HIP FLASK AND HANGING is the second in the Silvermoon Retirement Village Cozy series featuring the intrepid, impressive and slightly dodgy 97 year old Alice Atkinson, resident of the aforementioned retirement village and investigator. She of the many many ghosts from the past, although one...Read more
I'm not sure it's expected to be reading a crime fiction novel, and go from laughing out loud (waking everyone in the nearby vicinity) to sniffling. Or to find yourself going from immersed in a tricky and clever plot, to worrying yourself into an early grave over the possibility of the...Read more
First released in Australia in November 2020, DEATH IN DAYLESFORD is the 21st Phryne Fisher book, set in Victoria's Spa Country - between Daylesford and Hepburn Springs, in an area that's all too real, with some fictional places built into this story, as is the tendency with this very...Read more
A spy thriller that's slightly different from the run of the mill "one man to save the world", there is much to like about THE FRENCHMAN.
For a start this is obviously a book written by an author who knows the reality of life as an intelligence service agent all too well. The...Read more
There could be an argument made to the effect that I've currently got too many series revisits going on - what with this, the Flaxborough Chronicles, my rerun right through the Discworld novels, a restart of the Smiley series by Le Carre, and whatever else I've started and forgotten about...Read more
It all unraveled at the funeral...
Horace Reid's death opened the door to our freedom. His widow, Elizabeth, exists only on paper. She disappeared thirty years ago. It's us, the Tribe, who live in her body now. But nobody knows that. Us are Elise, the reluctant...Read more
A crime debut from New Zealand author Christina O'Reilly, INTO THE VOID is a short novel with considerable promise. Introducing DSS John (Archie) Baldrick, DC Ben Travers and the rest of their investigation team whilst presenting the reader with a well crafted plot all in 158 pages is quite...Read more
LONELYHEART 4122 sees the introduction of Miss Lucilla (Lucy) Teatime to the mayhem that is Flaxborough and the series is all the better for her presence.
Originally published in the late 1960's, this is a time of matrimonial agencies (and is now a good time to admit I was...Read more
Benjamin Stevenson's first book featuring documentary maker Jack Quick was a revelation, particularly when considered again, in hindsight, from the viewpoint of the second novel in the series. Quoting from my own review of GREENLIGHT at the time:
"There's a
...Read more
Eliza Dacey was murdered in cold blood.
Four years later, the world watched it unfold again on screen.
Producer Jack Quick knows how to frame a story. So says Curtis Wade, the subject of Jack’s new true crime docuseries, convicted of a young woman’s murder four years...Read more
The third novel in the Flaxborough series, I've always thought that it was here that Colin Watson declared his hand and intentions most firmly. Everything about this novel is slightly wacky, very English in humour and stylings, and slyly clever.
As you will get from the opening...Read more
The author of GIRL FROM THE TREE HOUSE, Gudrun Frerichs, worked for 25 years as a psychotherapist specialising in trauma. She's now written this astounding book, a fictional and moving account of Elizabeth, a thirty-two year old woman with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). Elizabeth has...Read more
The author of THE WILD CARD, Renee, is a much loved and prolific writer of novels, memoir, poetry and plays in her native New Zealand. She won the NZ Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement in 2018, following which she wrote this, her first crime novel, at the age of 90....Read more
The second book in one of my all time favourite series, the Flaxborough Chronicles, BUMP IN THE NIGHT, sees DI Purbright on temporary secondment to Chalmsbury after a series of monuments explode. Things get a lot more serious though when local "identity" Stan Biggadyke is blown up on the...Read more
It is more than fitting that the final word from Peter Corris would be curated by his wife, and long-time editor, Jean Bedford. The chosen short stories are perfect examples of his work, and the 'ABC Of Crime Writing' is every bit as insightful, acerbic, funny and thought-provoking as you'd...Read more
I distinctly remember years ago, standing in a bank queue behind a small, blonde, immaculately turned out woman, who I eventually recognised as Anne Hamilton-Byrne. At the time I mused why it was that nobody had written Australian crime fiction about the sorts of cults that she was...Read more
Shortlisted for the 2018 CWA Debut Daggar, TRUST ME, I'M DEAD, is the first crime novel from New Zealand born, Australian resident writer Sherryl Clark, best known for her children's writing, although I understand there's now a sequel to this novel planned for this year. Any possible sequel...Read more
POKER CHIPS AND POISON is the first novel in what's intended to be a series set around 97-year-old Alice Atkinson, resident of Silvermoon Retirement Village, and cunning sleuth. Anybody who has read this author's Hitchhiker series may remember a cameo from Alice, but in this story she's...Read more
Anybody new to the Flaxborough Chronicles by British writer Colin Watson might not be aware of the author's body of work. Born in 1920, dying in 1983, Watson wrote twelve Flaxborough novels in total, renowned for their dry comic styling, set in the small fictional town of Flaxborough,...Read more
What is always surprising about cults is that they consistently manage to attract seemingly intelligent people who leave their ordered lives to join bizarre communities run by petty tyrants with delusions of grandeur. What is sadly not surprising is that at the centre of cults there are...Read more
ONE SINGLE THING is the second in the Hunter Grant series from NZ author Tina Clough. You don't have to have read the earlier book (THE CHINESE PROVERB, 2017) to get this outing to work, but this series is developing into something a bit special, and it's always best to get in at the start...Read more
Rural noir being the big thing at the moment, it's sad that many seem to have forgotten that there have been superbly talented authors like Garry Disher telling beautifully crafted, intelligent, and informed stories of the urban fringe, and the rural regions for many years. PEACE is the...Read more
First in a series of novels based in Fiji, DEATH ON PARADISE ISLAND introduces Inspector Josefa Horseman and Sergeant Susila Singh of the Fiji Police Force, alongside a cast of supporting police characters, set elegantly within the local society and culture.
Readers are...Read more
“The best of Cliff Hardy, Australia’s legendary PI, with exclusive unpublished writing from Peter Corris on the art of crime fiction…”
You may consider yourself a well-read reader of crime fiction, even of Australian crime fiction (a slimmer yet more determined beast...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
Detective Constable Ash Henderson has a dark secret…
Five years ago his daughter, Rebecca, went missing on the eve of her thirteenth birthday. A year later the first card arrived: homemade, with a Polaroid picture stuck to the front – Rebecca, strapped to a chair, gagged and...Read more
Look, we all know what I'm going to say here, so let's just get straight to it.
The Logan McRae series is the bees knees of Scottish police procedurals. The plots are intricate, often confrontational (as is very much the case with this one) and the characters are brilliant....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
‘I know. My truth radar is all over the place.’
Fleet smirks but he cuffs me gently on the shoulder. ‘Truth radar. We don’t have those in the big smoke, champ. We just assume everyone is lying. Statistically it’s more likely.’
Sarah...Read more
With a growing awareness of her isolation and of how complete her removal has been from her old world of the ‘before’, Evie has few tools at hand with which to dig out the truth of what happened back in Australia. All she really knows is what Jim has selectively been telling her. It was...Read more