Sorted on book title (not in series order)
I have to admit that the blurb of EMPATHY didn't bode well for this reader who is a tad allergic to unrealistic scenarios, let alone one that's all about empathy in a bottle, and a game which involves people learning to understand one another without direct communication. So I approached...Read more
The blurb on this debut novel calls THE EMPTY COFFIN a high-octane thriller with cracking dialogue, sly humour and a sense of justice. There's also a hefty dose of real and paranormal combined in an interesting idea, with slightly creepy styling that feels like it comes from the Paul Cleave...Read more
ERASERBYTE is the 7th in the "byte" series from NZ author Cat Connor. The characters are all part of a crack team of special agents, operating out of Washington D.C., led by Ellie Conway. Conway is a classic all-action hero, capable of absorbing massive amounts of physical punishment (...Read more
When a man like Ihaka hears there are questions about the death of his father of course it will be front of mind. Just as the unsolved murder of a young girl on election night 1987 preys on the mind of his boss Finbar McGrail. It goes without saying that Ihaka is going to start kicking over...Read more
Book three in the journeys of Dennis Bogdanovich, a sanitary engineer and keen fisherman, the earlier books are SWIMMING WITH BIG FISH and SWIMMING WITH CROCODILES. It's one of those trilogies that having started out with this, the third book, I'd have to recommend against that - spent a...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
The second novel in the RJ Rox series, THE FESTIVAL KILLER is a crime novel, with a rejected manuscript at its heart. The connection between the past unsolved case of an ambassador's secret love child going missing at the Berlin Book Festival, and subsequent disappearances from similar book...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
The 4th Theodore Tate novel, FIVE MINUTES ALONE sees author Paul Cleave continuing to pull together connections from many of his previous novels - this series and the Christchurch Carver books. Must admit some of these connections, and the continuation in these books fascinate this reader....Read more
This book should have come with a warning - I mean a blurb that simply said 'Lawyers, drugs, deaths, and sneakiness, in New Zealand.' just doesn't cut it.
It should have mentioned:
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
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
Wellington, 1923, and a sixty-year-old woman hangs herself in a scullery; ten years later another woman ‘falls’ from the second floor of a Taranaki tobacconist; soon afterwards a young mother in Taumarunui slices the throat of her newborn with a cleaver.
...Read more
The third book now in the Nick Chester series set in New Zealand, this is a police procedural that uses sense of place and great characters as it's starting point, drawing them into nicely twisty plots that rely heavily on location to give them that little extra something.
The...Read more
From the author of Once Were Warriors, FREDERICK'S COAT is equally as surprising, challenging, moving and profoundly affecting. It's also particularly unusual in that it looks past the crime, the investigation and jail time to a life that is being rebuilt.
Johno comes from a...Read more
The third Cal Nyx novel, THE FREEZER, would possibly work as a standalone, but the connections between this and the second novel, THE QUARRY in particular, make the characters here make a lot more sense. Nyx and her partner, DI Liz Scobie, her...Read more
Still juggling, still not getting enough books read. Not the worst problem, I've got, but apologies, as always to the authors and...Read more
This update is bought to you a day early because of the Easter Break which, this year, I hope will be focused on reading, in the spirit of...Read more
Took a break over the first week in March so I'll backdate this post but it's not going live until Tuesday the 10th. So the reader need...Read more
These posts seem to have become less of a #currentlyreading post and more of an extended wishlist / highlights / example of just how much...Read more
This update is bought to you in the aftermath of an Easter break where not enough reading got done. To be honest, not a lot of anything...Read more
Nothing much changed last week so no post, but I've managed to get a few things ticked off in the last fortnight - mostly catching up on...Read more
I hope that, because it's Friday the 13th, my current streak of looking vaguely like I'm catching up doesn't end in a screaming heap....Read more
The #WishList continues unabated. (And the 16 year old Laverne was having none of this "15 year old Shirley's getting all the attention just...Read more