Sorted on book title (not in series order)
He left Hawaii to improve his prospects. He could be returning in a coffin…
San Francisco, 1870. Kaleo Manolo hopes to strengthen his ties to California. So the Hawaiian super-surfer and accomplished sugar merchant has come to town to meet his recently revealed father: a...Read more
A new resident, a new murder, an old lesson
98 year old Alice Atkinson is on the case once more when first an assault, then a murder rocks the Silvermoon Retirement Village. Some of her friends are rethinking living at Silvermoon so once again Alice dusts off her skills in a...Read more
After six Dan Delaney mysteries following a Kiwi family through the 20th century, the story comes full circle during the fragile beginnings of the 1995 Northern Irish ceasefire. The Delaney family are touring Ireland in search of their relations connected to a convict. In the process they...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
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
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
In 1987, leather-clad tourist Blanca Nul goes missing in small-town New Zealand. Local reporter Ray Moody, washed-up and over-imbibing, gets a scoop the foreigner modelled for a pornographic magazine. He chases the story but crashes his car and loses his job.
A year to the day...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
Adeline and Hemi finally have everything they ever wanted. A loving partnership, baby on the way, and who could forget Adeline’s beautiful assistance dog, Coco?
But… things never stay peaceful for long when magic is involved. Hemi’s cousin arrives, bringing some unwelcome...Read more
Florence. Spring, 1537.
When Cesare Aldo investigates a report of intruders at a convent in the Renaissance city’s northern quarter, he enters a community divided by bitter rivalries and harbouring dark secrets.
His case becomes far more complicated when a naked man’s...Read more
Dead Man’s Pose is a tension-reliever in yoga. Not this time!
The relaxation goes further than expected. One of Elaina Williams’s yoga students dies in her class. Was the victim helped into Dead Man’s Pose? Behind the scenes, there’s a coverup threatening to unravel Elaina’s...Read more
Nothing in Stan Andino's unremarkable life could prepare him for the day he discovers his wife in the living room, naked except for a black apron, bleaching out a stain in the carpet that only she can see.
A CT scan one week later explains the seemingly inexplicable; Carmen...Read more
Afghanistan 1982, a botched CIA operation leaves a young Ali without a family, setting him on an unpredictable path for retribution. What follows is his lifelong, meticulously planned quest for vengeance, from Afghanistan across the globe to New York. Along the way he makes enemies in a...Read more
Marshall Grade returns in an action-packed thrillride through the New York underworld.
When a former NYPD colleague is shot dead in front of him, private investigator Marshall Grade discovers there's far more to the killing than meets the eye.
Ray Vialoux is in...Read more
A phone call from the anxious husband of a murdered woman brings Private Investigator, Benedict Aberthorp, into the sinister world of his first murder case. When his new client tells Benedict he is the police’s prime suspect, Benedict agrees to help him. But what is the significance of his...Read more
1982, New Zealand. Sean McBride, an unlicensed private investigator living under a false identity, forms an unlikely alliance with small town lawyer Jim Mansell and his unconventional secretary Kelly.
Fighting against dirty tricks from Northland rugby fields to dusty courtrooms...Read more
Less a review, more a few comments on Les Allen's IF THAT'S WHAT IT TAKES, published in June 2022.
Set in 1982, New Zealand, the story revolves around an unlicensed private investigator who, whilst living under a false identity, forms an unlikely alliance with a small town...Read more
Two missing girls, two decades apart. Only one person knows the truth ...
Jac Morgan never planned on going back to her hometown. Seven years after the fatal house fire that killed her mother and branded Jac a killer she's back - but for only one reason. Her...Read more
What if an insane billionaire decides there are too many people in our world; what will he do? What is his answer? To kill millions for the greater good through the invention of a spectacular killing machine! How will he do this? By manipulating local cultural concepts to gain privacy for...Read more
Zoe Herewini's treatment for her irrational behaviour threatens to reveal the killer of her sister. The killer must silence her.
Members of a protest group wish to kill the Prime Minister, Jennifer Allenby for imposing sanctions on people's freedoms during the Covid-19 pandemic...Read more
97 year old Alice Atkinson has many ghosts in her past, but she never expected to see this one walk past her in the street.
She doesn't have much time to think about the past though as her friend Teresa asks her for help. She thinks someone is breaking into her apartment and...Read more
Silence is safe. Avoidance is comforting. Until it gets you killed.
Mac has spent his life hiding behind his disability. Added to that, he's struggling to find his identity as a freckled redhead in a family of black haired, brown skinned Du Roses.
...Read more
Who killed Marcia?
Beautiful but difficult, Marcia...
Ted answers the telephone to discover his ex-wife, Marcia, is dead, accidentally drowned in the sea below the house that he built on a remote beach in the north of New Zealand, a house he lost in the divorce....Read more
To say that author Lauren Roche has taken on a mammoth undertaking with MILA AND THE BONE MAN is possibly one of the bigger understatements this reviewer has uttered. There is so much happening in this coming of age story, which is more than just that - it's an exploration of consequences,...Read more
Retired Detective Inspector Ann Grieves, now private investigator, probes the dark secrets of Arcadia, a remote religious sect in West Auckland where abuse of adults and children is rife. After blowing the whistle on their narcissistic leader, a young dairy foreman is found dead. Ann and...Read more
Penrose and Pyke go together like fire and kerosene in this Victorian-era mystery with heart.
Trouble’s brewing in the Devil’s Half Acre. A death in an alleyway, a tragic accident in a factory, rumours of a murderer loose on the streets. It’s enough to give a genteel lady a fit...Read more
Addison Harper is abruptly summoned to Milverton at the behest of an abrasive lawyer. He plans to be in and out, back to the city lickety-split. Instead, he finds himself charmed by the small town with its delightful and eccentric residents, not to mention the rather easy-...Read more
At the end of Neands, in a world that has turned against them, Charlie, Pru, and Ivy have found refuge but they are desperate for answers. As they set out to find out what happened to Charlie’s mother and their foster parents, Alan and Ngaire, Em and her brother Miro are risking their lives...Read more
A cold-blooded murder in a small town has Dylan Harper scrambling for answers in a chilling case where the killer keeps leaving coded messages for detectives.
Dylan Harper has been demoted and banished to the small town of Westport. Now the sergeant in charge of the local...Read more