by NRB | 6 Dec 2024 | Crime Scene, Fiction, Flashback Friday |
June Wright has faded from view, but in 1948 her novel Murder in the Telephone Exchange outstripped sales of Agatha Christie in Australia. Between 1948 and 1966, Australian author June Wright published six mystery books, raised six children, and maintained a marriage...
by NRB | 3 Dec 2024 | Crime Scene, Fiction |
Iain Ryan’s latest novel continues his fascination with 1980s Queensland and the tentacles of corruption that captured police and politicians. The Gold Coast, 1982: Queensland is deep in recession and mired in corruption reaching from the premier all the way down to...
by NRB | 5 Nov 2024 | Crime Scene, Fiction |
The author of Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone returns with another witty homage to the Golden Age of crime fiction. There’s a whiff of unseriousness around some whodunnits. Many readers still think of the form as stuck in detective fiction’s Golden Age with...
by NRB | 3 Oct 2024 | Crime Scene, Fiction |
These two new crime thrillers from Australian writers Anna Downes and Lisa Kenway bring fresh takes to the genre. Writers groups are an increasingly popular way for new and established novelists to workshop and complete their manuscripts. It’s always been difficult...
by NRB | 10 Sep 2024 | Crime Scene, Fiction |
In Claire Sutherland’s debut crime novel, a body is found on an isolated track on the Wimmera Plains, where Mount Arapiles towers over all. Anybody who has ever spent any time in the Wimmera around Gariwerd (the Grampians) in Victoria will know how striking the...
by NRB | 4 Jul 2024 | Crime Scene, Non-fiction |
Love a good word list? More than 50 years since it was first compiled, this glossary of prison slang is a fascinating window into the past. In the early 1970s, two researchers for the yet-to-be-published Macquarie Dictionary, Sue Butler and Vanessa Mack, asked the...
by NRB | 7 May 2024 | Crime Scene, Fiction |
Devil’s Breath is the first novel in a new crime series built around a neurodivergent professor of botanical toxicology, Eustacia Rose. Eustacia Rose is currently ‘separated’ from her position at a university, disgraced after an incident in her laboratory. She...
by NRB | 30 Apr 2024 | Crime Scene, Fiction |
In BM Carroll’s latest crime novel, one family’s celebration turns to disaster as a teenager disappears amid a crowd of concert-goers. The Sullivan family feels like a loving unit, perhaps because Rachel’s brush with breast cancer made them closer, more...
by NRB | 18 Apr 2024 | Crime Scene, Fiction |
In Aoife Clifford’s third novel, the death of a local celebrity brings two old schoolmates together to answer some troubling questions. In a small town, news spreads, and in this particular small town – Welcome by name, though not always by nature – glamorous Vanessa...
by NRB | 11 Apr 2024 | Crime Scene, Fiction |
A new crime novel by Garry Disher is always exciting. In Sanctuary, he introduces a new protagonist: a female lone wolf. Meet Grace. She’s a very good thief, having been taught by experts and practising since she was a kid. Specialising in small, high-value...
by NRB | 4 Apr 2024 | Crime Scene, Fiction |
Donna M Cameron’s second novel is both a fast-paced tale of a whistleblower on the run, and a paean to the beauty of the natural world. The instant he ruins his life a vision of his mother explodes in his head. He can’t see her face, yet he knows she is smiling....
by NRB | 26 Mar 2024 | Crime Scene, Fiction |
In Sulari Gentill’s new novel, aspiring writer Theo and her brother Gus become embroiled in increasingly bizarre conspiracy theories. The Mystery Writer is the latest book by the prolific and always intriguing Australian author Sulari Gentill. Set in the USA, as her...
ANDREW O’HAGAN Caledonian Road. Reviewed by Catherine Pardey5 December 2024This new novel from the author of Mayflies is set in London, but Glasgow is [ … ]
MARINA YUSZCZUK Thirst. Reviewed by Ann Skea28 November 2024Argentinian writer Marina Yuszczuk puts her twist on the vampire novel in [ … ]