Sorted on book title (not in series order)
When I read this back in January I posted a review. Or at least I thought I did. Imagine my surprise when I found it here in the draft queue. Whoops.
NOW WE ARE DEAD is a spinoff from the Logan McRae series featuring the glorious DS Roberta Steel. I say glorious in a "slightly...Read more
There must be such a delicate balancing act involved when you're writing crime fiction about some of the worst possible crimes. In NOW YOU SEE ME Bedford has tackled the question of child abuse and child murder, and she's opted, bravely to do that in a most unusual manner.
The...Read more
The fourth book in the series sees probation officer Cate Austin out of the familiar ground of career, single parenthood and England in a new life in Luxembourg. She's moved there, with her young daughter Amelia, to live with boyfriend and local police detective Olivier Massard. The...Read more
Clare Curzon began writing in the 1960s and has published over forty novels under a variety of pseudonyms, with twenty or so of these in the Superintendent Mike Yeadings series. OFF TRACK is the first time I've come across this series.
It has been a long while since I...Read more
I'm behind with this series, and heartily confused about the order in which to read them. But this fortuitous find in a neglected stack of purchased books, is blurbed as the "long-awaited sequel to 1222". Which I did really enjoy. It's also listed as the 9th Hanne Wilhelmsen novel, but I do...Read more
Cristina Sanders is a new to me author who has written a number of books in the past along the same lines of ŌKIWI BROWN - a fictionalised version of historical events that incorporate early tales (tall and true) of Aotearoa. This story is told in a series of anecdotes, incorporating the...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
As I was reading this book I couldn't help but create a checklist of the things that make up seriously good crime fiction for me, and apply it as I went.
A sense of place that puts you right on the spot, without turning into a travelogue. Something that gives you a sense of...Read more
It would seem that there is a rich vein of corruption, vice and criminality to be mined in 1970's and 80's Perth, if the ongoing involvements of Frank Swann, disgraced cop, now private eye from the pen of local author David Whish-Wilson, are anything to go by.
OLD SCORES is the...Read more
Cosy mysteries are so far from my comfort zone we could be classified as sworn enemies. Which is not to say that some haven’t worked for this particular reader. But to be fair, those that have worked normally deploy a sly, dry sense of humour, a huge dollop of self-awareness and preferably...Read more
A New Zealand born, Australian and Northern Ireland dwelling, now Iceland based author has written a book set in his adopted city of Reykjavík, with a central female character whose life is turned upside down in a very short space of time, that really works. Read ON A SMALL ISLAND so you...Read more
The author of ON CRINGILA HILL has worked as a high school principal for twenty years, and been involved in Aboriginal eduation for most of his adult life, becoming the inaugural chairperson of the Aboriginal Education Reference Group. Which did seem to make this, his first crime novel, an...Read more
When reading the true crime / memoir INFILTRATION by Colin McLaren, I heard him speak at the Melbourne Crime & Justice Festival. At the time he mentioned he was working on a fictional book, and I've been looking forward to that since finishing INFILTRATION.
Anybody who...Read more
Set in early settlement Western Australia, ON TRACK FOR MURDER, is an interesting look at the period, taking the main viewpoint as that of a young woman, recently arrived from England, carer for her younger, disabled brother; seeking reunion with their father, and their stepmother....Read more
Where Do I Begin?
Ken Bruen writes in his own form of poetry.
The words pull no punches.
His characters make no apologies.
They will do as they damn well please and sometimes there are simply not enough good guys to go around....Read more
WOW!! A wow book. What is a wow book? A wow book is a book that has you glued to the pages, resenting every interruption. A wow book sees your hubby putting his head around the bedroom door saying, “aren’t you getting up today?” A wow book finds you lying in the bathtub and realising with a...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
On Halloween, a group of teenage students meet in the woods near Sally in the Wood, a road steeped in local lore and rumored to be haunted by the ghost of a murdered girl. By the end of the night, one student will be dead.
Teenagers from an...Read more
Gavin is a holiday tour operator turned big spending resort developer who was invisible at school. Simone, his wife, has had enough of Gavin and his philandering and wants a divorce, although Gavin doesn't know that yet. Catherine is the PR agent for the oil-rig resort and for reasons that...Read more
A mystery set in 1880's Idaho with a bordello madam Hennessy Reed at the centre of it, that has a lot going for it. I know....
Hennessey Reed is a bordello madam with a liking for laudanum, irish whiskey and the local marshal. Although they keep that last one on the quiet as...Read more
ONE LITTLE LIE is targeted at the upper age limit of YA readers, a suspense novel, that sees four friends, Melissa, Katrina, Belinda and Alison working the Christmas Holidays on Melissa's uncle's tomato farm on Waiheke Island, New Zealand. The girls are hoping for a classic university...Read more
ONE STEP TOO FAR is one of those books that make you think you need a new "category". One that emphasises the number of clues that were there, right under your nose, that you missed because you were too busy turning pages.
Right from the outset everything about Emily (soon to...Read more
In BM Carroll’s latest crime novel, one family’s celebration turns to disaster as a teenager disappears amid a crowd of concert-goers. Full Review at Newtown Review of BooksRead more
ONLY DAUGHTER has two perspectives. The first is that of Bec Winter who disappeared in 2003 and the second is that of her current day doppleganger, a "homeless by choice" young woman. The imposter settles quickly into Bec's life with loving parents, two younger brothers and friends who have...Read more
Debut author Anna Snoekstra has taken on one of the more difficult challenges in writing fiction - creating an engaging, morally ambiguous central character, who sometimes borders on unlikeable. ONE DAUGHTER shows that an intriguing scenario helps, as does pace and the provision for some...Read more
Right from the opening pages ONLY KILLERS AND THIEVES is brutal. Transporting readers to colonial Australia, this is a book that will should make you ponder how we got to be where we are. In the main this is a story about brutal people, doing unspeakable things - to Indigenous people,...Read more
The third book in the Ngaire Blakes series, THE ONLY SECRET LEFT TO KEEP finds Blakes back in the police force (see my review of the second book: ...Read more
The third in the DS Allie Shenton series, readers might be best served to have at least read one of the earlier books (this reviewer has read FOLLOW THE LEADER only and that helped make sense of a lot of the sub-plot elements).
Whilst the main plot of ONLY THE...Read more
ONLY THE DEAD is the third Sean Devereaux novel from NZ author Ben Sanders, but only the second I've read. Back in 2012, reading the second book, BY ANY MEANS, it was obvious then that Sanders is an author who likes to work with pace, and complexity. The plots in both these books are built...Read more
I wondered where Peter Corris would take Cliff after the loss of his PI licence (which, it seems, he's unlikely to ever get back), but I didn't really expect it to be the 1970's. Once you're back in that old case with a few well chosen "commentaries" Corris places you firmly in the 1970's...Read more