Puti Derrell likes running at midnight. During lockdown it was safe but now lockdown is over and Porohiwi doesn’t feel safe anymore – especially when she discovers her estranged grandfather has been murdered and left with a Judas mask on his face.
Puti’s already got a lot on her...Read more
Pete McAuslan is Vietnam Vet, and retired police officer, now holed up in the family's remote cabin near the small Tasmanian town of Mole Creek, writing his memoir. His grandson Xander is a Sydney based journalist, and they are close. So close that the shock of the death of Pete, and the...Read more
Set in Florence in 1537, The Darkest Sin is the second novel featuring Cesare Aldo, an officer of the feared Otto di Guardia e Balia. Full review at: Newtown Review of BooksRead more
Recently we lucked upon one of those fabulous episodes of Would I Lie To You? in which David Mitchell has to guess if Bob Mortimer is telling the truth or not. Regular viewers of the show will realise that this is the stuff of minor legend now, with Mitchell doubting his own sanity in these...Read more
The third novel featuring DSS Archie Baldrick and DC Ben Travers, A VIRTUOUS LIE follows on from INTO THE VOID and RETRIBUTION. This is a series that might be best read in order, which shouldn't be a trial for anyone new to it - the first two are tightly plotted, engaging and only 160 and...Read more
It's going to come as no surprise to any readers of EVERYTHING TO HIDE, that author K.V. Martins is a fan of historical crime fiction, in particular, the work of Dame Agatha Christie. It should also come as no surprise that she has a background in history and archaeology.
This...Read more
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 secluded island. A missing woman. An impossible choice.
Detective Inspector Karen Eiken Hornby is not the only person to have returned to her native island nation, Doggerland, after years abroad. Following a ten-year hiatus, Luna has chosen to secretly record her comeback...Read more
Detective Inspector Karen Hornby returns in this second thrilling novel from international bestselling author, Maria Adolfsson.
One terrible truth will create a perfect storm.
While her colleagues enjoy the seasonal festivities, DI Karen Hornby is called to...Read more
A remote island. A brutal murder. A secret hidden in the past . . .
In the middle of the North Sea, between the UK and Denmark, lies the beautiful and rugged island nation of Doggerland.
Detective Inspector Karen Eiken Hornby has returned to the main island, Heimö...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
The third novel in the Reggie da Costa series, DEADLY GAME is set in 1920's Melbourne featuring the celebrated, well groomed crime reporter da Costa, and the brave, and very determined Ruby Rhodes.
da Costa has a habit of gathering beautiful woman in his life, with problems and...Read more
If you’ve ever wondered what a crime novel written by Noel Coward might be like, Naked Ambition could provide some clues. Review at Newtown Review of BooksRead more
Having had the urge to try BorrowBox from our Library system recently, I happened upon the first three books in the Doggerland series by Maria Adolfsson - FATAL ISLES (2018), WILD SHORES (2019) and CRUEL TIDES (2020). It looks like there are three more books that haven't yet been translated...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
BETTER THE BLOOD is one of those novels that I'd been hearing whispers about for quite a while, and should have made it to the top of the reading pile more quickly than my poor priority setting allowed. On the one hand I'm now regretting the delay, but on the upside, maybe I've cunningly...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
The debut novel in a series featuring Cesare Aldo, former soldier, now an officer in the city's most feared criminal court, CITY OF VENGEANCE is set during the winter of 1536 in Florence, Italy. At that time Florence was a wealthy and influential city, ruled over by the Duke Alessandro de...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
The second in the Reggie da Costa Mystery series from local author Laraine Stephens, DEADLY INTENT is set in Melbourne, in October 1923.
In this outing, heavy rains have battered Melbourne, and local crime reporter Reggie da Costa finds himself at the centre of a story when he...Read more
A DETECTIVE IN SEARCH OF THE TRUTH
Hana Westerman is a tenacious Ma¯ori detective juggling single motherhood and the pressures of her career in Auckland’s Central Investigation Branch. When she’s led to a crime scene by a mysterious video, she discovers a man hanging in a...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