There are some authors who just seem to be able to consistently turn out good books, ones that engage your attention, sometimes create some discomfort in the reader, but invariably make you think. Elizabeth Corley is one of those authors for me, I remember her books long after I've...Read more
In his foreword to this fantastic collection Mark Billingham points out so many of the mysteries behind the decline of the short story. In these days of short periods of available quiet time for reading, it does seem strange that fewer and fewer short story collections seem to be published...Read more
Think Hercule Poirot in a Sikh turban and the tropical heat of Kuala Lumpur, but add a hefty dose of rumpled Columbo and I think that's the best description of Inspector Singh of the Singapore police that I can come up with. A MOST PECULIAR MALAYSIAN MURDER is the first in this series from...Read more
CROSSKILL is another of my Wyatt series rereads - just because I want to.
This book, in particular, really takes on the bad guys. Wyatt may not immediately seem to have much of a moral conscience when it comes to taking other people's money - but he does think honour amongst...Read more
Detective Sam Shephard is back, promoted (no longer a Detective Constable), working in the same squad as boyfriend Paul and still in head on confrontation with the boss, and slightly off centre confrontation with her mother. Which is particularly difficult as in BOUND Sam's much loved...Read more
Whilst it's not particularly unusual to have a flawed central protagonist, unapologetic ones are less common. Add being female, and that makes IN HER BLOOD's Catherine Berlin a rather rare beast, and a very welcome one.
Set in London after the Global Financial meltdown, Berlin...Read more
Thank goodness for notes! I finished this book at the start of the year, and just noticed that I'd not posted the review I wrote at the time. Which is interesting, as re-reading my notes again, I can remember just about everything about this plot. Which makes it, to my mind, a very good...Read more
You can't help thinking that this is an interesting idea for a book, the story of one of the most famous real-life spies, told from the point of view of Philby's own life. Now the book and it's publicity material is quite tricky about the background of this book. Whilst there's nothing...Read more
I think I read somewhere that DUSTY DEXTER PI - HER FIRST CASE started life as a newspaper serial, which if that is the case, makes it the second of this sort of book I've read coming out of Queensland this year. Although this isn't a series of short stories, it's the story of an entire...Read more
Dark, funny, dark, clever, funny, dark and absolutely brilliant, 13 SHOTS OF NOIR is a short story collection blurbed as in the "vein of Roald Dahl". I need to go back and read Dahl. Unless Brazill's got more of these collections.
Short, sharp and lyrical, these are dark dark...Read more
A modern day industrial espionage tale, 1.9.7 HAMBURG, the debut novel from Alex Camouro is a very brave undertaking. Moving backwards and forwards in time in chapter jumps, it tells the story of much of Dixon Grace's past life as well as present circumstances. As befits the situation she...Read more
I've read MERCY (aka THE KEEPER OF LOST CAUSES) by Jussi Adler-Olsen twice now and finally I think I've got it the review straight in my head.
Why twice? The first time I read this book was right in the middle of a series of releases based around the woman locked in the...Read more
GRAVEYARD OF THE ATLANTIC is the second in the Mitchell Parker thriller series, so reading them backwards (as I am) is clearing up some unknowns, and creating a few more. Needless to say MASTERMIND, the first in the series is going to have to be read at some stage as now, if nothing else,...Read more
Originally published under the title AN ACT OF REPARATION, DEAD GUILTY uses the complex subject of domestic abuse as a vehicle to explore the ongoing abuse and exploitation of women in very vulnerable situations.
Starting out with the murder of an abusive husband Sean Laidlaw,...Read more
The exploration of consequences is beautifully executed in Antti Tuomainen’s mesmerising DARK AS MY HEART. That he is an award winning author comes as no surprise, but of the five novels to his name in his native Finland, the third “The Healer” and this, his fourth novel, are so far the...Read more
Sulari Gentill’s award-winning historical crime series is written with verve and spirit, the fiction woven seamlessly into actual events of the time.
Review of Give the Devil His Due, and the entire Rowland Sinclair series at ...Read more
The Le Fanu series from author Brian Stoddart is one of those extremely elegant combinations of mystery fiction and historical lesson that also provides entertainment for readers. There's even a bit of good old fashioned romance from the male point of view. In short, there's something for...Read more
The 4th book in the Max Cámara series, which means if, like this reader, you've missed the first three, there's something to look forward to.
Set in post financial meltdown Spain, BLOOD MED is part crime fiction, part police procedural, part analysis of a society that's bottomed...Read more
I've never been one much for historicals, so I was mildly surprised by how much I enjoyed DEATH IN HELLFIRE. Asked by the blind beak himself, Sir John Fielding, John Rawlings launches himself into the investigation of the notorious Hellfire Club. Worried by the sketchy artifice he has...Read more
Gary Kemble's first book SKIN DEEP was shortlisted for the 2016 Ned Kelly Award for a very good reason. It was a hands on, in your face, blood, guts and glory paranormal crime mashup with a quintessentially Australian bloke central character that worked incredibly well. So well that a...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
There is only a small cast in THE BREAKDOWN so our suspicious eyes are trained on characters that don’t have anywhere to hide; they are all close to Cass’s life and are becoming increasingly aware that her life is in disarray. Cass becomes more hemmed in by her memory glitches and is...Read more
Finn Bell made quite an impact on the 2017 Ngaio Marsh Awards with two shortlistings - his first novel DEAD LEMONS in Best First Novel, and PANCAKE MONEY in Best Crime Novel. Grouped together as The Far South Series, these aren't series books as such, so you can read them in...Read more
It's probably not going to come as any surprise to find that DON'T LET GO jumped up the reading queue as quickly as possible, because every novel from Michel Bussi I've read now has been clever, different and intriguing. DON'T LET GO didn't disappoint, it's all of those things and more....Read more
As we’ve discovered with the two previous monster hits from this author (BEHIND CLOSED DOORS and THE BREAKDOWN ), Paris knows how to keep us in the seat and our eyes glued to the page. BRING ME BACK sets its own pace of creeping suspicion, denial, a good re-think, then circling back to...Read more
Anybody thinking the cover of this novel with it's bright pink girly styling, means it's going to be on the light and fluffy side, might want to invest in some brown paper, cover the thing, and read it anyway. THE SUNDAY GIRL is not fluffy, girly fiction, even if the opening salvo makes you...Read more
Over the summer, along with reviewing new novels, I’m also planning to review some of my favourites starting with John Le Carre’s Call For The Dead. Although Le Carre is arguably the greatest spy novelist of all time his first two novels, Call For The Dead and A Murder...Read more
Post 9-11 it's hard to think that there hasn't been speculation about the next shock and awe campaign. I bet nobody thought there'd be an Australian, rough and tumble ex-commercial pilot, come spy at the centre of it all. The theory that Michael McGuire proposes in his thriller FLIGHT RISK...Read more
Somebody called Jess Lowther has been demanding that I post reviews of a couple of Mike Boshier's books that were entered in the 2018 Ngaio Marsh Awards. These reviews have been queued up on the site for sometime now, and I've been resisting posting them as there's nothing much I can...Read more
In 2008 we decided to move - away from the most fire-prone area on the immediate outskirts of Melbourne - to somewhere where we had more room to move, and co-incidentally where we would feel safer. The possibility of catastrophic fire events had weighed heavily on our minds - as the...Read more