Seeing something you shouldn't have makes life on the margins a whole lot scarier.
Ranger Cal Nyx works alone in the vast NSW bushland reserves but is pulled away from the quiet and solitude by a coded message that only one other person could understand.
Dif, the...Read more
In a small rural community north-west of Sydney, park ranger, Cal Nyx, finds a badly decomposed body in the bush. When the remains are identified as someone she once knew, the police treat her as a suspect. Cal, a tough and canny woman, needs to find the killer and convince the...Read more
The Crime Fiction genre is a broad church. Delivery styles, subject matter and purpose can vary wildly from the light-hearted to the darkest noir, from purposely vicious and cruel to accidental and panicked. There's even shades in terms of how or why. Investigation and resolution with all...Read more
Somebody called Jess Lowther has been demanding that I post reviews of a couple of Mike Boshier's books that were entered in the 2018 Ngaio Marsh Awards. These reviews have been queued up on the site for sometime now, and I've been resisting posting them as there's nothing much I can...Read more
As a young adult novel, BETWEEN, is a little firecracker of a story, mostly because Olly is a wonderful character. Grounded, a lot, in the relationship between the slightly naughty Olly, who is constantly drawn to Mad Martha, despite the blanket family ban on contact, the other side of that...Read more
Shortlisted for the 2018 CWA Debut Daggar, TRUST ME, I'M DEAD, is the first crime novel from New Zealand born, Australian resident writer Sherryl Clark, best known for her children's writing, although I understand there's now a sequel to this novel planned for this year. Any possible sequel...Read more
THE ASH THE WELL AND THE BLUEBELL is one of those novels that's categorised as crime but takes the expectations that come with that and tips them out the nearest window. The blurb describes the scenario well:
Losing her daughter to the Christchurch earthquake
...Read more
THE BOYS AND MEN OF AUCKLAND'S MICKEY ROONEY GANG is an unusual undertaking for more reasons than just the title. The story, starting out in 1957, revolves around eight schoolboys, mildly rebellious, obsessed with sex, and anything edgy, they are all attracted to the one bad apple - the...Read more
Following on from INTO THE VOID, RETRIBUTION continues to feature DSS Archie Baldrick and DC Ben Travers - in this outing, investigating the death of a very mysterious woman indeed. After Lucy is found dead on the beach, finding out who she is, or anything about her is the most tricky part...Read more
In THE GREAT DIVIDE, L.J.M. Owen has set what seems to be the first of an intended new series in the atmospheric location of a small Tasmanian town with plenty of past secrets just waiting to come back to haunt new and old residents alike.
Atmosphere is the word when it comes to...Read more
The second fiction book from New Zealand writer, Gigi Fenster, A GOOD WINTER is a story of a group of women, after Lara moves to the city to be near her widowed, pregnant daughter. Sophie really starts to struggle after Michael is born, her grief compounded by post-natal depression. The...Read more
Book number five in the Fiji Island Mystery series featuring local rugby hero, now policeman Inspector Joe Horseman and his team, this time investigating the death of a fit young reality TV star who dies most unexpectedly on a small island off the coast of Fiji, in the middle of filming a...Read more
In The Legend of Winstone Blackhat, Tanya Moir takes the reader, in a sustained and authentic way, into the world-view of an abused 12 year old. She writes powerfully about a boy, Winstone, (named after a NZ concreting company) who comes from a neglectful and damaging home life....Read more
CEMETERY LAKE is the third book by Paul Cleave, THE CLEANER and THE KILLING HOUR being the first two. None of these books are connected, so you can pick them up in any order, although, being lucky enough to read them in order, you can see a certain style developing in the writing....Read more
The third and final instalment in the Raymond Electromatic, I ONLY KILLED HIM ONCE sees robot detective, turned gun for hire, in the fight of his "life".
"Life" requires a bit of wiggle room here as Raymond Electromatic is a robotic detective / hitman with a 24 hour long memory...Read more
I distinctly remember years ago, standing in a bank queue behind a small, blonde, immaculately turned out woman, who I eventually recognised as Anne Hamilton-Byrne. At the time I mused why it was that nobody had written Australian crime fiction about the sorts of cults that she was...Read more
This is one of those books that the blurb will give you a very good feel for the style (and there is a lot of style here) of story-telling deployed. THE FELL I can best describe as a stream of conscious coming of age novel that's light on punctuation, and big on the angst, challenge and...Read more
Set in 1960s small town New Zealand, BUSH SICK LAND is a story that sets itself so firmly in time and place that it's uncomfortable. A time when racism, homophobia and gender stereotypes were not just rife, they kind of felt like they are being celebrated. Back when radio and vinyl records...Read more
1973, from art school to shared housing in run-down Leeds, and Jude (aka Toto) is a chaotic, wild child, living a reckless, slightly crazy life, thoroughly enjoying her youth, blissfully unconnected with the news of random attacks on woman that keep showing up on the news.
What...Read more
The fourth novel in the Fiji Islands Mysteries series, DEATH SENTENCE is slower, more measured, and reflective than the earlier entries, which makes sense, given the subject matter.
For those new to the series, it's based around the investigative team of DI Joe Horseman, a...Read more
Up front, it was utterly impossible to avoid comparisons with McCarthy's THE ROAD right from the start of this novel, so I gave up trying not to. Dystopian in nature, thriller in intent, UNSHELTERED is yet another one of those novels that I suspect will spark widely different reactions, and...Read more
RINGS ON WATER is the second novel in NZ author Madeleine Eskedahl's Matakana Series, set in and around the idyllic rural winemaking and tourist destination near Auckland. The series features local cop, Sergeant Bill Granger, and his Swedish wife Annika, their family, and their lifestyle in...Read more
The novella THE MISTAKE is short, sharp, packed with a punch crime fiction set in Iceland, written by ex-pat New Zealander Grant Nicol. Set in Reykjavik, there's a lot that's laid on the line, as you'd expect in something constrained by length. There's been a brutal murder and the clear...Read more
Christchurch private investigator Theodore Tate is attending the exhumation of a man who died two years before. Suddenly bubbles appear on the surface of the small lake in the middle of the cemetery, and several bodies slowly rise to the surface.
When the exhumed coffin is...Read more
First in a series of novels based in Fiji, DEATH ON PARADISE ISLAND introduces Inspector Josefa Horseman and Sergeant Susila Singh of the Fiji Police Force, alongside a cast of supporting police characters, set elegantly within the local society and culture.
Readers are...Read more
Combining a coming of age story, with paranormal aspects, this YA novella sensitively incorporates the subjects of disability and same sex attraction.
The main character, Myra, is a circus kid, who once old enough, had joined her parent's aerial act. Then she fell, injuring...Read more
THE SISTERS' LOVER is an engaging, slightly quirky historical fiction novel set mostly within Australia. Starting out in post war 1950, Flis, Australian by birth, is returning to the family property after many years in Wellington, New Zealand. Flis hasn't been in contact with her younger...Read more
THE FORGER AND THE THIEF takes touches of the mystical (as you'd expect from this author) and builds them into an historical mystery thriller framework in a particularly successful, and extremely atmospheric novel about, in the main, emotional betrayal and lies, set in 1960's Florence....Read more
The blurb puts it best - "DANCE PRONE is a novel of music, ritual and love. It is live, tense and corporeal." For many who were around in the mid 1980's, immersed in the counter culture of hard-core post-punk, indie rock with its wildness and weirdness, there are going to be bells ringing,...Read more
Set in small-town New Zealand, Boy Fallen is beautifully written and elegantly plotted crime fiction.
Auckland Detective Brooke Palmer returns to her home town of Taonga to support her best friend Lana when the body of Lana’s teenage son is found at the base of...Read more