Sorted on book title (not in series order)
Rural noir being the big thing at the moment, it's sad that many seem to have forgotten that there have been superbly talented authors like Garry Disher telling beautifully crafted, intelligent, and informed stories of the urban fringe, and the rural regions for many years. PEACE is the...Read more
Simone Kirsh (aka Vivien Leigh) has an interesting job history - ex prawn trawler hand and working as a stripper for starters. Simone is determined to change things though, so even as she's still working in peepshows and as a stripper she's finished her Private Investigator's Course; has...Read more
A drama told from four family member's viewpoints, Lexi Landsman's THE PERFECT COUPLE is an interesting title choice for a book that's about anything but the perfect couple. As the blurb explains, Sarah and Marco Moretti have travelled the world together as part of their joint work as...Read more
The world sure as hell needs something to laugh at, and it could use a lot more caper novels. Especially ones where things are manic, odd, downright daft on occasions and a bit of just good old fashioned silly fun. With car chases obviously. PERFECT CRIMINALS fits most of those requirements...Read more
Immersive, almost meditative listening, I started John le Carre's A PERFECT SPY in Audio version recently, and was amazed by it. Partly a spy thriller, but really it's a character study in two parts. Magnus Pym, a young boy growing up with a con-artist for a father, who has become a...Read more
The author of THE PERFECT SUSPECT is a surgeon who, it would appear, has a strong interest in the welfare of children. Readers of this novel could probably be excused if they assume that the character of Tom is based on the author himself, although obviously, you'd hope without the tragic...Read more
Upon awakening in what she first thinks is a hospital bed, Abbie’s immediate thoughts are of her husband and young child. Abbie knows that there has been a terrible accident. The memories that Abbie brings forth though are not recent ones, as it has been five years since the car crash...Read more
Book 13 in the Hana Du Rose Mysteries series and boy oh boy do I wish I'd read at least one of the earlier novels as I really struggled to work out what and who and how and why coming in at this point. Young Adult series that moves around the extended Du Rose family as far as I could tell,...Read more
Back in 1986 I wouldn't have had as much understanding of the opening line of this blurb as I do have today, as 70 year old Phoebe and her two similarly aged friends Eva and Dave are escaping from the back of the arts school near the National Gallery of Victoria, stolen painting in hand:...Read more
This debut novel is set in small town South Australia, using many of the up and downsides of living in small communities as devices throughout the novel. Protagonist Mina Everton has lived in this town all her life, she knows everybody, and everyone knows her, and her family. Which made...Read more
PIETR THE LATVIAN commences the latest entire series audio quest, having now finished the much loved Discworld novels. I'm also aware I've got a few other series underway in this quest - mostly they've lapsed because I'm easily distracted, or because they've failed to hold interest. This...Read more
An old release - originally published in 1994, Pig's Head is the first in the 4 Pufferfish novels by David Owen and so far it's been the only one I've never been able to get my hands on. Imagine my sheer delight when Kill City in Swanston Street revealed 2 copies!
Detective...Read more
The Rubens McCauley series is one of those little gems of Australian crime fiction, of which PINK TIDE is the third book. We now find McCauley in a seachange respite from the rigours of inner city St Kilda, stationed in the small coastal town of Jutt Rock, admiring the scenery, chilling out...Read more
Well this is surprising, and a testament to the power of a bit of a tidy up sometimes, because in the process of doing so I discovered I'd not published these notes ... a long time ago. Apologies to the author - this is a series of four books set in Iceland, from Kiwi Author Grant Nicol....Read more
Wandering around in Wormhole Books in Belgrave South last Saturday, you have no idea how pleased I was to find a copy of Plaster Sinners by Colin Watson. This is the last of his 13 Flaxborough novels that I've been looking for for such a long time.
Colin Watson is one of the...Read more
PLEASE DO NOT DISTURB comes with a wonderfully evocative sense of place and people, delivered with an affectionate comic touch. There's something reminiscient in here of lots of these styles of novels set in developing nations, where the people in positions of power and leadership are over...Read more
Told in three parts, Please Don’t Leave Me Here by Melbourne writer Tania Chandler begins with the story of Brigitte – mother of twins and married to policeman Sam – a normal wife and mother, with a secret.
Part I, ‘Come as You Are’, set in 2008, is the present, after...Read more
This is now the second book by NZ author David McGill that I've read, both of which share a central detecting character, and a style being a combination of true history and crime fiction. The first novel, THE DEATH RAY DEBACLE was set in 1935, and this one, THE PLOT TO KILL PETER FRASER, is...Read more
Not having read any of Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl books, I'm guessing from the author's own description of that series as "Die Hard with fairies", that PLUGGED has a hefty dose of the same sort of humour but this time for adults.
Certainly part of one blurb I read "the crime...Read more
Josephine Pennicott has written three dark fantasy novels, and won three Scarlet Stiletto Awards from the Sisters in Crime Australia, so it's no surprise that her latest offering, POET'S COTTAGE has a little of the sensibility of both genres.
Set in the small, fictional town of...Read more
A triumph by Seicho Matsumoto (1909-1992), the master of Japanese mystery writing. A beautifully written novel that takes on the taboo of Japanese prostitution catering to GIs during the American post-war occupation.
Tokyo 1958, Teiko marries Kenichi Uehara, ten...Read more
A prominent official in a ministry tinged with scandal. A dining car receipt. A name missing from a passenger list. And a young man and woman dead on a beach in an apparent suicide - lovers who had one final drink together. Disconnected points, but not to Detective Torigai, who keeps...Read more
This has been a book that's been in the back of my mind as a "must read" for a long time. It combines that most fascinating (to me) of components of crime fiction - a mystery and an insight into life and the thinking of another culture - one that's totally different to my own. Whilst a...Read more
The 2nd in the Milverton Mysteries featuring Addison Harper, this is a series that's on the cosier, English Village styled end of the mystery scale. Although that setting is delivered with a dry, very wry tone, and a great sense of petty politics in a pretty village.
It's...Read more
Set in New Zealand, written by an Australian author, POISON BAY by Belinda Pollard is one of those novels that you just can’t help but wonder what tourism authorities reaction would be...
Located in one of New Zealand’s most rugged and beautiful locations - Fiordland - the...Read more
I was very intrigued by the idea behind Brisbane journalist Belinda Pollard's debut novel - a 'who's the unknown killer in the group' adventure thriller set in one of New Zealand's most ruggedly gorgeous national parks: Fiordland. A sort of And Then There Were None in the heart of...Read more
Not being at all adverse to a big suspenseful thriller I was more than pleased to get my hands on a copy of NZ author Steve Malley's book POISON DOOR.
Even more pleased that I didn't dither around like I'm wont to do and sat down and read it. There's an awful lot to like about...Read more
POKER CHIPS AND POISON is the first novel in what's intended to be a series set around 97-year-old Alice Atkinson, resident of Silvermoon Retirement Village, and cunning sleuth. Anybody who has read this author's Hitchhiker series may remember a cameo from Alice, but in this story she's...Read more
Belfast 1988: A man is found dead, killed with a bolt from a crossbow in front of his house. This is no hunting accident. But uncovering who is responsible for the murder will take Detective Sean Duffy down his most dangerous road yet, a road that leads to a lonely clearing on a high bog...Read more
Part history lesson, part social exploration, the Sean Duffy series from Irish-Australian writer Adrian McKinty is required crime fiction reading. Reviewed at: ...Read more