Sorted on book title (not in series order)
Whoever said "write what you know" to Michael Armstrong got their message through loud and clear. THE MALL is set in the world of high finance commercial real estate, and features the wheeling, dealing, and dodging goings on of that, as well as the life and times of an ambitious young...Read more
Beneath the sheen of its orderly streets and obedient populace, all is not well in the port city of Kobe. Business is as brisk as the Haru-ichiban spring breeze for Mami Suzuki, hotel clerk by day, private investigator by night.
Who's stealing from Japan's biggest pearl trader?...Read more
MAMI SUZUKI: PRIVATE EYE is a debut series of linked short stories by NZ born, Japan resident author, Simon Rowe. Mami Suzuki is a hotel clerk, and a part-time private investigator, running her slowly building sideline around the day job, and her mother and young daughter at home. Based in...Read more
Mammoth by name, mammoth by nature - this collection has 42 stories in total, many of which come from well-known names, with a good sprinkling of new and emerging writers. Exactly the sort of thing short story fans would be looking for.
Preferring the darker side of the genre,...Read more
This is a fantastic collection of really good quality crime fiction from a wide range of backgrounds and perspectives.
The compilation is made up of 36 stories (too many to list here anyway) from a diverse range of writers and countries. That's part of what's great about this...Read more
There's something very satisfying about the emergence of a new crime series set in Australia - this time 1960's Perth. This one includes a hat tip to a number of the older stylised detectives of popular TV series in that Detective Cardilini's is portrayed as, not to put too fine a point on...Read more
THE MAN FROM BEIJING is a standalone book from the author of the popular Kurt Wallender series, and if the discussions I've seen about it are any indication, it's guaranteed to polarise opinion.
Set in Hesjövallen, where something very very bad has happened, police are called...Read more
A lot of things happen to normal, everyday father, husband and businessman David in a big hurry. His wife confesses to a secret past which he can almost handle and then he collapses with a rare brain disorder requiring urgent surgery, forcing him into a period of recuperation. This leads to...Read more
It's the following Thursday.
Elizabeth has received a letter from an old colleague, a man with whom she has a long history. He's made a big mistake, and he needs her help. His story involves stolen diamonds, a violent mobster, and a very real threat to his life.
As...Read more
The last thing anybody needs is a fully blown review of anything to do with Richard Osman's wildly popular The Thursday Murder Club series, of which THE MAN WHO DIED TWICE is number 2 and THE BULLET THAT MISSED is number 3. These books deserve all the success they have achieved, but as I've...Read more
If they are giving out an award for the most unexpected crime fiction novel, then THE MAN WHO DIED would have to be an odds on favourite.
Narrated by Jaakko Kaunismaa, this is the story of a Finnish mushroom entrepreneur, based in a small town, building a successful business...Read more
I'm still dipping into this reprint series from Harper Perennial with a profound sense of gratitude for the fact that they are bringing these fabulous books back to our attention. Originally copyrighted in 1966 THE MAN WHO WENT UP IN SMOKE sees the only time Wahloo and Sjowall take Martin...Read more
One of those series that I plucked from a long list on Audible when looking for something new and fun to listen to. Sometimes the universe is very good to you.
A MAN WITH ONE OF THOSE FACES was such good fun with madcap action and activities, really engaging characters, and a...Read more
Maths not being a strong point, I got myself tied up in knots reading THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN MIND. Perhaps it wasn't helped by not having read the earlier book in the series, but I could not, for the life of me, get the timeframes straight in my own mind.
Twenty-five years...Read more
I don't know - maybe it's because the book is set in a small country town struggling to survive (and I live 20 kilometres or so out of just such a town), or maybe it was the line on the opening page "He had the sort of body normally achieved by eating plankton.", but I was particularly...Read more
This is a tricky one to review. On the one hand I really like this character, and the series has covered some interesting aspects of policing. On the other hand they come with enormous info dumps, none more obvious than the aspects of how and what happens on surveillance jobs in MAN. MADE....Read more
Reading the first book in this series - THE MARMALADE FILES - was a laugh out loud experience, what with scheming Foreign Ministers, dumped Prime Ministers scheming revenge and ... well you name scheming in recent Federal Politics and there will be a version of that in these books....Read more
Book 5 in the Maigret series, and part of a now stalled attempt to go right back through them all via audio books. Stalled not because of this particular entry, which was a much more interesting read than a couple of the earlier books. Stalled mostly because of the weight of the queues...Read more
Major earthquakes aren't new in Christchurch, but the last really big one left massive destruction, dislocation and death in its wake. As a setting for a crime novel that time and place make enormous sense, giving an author the chance to delve into a society in flux, and the reality of...Read more
The second Jeff Bradley novel from New Zealand author, Thomas Ryan, certainly made me really want to shunt my as yet unread copy of the first (The Field of Blackbirds) up in priority.
A thriller in construction, THE MARK OF HALAM is fast-paced, big-threat, enemies on all sides...Read more
Alan Carter is the author of the Ned Kelly Award winning Cato Kwong series (PRIME CUT won the Best First Award in 2011), but MARLBOROUGH MAN features a new character - UK born, New Zealand based cop Nick Chester and his family.
Chester's had an "interesting" working life -...Read more
This audio series was recommended to me by an algorithm which I'm never 100% convinced about, but I'd finished all that was available in The Thursday Murder club series and was in the mood for something on the lighter side. Besides I'm increasingly a sucker for anything with women of a...Read more
One of the biggest problems with the blanding out of Australian Federal politics and society is that Political Satire seems to have disappeared around the back, probably mugged by some idiot with a bias obsession. Well that is until THE MARMALADE FILES where I cannot begin to tell you how...Read more
The Marshall Grade series is American noir of the minimalist, dark kind, bought to you by New Zealander Ben Sanders.
The first book AMERICAN BLOOD (reviewed at http://reviewingtheevidence.com/review.html?id=10540...Read more
The first novel in what one hopes will be a very long series, MASALA AND MURDER introduces Melbourne-based, Anglo-Indian ex-cop / private detective Samson Ryder to the world.
The author, Patrick Lyons, is Anglo-Indian himself, and his view of life obviously informs the way that...Read more
MASTER, LIAR, TRAITOR, FRIEND is the third in the Swedish Leo Junker series, a set of books which hopefully all fans of Scandinavian crime fiction are aware of.
Up there with the very best of Scandinavian crime fiction, partly it's the interweaving of the past and present into...Read more
Personally I think I agree with Eddy - Mavis is a busybody. She's also a bored housewife, living in a flat with her retired husband, desperate for something to break the monotony of life. When Claudia Valentine drops in to peak through the curtains as part of her investigation in The Life...Read more
Australian readers could probably be forgiven for slightly different expectations when sitting down to read a book labelled "The New Peter 'Mad Max' Maxwell mystery". This isn't our Mad Max - this is a particularly English style of Mad Max more than a hemisphere away from our own version...Read more
MAXWELL'S POINT is the 12 book in what seems to now be a 14 book series. Having never read any of the earlier books, I was particularly curious to see whether or not the series could be picked up well down the track without this reader feeling lost, and more than a little confused. ...Read more