First in a new series from The Thursday Murder Club author Richard Osman, WE SOLVE MURDERS uses many of the stylings and touches that make all his books very readable.
WE SOLVE MURDERS features two new main characters. Amy Wheeler is a close protection agent, working for a...Read more
Along with a lot of other readers around the same age, I started out reading Espionage thrillers with John le Carré's George Smiley, Robert Ludlum's Jason Bourne, Ian Fleming's James Bond and the novels of Frederick Forsyth and Len Deighton. George Smiley was always a particular favourite,...Read more
The third book in the Hawthorne & Horowitz series (it's meta - you can find out more about all of that at reviews of THE WORD IS MURDER and THE SENTENCE IS DEATH), sees...Read more
I'm really only slightly obsessed with this author's work. Slightly in that just about everything he has written now is automatically high on the read / listen list.
Sometimes, into every life, a bloody good laugh, a bit of craic, some distraction from the general godawfulness...Read more
The fourth in Dark Passage’s reissue series of crime mysteries by June Wright, The Devil’s Caress , originally published in 1952, is an tense psychological thriller set on the wild southern coast of the Mornington Peninsula, outside Melbourne.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
One of the very best things about reading the entrants in the 2024 Ngaio Marsh Awards is just how varied a bunch of books they were. BIRNAM WOOD is a eco-thriller, set on New Zealand's South Island, serving up a hefty dose of challenges for the reader to be going on with.
The...Read more
STRING THEORY is the 2nd in the Guitar Store Mysteries, and the first I've read. Which I think might have been a bit of a mistake. This worked, in that it was fun, a bit silly, and a bit of giggle in places, although it did take me a while to figure out who was who and how it all fitted...Read more
BRONTE NEEDS A PLACE TO LIE LOW.
She posted a drunken rant that went horrifically viral. Now – jobless, friendless and broke – she’s forced to volunteer as a carer on an isolated rural property. She won’t be paid for looking after dementia sufferer Nell, but at least she’ll...Read more
The author of this series was born in South Africa, but has lived in Sydney, Australia for a long time. PRESENT TENSE is the first, followed by SHADOW CITY (https://www.austcrimefiction.org/review/shadow-city-...Read more
Prince of spin and life of the party, Baz King, is missing. Nine years ago, at an innocent summer barbecue in Melbourne, everything imploded. For the Kings and the four other young families there that fateful day marriages fractured, friendships crumbled and lives were upended.
...Read more
Sri Lanka, 2009. Decades of civil war and bloodshed are being brought to an end at last—by any means necessary. In the capital, Colombo, tenacious journalist Ameena Fernando is murdered, execution-style, on a busy street near her home, with no witnesses.
With...Read more
CUTLER, the novel, features Paul Cutler, the former undercover operative, now working "off the books" in the dangerous and unpredictable world of investigator for hire. In this story he's tasked with finding the truth about the disappearance of an Australian marine scientist, whilst on a Taiwanese distant water fishing vessel, working in the incredibly murky and dodgy world of deep sea trawling and fisheries.Read more
First few chapters - what on earth am I doing reading this.
Next few chapters - okay I'm getting this, this is .... different.
Next few chapters - what do you mean you want something ... can't you see I'm busy.
Why do I keep hearing Henning Wehn's...Read more
It was just supposed to be a family vacation.
A terrible accident changed everything.
You don't know what you're capable of until they come for your family.
After moving from a small country town to Seattle,...Read more
This was one of those fortuitous picks from the library (I know I should be attending to the visible from space TBR here, but something about this book appealed when I heard a whisper about it, and sometimes giving into a little bit of temptation is... good for morale). Anyway, I saw this...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
Jackie and Pete King have lived in Dunmore for years, running one of the two local pubs in the sleepy little town. Money has been tight after the bushfires, and it’s about to get tighter if they can’t find a way to pay their suppliers to keep their business going and keep the bank from...Read more
"A brand new novel that continues the legacy of ‘Master of the Genre’ Desmond Bagley by the co-author of Domino Island."
Insurance investigator Bill Kemp made his first appearance in Domino Island - the story of that novel is best told...Read more
Detective Constable Angus MacVicar has just landed his dream job – transferred out of uniform and assigned to Oldcastle’s biggest ongoing murder Operation Telegram, hunting the 'Fortnight Killer'.
Every two weeks another couple is targeted. One victim is left at the scene, their...Read more
“When we opened Sherlock Tomes people warned us that we’d made a terrible mistake. People warned us that e-readers were taking over. People warned us that we’d never compete with the evil Amazon. The one thing they didn’t warn us about was the murders…”
Introducing......Read more
Bit of explaining first - LAST ONE TO LEAVE and FIND US are available as stand-alone ebooks / novellas. They are also available together in printed form under the title FOOL ME TWICE. I read the two separate novellas, but...Read more
This is gathering together of two DI Steel short stories, one featuring DS Logan McRae (Stramash) and the other (DI Steel's Bad Heir Day) has her giving Constable Guthrie a day to remember.
DI Steel's Bad Heir Day is set around Christmas with her manically buying / wrapping...Read more
If everyone has a book hidden somewhere in them, it seems, these days, it's probably going to be a crime fiction book. It seems inevitable now that "celebrities" will show up at, touting their wares - some with considerably more success than others.
Susie Dent, famous for her...Read more
There have been a number of Australian crime fiction books recently that are tackling the effects of poverty / deprivation / loss and family breakdown in small towns, on small boys in particular. A TOWN CALLED TREACHERY is following, successfully, in the footsteps of authors like Mark...Read more
This was one of those fortuitous pickups in the Audio section of the library's BorrowBox app. Probably based on the reference to Magpie Murders in the blurb, which was a TV series I thoroughly enjoyed. It might also be because of the description of the main protagonist:
...Read more
Who hanged the headmaster in the playground on the night of the school Hallowe'en party? Almost everyone in Heppleburn either hated or feared the viper-tongued Harold Medburn.
Inspector Ramsay is convinced it was the headmaster's enigmatic wife, but Jack Robson, school governor...Read more
How to Kill Your Family meets The Power in this entertaining and thought-provoking read, that asks:
If you had the power between life and death, what would you do?
...Read more
For ten years, Logan Booth served as a contract killer for the CIA – he just never knew it. The first book in a blockbuster thriller series from Matt Rogers, million copy bestseller and 'a bright new talent shaking up the genre ' (Candice Fox).
In the twilight of his career, Logan learns...Read more
DI Nyree Bradshaw and her team have their work cut out for them once again. Local woman Lizzy Bean has been found dead, garrotted with a piece of wire. Lizzy's property, a 1970s beach house overlooking a pristine Northland bay, is overflowing with rubbish. Inside, the house is even worse....Read more