TOM BARAGWANATH Lucky Thing. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm
In Tom Baragwanath’s latest crime novel, Lorraine Henry knows only too well how small towns and close communities are a blessing and a curse. Tom Baragwanath first introduced ‘Lo’ Henry in Paper Cage, a novel about a small but divided community and a string of missing...
FIONA HARDY Old Games. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm
The morally flexible PI team of Alice and Teddy are back in a perfectly bonkers scenario in Fiona Hardy’s new novel Old Games. Alice and Teddy, introduced to readers in the excellent Unbury the Dead, are best mates and private investigators who work for ‘Choker’, a...
ZEYNAB GAMIELDIEN Learned Behaviours. Reviewed by Sally Nimon
The new novel from the award-winning author of The Scope of Permissibility examines assumptions about class, connection and culpability. A common question on forums like Reddit goes something like this: What moment in your life was so pivotal that everything since has...
TIM AYLIFFE Dark Desert Road. Reviewed by Viv Ronnebeck
Tim Ayliffe’s new thriller Dark Desert Road delivers claustrophic tension as twin sisters navigate extremists in the outback. The prologue to Tim Ayliffe’s Dark Desert Road begins with a woman trapped in a stranger’s suitcase, but the even more arresting detail...
MICHAEL BURGE Dirt Trap. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm
Twenty years have passed since the brutal death of James Brandt’s beloved cousin. Will an inquiry into gay hate-crimes offer any resolution? In 2021 journalist Michael Burge released his first novel Tank Water, a coming-of-age thriller that tackled the issue of...
STUART EVERLY-WILSON The Maskeys. Reviewed by Catherine Pardey
Set in a small Australian town dominated by a family of drug dealers, Stuart Everly-Wilson’s new novel is full of memorable characters. Possibly you’ve always been intrigued by the kind of people who feature prominently in Stuart Everly-Wilson’s The Maskeys, but never...
JOHN BANVILLE Venetian Vespers. Reviewed by Naomi Manuell
Set in Venice in 1899, John Banville’s new novel blends crime and the gothic as it skewers literary pretension. From 2006 to around 2020, Irish novelist John Banville began publishing crime fiction under the pseudonym Benjamin Black. The Man Booker Prize winner (and...
GARRY DISHER Mischance Creek. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm
Senior Constable Paul Hirschhausen and his small community are once again put to the test in the fifth of this outstanding rural noir series. Paul Hirsch is out and about on his huge, drought-ridden South Australian beat doing firearms audits. Checking that guns are...
MICHAEL ADAMS They’ll Never Hold Me. Reviewed by Tom Kelly
A charismatic criminal, corrupt cops, and the brutality of Grafton Gaol – the story of Kevin John Simmonds is more than compelling true crime. In 1959 most people in Australia would have known the names ‘Simmonds and Newcombe’. They were the two prisoners who...
JENNIFER TREVELYAN A Beautiful Family. Reviewed by Ann Skea
Jennifer Trevelyan’s debut novel is both a coming of age story and a mystery full of secrets set within a 1980s New Zealand beach holiday. All sorts of things might have happened to the girl’s body after it had drowned, Kahu said. It might have been carried out to...
SUZANNE DO The Golden Sister. Reviewed by Linda Godfrey
Set on the Australian coast, Suzanne Do’s first novel is both a murder mystery and a story of grief, family and connection. Lili Berry is in her twenties, and her world is a mess of anxiety, dysfunction and pain. Compounding all her day-to-day problems in the...
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