Crime Scene: MATTHEW CONDON The Toe Tag Quintet and Three Crooked Kings. Reviewed by Annette Hughes
History, mystery, truth and fiction; these two books expose the underbelly of south-east Queensland. In complete control of the genre, Matt Condon adds his own secret herbs and spices to his collection of murder mysteries: an uncanny knack for writing great...The Godfather: Peter Corris on gongs and milestones
I’ve been lucky with reviewers, lucky even in their mistakes. A recent positive review of my current Cliff Hardy novel The Dunbar Case credited me with four Ned Kelly awards for crime writing but I only have two. Another, equally pleasing review, declared it to be the...MELISSA LUCASHENKO Mullumbimby. Reviewed by James Tierney
This sure, funny novel of an Indigenous woman and her land is alive with the tensions of new ways of belonging. Meaning is a messy act. Its fusing of memory, testimony and narrative is a selective one that shapes cadence and line out of life’s awkward arrhythmia....RICHARD DAVENPORT-HINES An English Affair: Sex, Class and Power in the Age of Profumo. Reviewed by Peter Corris
Lies, puritans and hypocrites: England’s class system and the notorious Profumo Affair of the early 1960s. I can safely say I’ve never read a book with as many hyphenated names in it as this. As the author, with his own double-barrelled name, plots the comings...The Godfather: Peter Corris on those radio days
Television came to Australia in 1956, in time for the Melbourne Olympics. The big consoles were expensive and my parents had to save for the deposit and buy one on hire-purchase. We didn’t get a set until 1960, which meant that, for the whole of my youth, home...JESSE BLACKADDER Chasing the Light. Reviewed by Kylie Mason
Three women battle the elements, men and each other in the quest to be the first to set foot on Antarctica. Ingrid Christensen has lived the last twenty years waiting for her husband, Lars, to make good on his promise to take her to Antarctica. In that time, Ingrid...Crime Scene: ROBERT GOTT The Holiday Murders. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm
This novel of murder and military intelligence in wartime Melbourne is inspired by history. While The Holiday Murders isn’t, sadly, a new William Powell book, Robert Gott has delivered another masterful crime novel steeped in Australia’s past. It’s...The Godfather: Peter Corris remembers his schooldays
Advancing age is said to enhance the long-term memory at the expense of the short-term. At 70 I’m not aware of any particular loss of short-term memory but I am conscious of an ability to recall the distant past in clearer detail than before. In particular, I’m...Crime Scene: ANTTI TUOMAINEN The Healer. Reviewed by Jean Bedford
This dystopian Finnish crime novel is well above the ordinary. The Healer is set in Finland in the near future of drastic climate change. Floods, earthquakes and disease have ravaged most of the world, causing widespread cultural upheaval, the disintegration of...The Godfather: Peter Corris on Hemingway
Lately I’ve had Ernest Hemingway coming at me from all directions. For the second time I watched Woody Allen’s brilliant romantic comedy Midnight in Paris, in which a Hollywood hack writer fantasises that he’s back in the Paris of the 1920s. The look-alike actor...The NRB QUIZ Answer ten Australian crime fiction questions to win The Healer
For a copy of Antti Tuomainen’s just published prize-winning Finnish crime novel The Healer – or just for fun – do this quiz and send us your answers by email (nrbooks@ymail.com). The earliest correct entry wins. Good luck! 1. Which Australian writer of...
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