Meaghan Wallace is invited to one of the "must be at" social events in Sydney - a party at the very very rich Cavanagh household. When her escort (and boss) finally passes out, she stumbles across Damien, the very spoilt son of the family, arguing with other men in the same room as a bed,...Read more
First in the series "The Notting Hill Mysteries" originally published in 1992, An Uncommon Murder introduces Alex Tanner is another entrant in a long tradition of accidental investigators, although working, as she does, as a freelance researcher - this time for a possible magazine article...Read more
Captain Jack Robertson, ex-Military, Pilot and CIA Spy is kidnapped in-flight, picking up the latest shipment of opium that the CIA is using to fund covert operations in Asia. Discovering that he has been kidnapped by the deliciously over the top one-eyed, betel juice chewing minion of his...Read more
To begin with, I have one confession and one warning. Reginald Hill is my absolute favourite author. I could read his shopping list and rave about it, so I have no pretence here of objectivity.
Now the warning. If you have yet to read Reginald Hill’s DEATH OF DALZIEL (...Read more
Frank Calder is a bit of a maverick. Ex-cop / ex-soldier - current day "mediator". He's the sort of bloke that gets called in to sticky situations where unusual solutions are required. He's worked for the Carsons before. When a crazed gunman took store staff hostage, Frank wandered into...Read more
Set in Botswana, A CARRION DEATH introduces the reader to, amongst a lot of other characters, Assistant Superintendent David Bengu. David is a big man. A very big man. As a young man, his friend Angus coined the nickname Kubu - which means Hippopotamus in Setswana. That friend belongs...Read more
Martin's the sort of bloke that persons of a certain age can identify with. It might not make you all that comfortable with yourself, but boy can you identify (I hasten to add I have NEVER worn brown suede shoes and if I ever do .... well feel free to shoot me on sight), but I digress....Read more
The latest "it" in crime fiction can be pretty common. Sometimes it's a plot elements, sometimes it's locations for books, sometimes it's the home location of the author themselves. The "it" thing I'm coming across a lot at the moment is books set in Africa. Not that you could possibly...Read more
FAN MAIL is P. D. Martin’s third in the Sophie Anderson series and her strongest to date. Martin follows Sophie and Detective Sorrell as they conduct the investigation. So many detective novels are linear; we start at point A, go to point B and end at point C. Not so FAN MAIL. It twists...Read more
DARK MIRROR is a first rate police procedural. The author plays fair with the reader. The clues are all there, it's up to you to sort out which are red herrings and which are genuine. He also strikes a nice balanace between the private lives of the characters and their work.
A...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
I really really really hope that, in particular, local fans of spy and espionage thrillers are reading Mark Abernethy's terrific series. Firstly because each of the stories is set in our own region, and secondly because Alan McQueen is such a quintessential Aussie bloke hero type....Read more
With any long term series, it's not surprising to see an author rejigging the relationships just a little, bringing in new perspectives or adjusting the expectations. CHELSEA MANSIONS is the ninth Brock and Kolla book from Barry Maitland, and in the last book there were hints that there is...Read more
It was rather pleasing to see DUBLIN DEAD, mostly because O'Donovan's first book, The Priest, actually managed to get me to rethink my "over serial killer" books stance. So no pressure on this one... at all.
There is some reference back to The Priest in DUBLIN DEAD, which is...Read more
A DISSECTION OF MURDER is the first in a series of books from Western Australian author Felicity Young. Set in London at the turn of the twentieth Century, featuring Dr Dody McCleland, the first female autopsy surgeon, the action in this book takes place in the midst of the Suffragette...Read more
Here's the thing. You hoard a book because it's a favourite series, and there's no sign of the next one yet. But then there are noises about the next one, but that's not out for ages, but you can't wait any longer so you read the one you've had tucked away. Then you've not got that little...Read more
I blamed Chris Allen for a lot of things whilst I was reading this book. Dog's were left hoping for games and walks. Not my fault. Cat's balefully batted toys on sticks with nobody holding onto the other end. Nothing to do with me. Pet pigs resorted to throwing their food bowls around in...Read more
Some of the very best crime fiction explores issues that are relevant to the society in which it is set. Michael Stanley's Kubu series, set in Botswana seems to have really hit its straps in that department in the last couple of books, with DEADLY HARVEST reaching a particular high. The...Read more
DEATH ON DEMAND came out in 2012 and it is impossible not to question sanity. It sat in my reading queue for over a year before daylight finally dawned.
Needless to say a lot of other worthy books were swept aside, because it's nearly impossible not to love these books. Partly...Read more
"Carroll is the Australian writer who has most fully and consistently approached the dark and alienated world of Americans like James Ellory and Andrew Vachss..." Continent of Mystery, Stephen Knight (MUP, 1997).
Sometime in the early 2000's,...Read more
Set in the heat, dust and community of the South Australian Mallee there is much that is visceral in ONE BOY MISSING. From the opening in which a young, vulnerable boy desperately tries to avoid a pursuer, to the character of DS Bart Moy who is back in Guilderton, possibly because his...Read more
A young adult crime fiction series, the "EVERY" books from Ellie Marney are a pitch perfect example of YA that works for young and old. Particularly the old that can still remember how complicated first love was, and the young that are experiencing the same.
Following on...Read more
The first of the Peter Clancy books from T.W. Lawless, HOMECOUNTRY takes Clancy to exactly that - home to the town where he grew up, in outback Queensland to bury his mother. With his credo of never looking back this is the first time he's returned to Clarke's Flat since he left, so for the...Read more
There's a lot of crime fiction out there that is all about the investigator and the protagonist, but A TIME TO RUN tips that right on it's ear, setting up a scenario in which an investigator (cop) is the next victim of a mad, dangerous man who makes a sport out of hunting down the women he'...Read more
Something went wrong in the reading universe a while ago and I missed that this had been sitting in the unread list, when I picked up and enjoyed the second in the series - A SONG FOR THE DYING.
Which weirdly turned out...Read more
In 2013 Aoife Clifford was awarded an Australian Society of Author's mentorship to help bring this debut novel - ALL THESE PERFECT STRANGERS - to fruition. To be fair to those who have read it and are finding the idea that this is a debut novel hard to believe, she has form. Shortlisted for...Read more
Built around the worlds of art fraud, forensic accounting, law and the European Mafia DEATH OF A FRIEND is the debut novel of Australian author Desmond L Kelly.
There's an interesting concept at the centre of this book - two men, friends since their schooldays, different...Read more
Two recent Australian crime novels – a PI mystery set in Thailand and a police procedural in Canberra – give a strong sense of place.
The Dying Beach is the third Jayne Keeney book from Angela Savage, following on closely from Behind the Night...Read more
Despite a rather shaky start in the legal profession, Robert Rotenberg's background in criminal law explains the perspective of his first novel OLD CITY HALL, most of the the book is being told from either the defence or the prosecution viewpoints.
OLD CITY HALL starts off in a...Read more
I had no idea what to expect when I sat down to read VILLAIN, although the Japan Book News quote on the back of the book "... lays out a panorama of modern Japanese society, a patchwork composed of people of various classes and occupations..." really appealed. And the book most definitely...Read more