the young that are experiencing the same.
Following on...Read more
The Crime Factory have developed a reputation for publishing wonderful examples of modern noir fiction set in different locations and times. DOUBLE EXPOSURE is, however, a very different animal indeed, combining a past time frame (1948) with a dark and very atmospheric sense of place, and a...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
The body of popular Environment Minister and leadership contender Susan Wright turns up on the shores of Lake Burley Griffin in the company of a recently deceased cat likewise dumped in the mud. Then a particularly unpopular government head-kicker (aka ‘advisor’) is found in similar...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
Hate it when a new book from a much loved series lingers too long on the reading pile simply because of competing priorities. No disrespect intended at all in how long it took me to get to this entry, and much pleasure when I finally did. Anyway they come, I'm quite a fan of the Pufferfish...Read more
Australian Rural Crime has arrived, there are novels showing up everywhere claiming this as their sub-genre, and SCRUBLANDS is the one that everyone is talking about. Film rights have been sold, everyone's reading it, most are raving about the book.
So having a contrary opinion...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
Rural noir is a thing at the moment, which means some stellar entries in the category, and some not so good ones. Makes opening each new novel and settling in for the experience a bit of rollercoaster ride. So did 55 live up to the hype? Well yes, yes it did....Read more
With SCRUBLANDS we had the bush, with SILVER we have the sea. It will be interesting to see if Hammer’s next book is set in a grotty city capital, just to complete the trifecta of the Australian way of living.
SILVER is set in a coastal town...Read more
The London life of a young actor can be one of flopped auditions, money scrounging, crummy rentals and the occasional spot of couch surfing. Emily Proudman has just lost her day job as well as her agent, so at this point is absolutely open to all opportunities that could save her from yet...Read more
Inventive and brutal, there are good reasons why Iain Ryan’s third novel is being talked about. Full review at Newtown Review of BooksRead more
I have no idea how this happens, but here I was, reading FROMAGE by Sally Scott, and I suddenly realised... shoes again. Another heroine on the "slightly ditzy side" that's obsessed with shoes. It's so not my comfort zone, although I was looking for something on the lighter, silly side, and...Read more
The Wikipedia definition of metafiction is:
"Metafiction is a form of fiction which emphasises its own constructedness in a way that continually reminds the audience to be aware they are reading or viewing a fictional work. Metafiction is self-conscious about
...Read more
I'll be perfectly honest - I circled El Dorado in the Readings tent at the Melbourne Writers festival for days. It's a contemporary Australian crime fiction thriller. It was long-listed for the 2007 Ned's and I'd promised myself to read the entire list of nominees this year. So why was I...Read more
Kirsty Jagger’s debut novel is a confronting story about growing up in the worst of circumstances, and how violence and poverty can happen to anyone. Full Review at Newtown Review...Read more
The author of THE CONCIERGE, Abby Corson, has been a luxury travel and lifestyle writer for over 10 years, and it shows in the way that she's able to depict a luxury hotel in the English countryside, with it's own concierge, Henry Harrow, the narrator of this, her first novel.
...Read more
When I read the first novel from Alexander Thorpe (DEATH LEAVES THE STATION) I hadn't quite twigged to the extent that future novels would be based around the itinerant friar figure - but it's now titled the "Itinerant Mendicant" series, and it really makes a lot of sense. He's a...Read more
An historical mystery that mixes fact and fiction, THE WOMAN WHO KNEW TOO LITTLE is set in Adelaide in late 1948. It's a story about female police officers built around the factual case of the Somerton Man, a notorious tale that has captured much speculation for many years until recently...Read more