If you're new to the Judi Westerholme series, it's one of those featuring a slightly older, marginally wiser, female character who's in too deep and doing the two steps forward, one step dance that quite a few of us might recognise. It's a great series, with a believable, slightly manic...Read more
THE WRONG WOMAN is the first foray from J.P. Pomare overtly set in the US, and it was, for this reader, utterly seamless in its evocation of an American feeling small town. Helped a lot by the central character ex-cop, now Private Investigator Reid being from this particular community, and...Read more
A short novel from the No. 1 bestselling author of CLOSE TO THE BONE and A SONG FOR THE DYING, featuring his most popular characters, Acting DI Logan McRae and DCI Robert Steel.
CID isn’t what it used to be…
It’s a been a bad week for acting Detective Inspector Logan McRae. Every...Read more
He’s back...
Eight years ago, ‘The Inside Man’ murdered four women and left three more in critical condition—all of them with their stomachs slit open and a plastic doll stitched inside.
And then the killer just... disappeared.
Ash Henderson was a Detective...Read more
Taukiri was born into sorrow. Auē can be heard in the sound of the sea he loves and hates, and in the music he draws out of the guitar that was his father’s. It spills out of the gang violence that killed his father and sent his mother into hiding, and the shame he feels about abandoning...Read more
Will confess to being more than a bit pleased when WILD CARD, the second DS Zoe Mayer (and her service dog Harry) novel arrived. The initial outing - THE LONG GAME - had all the hallmarks of a long, and good series in the making, and the follow-up does nothing to dispel that belief....Read more
One foggy morning on the banks of the Murray River, a body is found in a burnt-out area of grassland. The heavily tattooed victim, who has suffered two bullet wounds to the head, is identified as Freddie Jones, a bikie from Moama.
Detective Sergeant Zoe Mayer is on the case,...Read more
The Crooked House sits on a snowbound cliff at the remote northern tip of Japan. A curious place to build a house, but even more curious is the house itself - a maze of sloping floors and strange staircases, full of bloodcurdling masks and uncanny dolls. When a guest is found murdered in...Read more
In a peaceful retirement village, four unlikely friends meet up once a week to investigate unsolved murders.
But when a brutal killing takes place on their very doorstep, the Thursday Murder Club find themselves in the middle of their first live case. Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim...Read more
J.P. Pomare won the Ngaio Marsh Award for Best First Novel with his debut CALL ME EVIE. Since then he's carved out a name for himself when it comes to precisely plotted, atmospheric, tense psychological thrillers populated by cleverly constructed characters, designed to keep readers...Read more
Being a 14 year old girl is never an easy undertaking, but living in a dying town, in a family beset with problems makes Miracle's life that bit more complicated.
She's known as Miracle because she was born in the middle of Australia's biggest-ever earthquake. The same quake...Read more
Back when I first discovered Paul Cleave's books and the Theodore Tate series in particular, I did wonder if he really liked frightening the living daylights out of his readers. I'm not talking horror or anything here, but the creepy, persistent sense of terror that invades those books has...Read more
Welcome to the Misfit Mob…
It’s where Police Scotland dumps the officers it can’t get rid of, but wants to: the outcasts, the troublemakers, the compromised. Officers like DC Callum MacGregor, lumbered with all the boring go-nowhere cases. So when an ancient mummy turns up at the...Read more
Auē: 1. (verb) (-tia) to cry, howl, groan, wail, bawl.
Nō tō mātau mōhiotanga kua mate, kāore i ārikarika te auē o ō mātau waha (HP 1991:19). / When we knew that she had died we howled our eyes out.
...Read more
It's been way. too. long. since the last Emily Tempest novel from Adrian Hyland was published. Been way too long since anything from Adrian Hyland was published, so I will admit to some serious stack reshuffling when CANTICLE CREEK arrived. Not a shred of disappointment about the decision...Read more
"Sure thirty years is a long time. Sure the case was closed. Well, never really a case as such. Fifteen-year-old brown girl tops herself, who cares? Turn the page. That bloody notebook, thought Club. God knows what was in it. Who knew that little bitch could even write?"
Ruby...Read more
It increasingly feels like the things you can be guaranteed of when starting a new book by J.P. Pomare are it's going to be a fast paced, high tension thriller; it's likely as not going to frighten the daylights out of you; and it's going to be littered with twists, turns, red herrings,...Read more
In a small rural community north-west of Sydney, park ranger, Cal Nyx, finds a badly decomposed body in the bush. When the remains are identified as someone she once knew, the police treat her as a suspect. Cal, a tough and canny woman, needs to find the killer and convince the...Read more
Flames crackle and stability just went up in smoke.
When Elizabeth’s happy new life goes up in flames and mortal danger is knocking down her door once again, she struggles to stay sane. Only when she falls into the trap her aunt’s killer has set for her does she realize the danger...Read more
The second book in the Women of Our Time series, and follow up to the outstanding GIRL FROM THE TREE HOUSE, BEYOND THE TREE HOUSE again features Elizabeth and a number of her multiple personalities. Elizabeth has DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder) and for more on how she survives with...Read more
Following on from INTO THE VOID, RETRIBUTION continues to feature DSS Archie Baldrick and DC Ben Travers - in this outing, investigating the death of a very mysterious woman indeed. After Lucy is found dead on the beach, finding out who she is, or anything about her is the most tricky part...Read more
Set in a fictitious location in Melbourne, timed to coincide with one of those blazing hot, drought and bushfire plagued summers, FOR REASONS OF THEIR OWN is a debut novel introducing DI Robbie Gray and her new to town offsider Mac, a young Aboriginal policeman who has been moved out of the...Read more
A summer of relentless heat. A local surfer named Ray Carlson is found dead in a house not far from Portsea back beach. There’s a silver-handled kitchen knife deep in his chest, and blood everywhere.
Detective Sergeant Zoe Mayer is scarcely back from extended leave, and still...Read more
The start of what one selfishly hopes is a long series, THE LONG GAME, introduces readers to Detective Sergeant Zoe Mayer. She's back at work after a traumatic incident, working with her old homicide partner Charlie, accompanied by her service dog, the gorgeous Harry, who helps her handle...Read more
DEAD AND GONE is the 2nd in the Judi Westerholme series, following on from TRUST ME, I'M DEAD. There are some events in the earlier book that would be useful to know about before starting this one, although it's not absolutely vital - there should be enough context to keep you moving...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
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
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