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
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 follow on from FOR REASONS OF THEIR OWN, GLASGOW SMILE is set (the title relates to something specific in the surroundings), in Melbourne, where the discovery of a woman's body stabbed and strangled late at night in the graffitied and dark tangled laneways of the innercity sets off a...Read more
Set in 1920's India, A MADRAS MIASMA takes place in an India that is looking towards independence from the British. With a strong sense of place, culture and time built in, this is debut crime fiction with potential.
The central character, Superintendent Le Fanu is a complex...Read more
There's something deliciously intriguing about the idea that a top spy could lose a briefcase, which, rather than chock full of official secrets and classified documents, instead contains three mince pies, two fruit pies, the NZ Listener, a Penthouse magazine, and unfortunately a diary...Read more
The Cleaner is Christchurch, New Zealand based Paul Cleave's debut novel. Set in Christchurch where at one point Joe, the central character, muses that the biggest crime in Christchurch City - apart from the fashion and the Old English Architecture, glue-sniffing, too much greenery, bad...Read more
A STOLEN WOMAN is the third novel in the Elizabeth McClaine series, and I can't help thinking it would have been much better to have read the earlier novels first as there's some back story here that took some sorting out. In short, Elizabeth McClaine is the custodian of a wealthy...Read more
A COLD WIND DOWN THE GREY is a novel based on a true crime story from the days of early white settlement in New Zealand. As per the blurb opening: Greymouth, New Zealand, 1866: The Burgess gang is heading towards town, and a young surveyor from one of the country's leading families...Read more
New Years Eve often involves some reflection, some celebration, and some odd goings on. For Aimee, Melinda and Lou, starting out their celebration with an illegal Chinese lantern ceremony. Filling each lantern with their own resolution, the women light them and they lift off, after which...Read more
Before we get started here, a bit of housekeeping. Because the covers on the versions of the 4 books in the Madeleine Brooks series I received caused a bit of confusion on my part, the order is:
DEATH IN COLD WATERS
DEATH AT CHERRY TREE MANOR
DEATH AT VALLEY...Read more
It increasingly feels like the things you can be guaranteed of when starting a new book by J.P. Pomare are it's going to be a fast paced, high tension thriller; it's likely as not going to frighten the daylights out of you; and it's going to be littered with twists, turns, red herrings,...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
Familial love, tension, friendship and interconnections are all part of Laurence Fearnley's novel WINTER TIME, set in New Zealand's MacKenzie Basin, a location which absolutely stars in this story. A place in which breath frosts, mists are all encompassing, peaks are starkly white, snow...Read more
“When we opened Sherlock Tomes people warned us that we’d made a terrible mistake. People warned us that e-readers were taking over. People warned us that we’d never compete with the evil Amazon. The one thing they didn’t warn us about was the murders…”
Introducing......Read more
A New Zealand born, Australian and Northern Ireland dwelling, now Iceland based author has written a book set in his adopted city of Reykjavík, with a central female character whose life is turned upside down in a very short space of time, that really works. Read ON A SMALL ISLAND so you...Read more
Coming at an eco-thriller from the point of view of the activists, RUBY AND THE BLUE SKY is part thriller, part exploration of "celebrity" culture, and part do good chick lit novel. The idea at the core is that fame can be used in positive ways - in this case a pro-environment, anti...Read more
A comedic styled novel tending almost towards satire, which you'll get from title, even before you've even cracked open the spine. SIX MURDERS (for short) is the tale of the weird life of Ponytail O'Gorman - a charming old-style fraudster - who somehow convinced a couple of everyday people...Read more
THE STAKES is the latest noir thriller from NZ writer Ben Sanders, and it's a standout. Set once again in the US, this time NYPD detective Miles Keller is onto what he thinks is a pretty good idea; ripping off rich New York criminals, with a view to early, anonymous retirement. I mean...Read more
Flagged as the first book in the Kiwi Falls Series, TAKE DOWN is part crime, part thriller, big part violent erotica that comes with a trigger warning for abuse, torture and sexual assault.
From the blurb:
"Lily Cartwright has been trained to obey and protect her...Read more
Miller Hatcher made her debut as a character in NOTHING BAD HAPPENS HERE. In my review of that book I noted that she was "a flawed character, frequently almost pathetic, but there's enough in her back story, and the way her problems presented to make her understandable, if not completely...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
Magical realism in a disturbing political thriller, told in a confessional first person voice, SHAKTI is not the sort of novel that you'd normally expect to show up in the list for a crime fiction award, but if the Ngaio Marsh Award has shown me anything over recent years it's to expect the...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
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
STRING THEORY is the 2nd in the Guitar Store Mysteries, and the first I've read. Which I think might have been a bit of a mistake. This worked, in that it was fun, a bit silly, and a bit of giggle in places, although it did take me a while to figure out who was who and how it all fitted...Read more
The central premise of RUNNING TOWARDS DANGER is a fascinating idea. What would you do if the flatmate that you knew very little about, and saw even less of, is suddenly gunned down in front of you, and the investigation into his death starts to reveal some very worrying facts about his...Read more
A CONFIDENTIAL AGREEMENT is one of those books that you really want to work. Populated with some really engaging characters, built around a strong central premise, it's let down in the end by a lack of firm editing and direction. Overly wordy, there's a tendency to disappear off on tangents...Read more
Book 4 and we're now probably at the point that A GREATER GOD will require some effort to catch up if you're new to the Chris Le Fanu series. Set in early 20th century India, around the tensions leading to Indian Independence from Britain, Chris Le Fanu is a member of the English police...Read more
Set in Depression era America, DROWNING CITY is set on one night when life, business and the future explodes in Fontana's face. A bootlegger by trade, it's a business that has a limited lifespan with political mumblings about getting rid of Prohibition. Meaning what money there is to be...Read more
When it comes to knowing anything at all about sport, if it's not cricket, then I'm the last person you want on your trivia team (and then only if you're really short of subject matter experts). The author of SPIKED, on the other hand, seems to know a lot about this environment,...Read more