Sorted on book title (not in series order)
When Finn Bell entered his first two novels in the Ngaio Marsh Awards (PANCAKE MONEY and DEAD LEMONS - which won the 2017 Best First Novel), he cemented himself pretty firmly in favourite author stakes. Mostly because there was something very different about both of those novels, but both...Read more
A fifteen-year-old tearaway is obviously heading for a whole lot of trouble, but when he seemingly commits suicide in a youth detention centre after nearly bludgeoning an elderly couple to death, there just seems to be something more to this than originally meets the eye.
When...Read more
ECHO LAKE is the debut thriller from screenwriter, producer and author Joan Sauers. Set in the sleepy, scenic vista of the Southern Highlands of New South Wales, Rose McHugh has just moved to the area, as a result of a tumultuous divorce. This is an area she loved to visit when younger, and...Read more
A vigilante with a message. The outsider detective. A cold case they both want solved.
Rachael Schlank is a straight-talking detective who’s always felt like a fish out of water, bouncing between departments over the years. Now she’s finally found a home in Victoria Police's Cold...Read more
Opening up with a duck hunting scene that will stay with readers for a while, THE ECHO OF OTHERS is a debut novel set in my part of the world - Central and parts of Western Victoria. There's a heap of potential here - from a good solid, cleverly structured plot; some excellent characters -...Read more
This book is just classic Swedish / Scandinavian crime fiction. Slow, involved, intricate, revealing and complex, ECHOES FROM THE DEAD concentrates very much on Julia, and her father, and their slow and careful repairing of a relationship which was torn apart at the time that Julia's son...Read more
Candice Fox is on the verge of scoring a rare hat-trick at this year’s Ned Kelly awards with the release of the third book in her Frank Bennett and Eden Archer series. In 2014, Candice Fox’s Hades blasted onto the Australian crime-fiction scene and won the Ned...Read more
EDEN PRIME is the second Jonas Blackthorne Action thriller. In the first book, author Andy L Semple gave the politicians something to think about. In this outing he's decided to up the pressure just a tad, and give everybody something to think about.
I think it would be fair...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
Sandra Mahoney and her partner Ivan are security consultants, so what she is doing poking around the death by natural causes of a well known politician seems to confuse Sandra as much as everybody else. In EDEN, the third Sandra Mahoney series book by Dorothy Johnston, Sandra is home alone...Read more
Mark Brandi has always been a writer of great male characters, from Ben and Fab in his standout debut WIMMERA, to Jimmy in SOUTHERN AURORA, Anton and Steve in THE RIP and...Read more
It doesn't seem to matter how adamant I am about the subject matter that I just don't like, there just always seems to be "that book" that comes along and shoots all my prejudices out of the water. THE EDGE OF MADNESS is about cyber-war. The threat of annihilation of the free world at the...Read more
There's nothing new about a central police character as damaged as the victims they are fighting for, and in many ways DI Helen Grace is one straight out of the mould. She's driven, single-minded, single and a devoted cop and good and supportive boss. She's not a woman who is just suffering...Read more
It really shouldn't work. Even in something as dark and noir styled as EIGHTBALL BOOGIE, there should be limits. Sure, hero's can be wise-cracking, dry, lone wolf investigators, or "Researchers". They can obviously have fraught personal lives, and goodness knows Rigby's personal life - what...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
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
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
“Barely a week later, the doorbell rang, loud and long. In Maud’s world it felt as if her visitor had only just left.”
When Swedish crime writer Helene Turston was asked to write a short story for a Christmas anthology she created the character of Maud, an 88 year lady who has...Read more
The book of the TV show, ELEMENTARY: THE GHOST LINE is based around the characters of Sherlock Holmes and his sidekick Joan Watson. Set in New York, and having never seen the show, it seems that likely that the TV show is a reworking of the recent English reboot of Sherlock. Which probably...Read more
Reading a lot of crime fiction can sometimes get a little groundhog day"ish". Not so when a book like ELIZABETH IS MISSING comes along. Not only is the styling of this mystery very unusual, the central character is outstanding and different.
Maud is an eighty-two-year...Read more
Elly was once a sister to Ines, and a daughter to Judith and Hamid. She lives on in the stories told by others and most importantly, in the stories told by her own family. Elly is a curious novella that depicts the isolated roads that we journey through grief, surrounded by others but...Read more
THE EMBROIDERED CORPSE is the sequel to CAPABLE OF MURDER. Our Australian heroine, Belinda Lawrence, has put the events surrounding the murder of her aunt behind her and has now moved permanently to England. She is living quietly in the village of Mitford in the house bequeathed to her by...Read more
Described as razor-sharp and mind-bendingly clever, there are bits of that I could probably agree with, but there were too many other "bits" which made this a particularly rare DNF for me. From the blurb to save a bit of time here:
It's 1925 and the Empress
...Read more
The blurb on this debut novel calls THE EMPTY COFFIN a high-octane thriller with cracking dialogue, sly humour and a sense of justice. There's also a hefty dose of real and paranormal combined in an interesting idea, with slightly creepy styling that feels like it comes from the Paul Cleave...Read more
The second in the Alex Morrow series, THE END OF THE WASP SEASON is a book that it would actually be possible to read before the earlier. The opening chapters of the book introduces the reader to the three women at the centre of this story - DS Alex Morrow, Kay Murray who worked for Sarah...Read more
It goes without saying that there are some - and they are only some - elements of this story that are "heavily" influenced by the death of a sort of local celebrity; and undoubtedly that's going to get some readers a bit hot under the collar about THE ENDANGERED LIST. That and some really...Read more
I really hope Dave feels better after writing this book. I'm guessing that there's a somewhat autobiographical element to the events that happen in this book - it's too starkly drawn surely for just imagination (mind you, if I'm wrong, well it's some imagination this man has!)...Read more
Michael White is the author of a considerable number of non-fiction books, including one entitled Isaac Newton: The Last Sorcerer and you'd have to assume that book feeds a lot of the fictional story of EQUINOX. Mind you, EQUINOX doesn't read like a non-fiction / biography style book - it...Read more
ERASERBYTE is the 7th in the "byte" series from NZ author Cat Connor. The characters are all part of a crack team of special agents, operating out of Washington D.C., led by Ellie Conway. Conway is a classic all-action hero, capable of absorbing massive amounts of physical punishment (...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