WAKING THE TIGER is set in 1939 Singapore. Dripping with sense of place and time, there's something vaguely reminiscent of Chandler's styling, and the excellent Inspector Le Fanu series by Brian Stoddart in the characterisation and plot.
Inspector Maximo Betancourt is working a...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
Queensland, 1976, the town of Royalton and exiled Detective Ray Windsor, sent to the dying town in the state's west, feels like an alien in his own country. Royalton is ruled by corruption, populated by despair and an overwhelming sense of hopelessness, something that Windsor instantly has...Read more
Number 4 in the Jack Parlabane series and silly me thought this would be an excellent audio book to have burbling away in the background whilst I got on with some work around the house. Kept having to stop and listen hard, or lean against a wall because I was laughing so much.
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WAKE won the CWA Debut Dagger in 2019, and it's not at all hard to see why. Atmospheric and cleverly constructed, with a strong sense of place and realistic characters, WAKE has a plot that bring past trauma, grief, guilt and violence forward in a family, and community, to the consequences...Read more
Bryan Brown is an actor synonymous in these parts with that sort of dry, pared back, quintessentially Aussie bloke character, much like the ones he's played in THE CHANT OF JIMMIE BLACKSMITH and for those of die-hard local crime fiction fans, the much missed Cliff Hardy in THE EMPTY BEACH....Read more
I've gotten a bit out of wack, but I think TO KILL A CONMAN is the third in the Quake City Investigations series (following on from SHOOTING MESSENGERS and THE POSSUM FUR PLOT). Either way it didn't matter, having read the first this one just flowed on, with central character PI Danny...Read more
The thing about a book by Garry Disher is that I know it's going to be good. But every single time I find myself marvelling at just how good.
Disher is a master at the art of the space - be it in the narrative, the place or the thing. He evokes a sense of place better than any...Read more
DYING GRASS MOON is the 2nd book in the Hennessey Reed Mystery Series, following on from ONE FOR ANOTHER. Set in the early 1800's in Idaho in the USA, Hennessy Reed is a bordello madam, amateur sleuth, hidden mother, astounding woman and an absolute force to be reckoned with.
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Iluka, perched above the Pacific Ocean, is a beautiful, isolated, place, home to Ana and her family. Her grandfather's sanctuary, somewhere more complicated for her mother and Ana. It is, however, a place where creativity abounds, and Ana's aunt runs an artists' retreat there, her...Read more
The second George Manolis novel sees him flying from Australia to Greece on an extended holiday after a turbulent time. Recently divorced, mourning the death of his much loved father, Manolis returns to the place of his father's birth - the Prespes region which straddles the borders of...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
Ray Moody is washed up. He drinks too much and won't look after himself. He's separated from his wife (it's more complicated than that), living in the house that her family still pays for and he's got a full time pre-occupation with separating himself from his career. So explaining the...Read more
A sequel to THE GENTLEMEN'S CLUB and THE VANISHING ACT, THE FINAL CALL is set in 1979 (10 or so years after THE VANISHING ACT) located in Remuera New Zealand, where Rita Saunders is the boss at The Gentlemen's Club, a high class brothel. Rita's more than a madam to her girls though, and the...Read more
I used to keep count of "girl in a hat" (and man standing on a foggy street corner) book covers. But in this case, you know the sort of thing, book covers for rural / romance styled novels with girls looking off into the distance, over fields of golden (dry) grass, akubra style hat firmly...Read more
Edwina Biggs has lead a quiet life, battling to make ends meet, working a mundane job with antisocial hours, living a restrained life in a contained neighbourhood. Things were changing at last though as she'd recently swapped the big family home for a small cottage on Edmund Street, learnt...Read more
Started this book with absolutely no idea what I was going to get, got through the first quarter with no idea what was going on, ended the whole thing thoroughly enjoying every word of it.
Maudie is the central character of this novel, a millenial New Yorker who, on assigment...Read more
The Wikipedia definition of metafiction is:
"Metafiction is a form of fiction which emphasises its own constructedness in a way that continually reminds the audience to be aware they are reading or viewing a fictional work. Metafiction is self-conscious about
...Read more
The 3rd in the Jack Parlabane series, the audio of this book kept mildly freaking me out. Originally published in 2000, the political satire, the social commentary, and the sheer breathtaking bloody awfulness of the "powers that be" could be right now. So right now, that it was freaky,...Read more
The 3rd book in the Hunter Grant series, FOLDED sees Hunter and Dao reluctantly pulled into the darkweb and dangerous human traffickers.
After office-worker Grace finds a series of calls for help, folded in tiny origami shapes, dropped outside a high-rise city apartment...Read more
Into the crime fiction reader's life something different should lob more often. CRIMINALS is not only different, it's brilliantly different.
Well known ABC presenter James O'Loghlin has taken his inspiration for this novel from his time as a criminal lawyer, and told the tale...Read more
The fourth book in the Cass Tuplin mystery series, set in the dryland farming areas of Victoria, somewhere sort of north west of Bendigo (I think), in the fictional town of Rusty Bore, with a takeaway that always makes me think of Wycheproof. (There's nothing whatsoever in these books that...Read more
Alice Atkinson is back, laid up with an injured ankle and mildly bored. When her friend, and fellow resident of Silvermoon Retirement Centre, Owen asks for her help with his wayward granddaughter who has gotten herself into a spot of trouble. Nothing compared to the trouble she's going to...Read more
The first novel in what one hopes will be a very long series, MASALA AND MURDER introduces Melbourne-based, Anglo-Indian ex-cop / private detective Samson Ryder to the world.
The author, Patrick Lyons, is Anglo-Indian himself, and his view of life obviously informs the way that...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
Everyone is going to be talking about EVERYONE IN MY FAMILY HAS KILLED SOMEONE, because it's fiendishly clever, dryly funny (well as funny as a crime novel with a very high body count is going to get), complicated without being overly so, different, and well, relatable, in a weird sort of...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