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. The earliest correct entry wins. Good luck! 1. Which Australian writer of private-eye...DAMON YOUNG Philosophy in the Garden. Reviewed by James Tierney
This book invites readers to drink from a beautifully blended philosophical cup. Philosophers occupy a diffident space in Australian public life. No antipodean philosopher dominates debates here in the manner of Europeans like Slavoj Žižek or Bernard-Henri Lévy,...The Godfather: Peter Corris on golf
A number of creative people have played golf. British Poet Laureate John Betjeman did and wrote a poem about it, the first line of which reads: ‘How straight it flew, how long it flew’. Betjeman, it is said, was more interested in how far he could hit the...Crime Scene: KATHERINE HOWELL Web of Deceit. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm
The lives of paramedics entwine with a police investigation to remind us just how good Australian crime writing can be. Web of Deceit, the sixth book by ex-paramedic Katherine Howell featuring Detective Ella Marconi, continues to build a solid, clever...
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