Crime Scene: BELINDA BAUER The Beautiful Dead. Reviewed by Derek Dryden
Bauer’s new novel keeps us guessing until the very end. This is the fifth book by Belinda Bauer, the Gold Dagger award-winning author now resident in Wales. Unlike some crime writers who, once they’ve developed a successful character, stick with them forever,...
Crime Scene: B MICHAEL RADBURN The Falls. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm
Emotion, reaction, damage and recovery are at the core of B Michael Radburn’s dark thrillers. In 2011 The Crossing arrived in the Australian crime fiction landscape, combining aspects of the supernatural with the story of Taylor Bridges as he dealt with the extremes...
Crime Scene: HERMAN KOCH Dear Mr M. Reviewed by Lou Murphy
Metafiction is pushed to the limit in Dear Mr M, a sardonic and self-conscious thriller. This is a multilayered story told with conviction through multiple viewpoints: the jaded downstairs neighbour of ageing bestselling author Mr M, the writer himself and the...
Crime Scene: TANIA CHANDLER Dead in the Water. Reviewed by Robin Elizabeth
Crime fiction is blended beautifully with elements of commercial women’s fiction in Dead in the Water. Tania Chandler brings back the femme-fatalesque Brigitte in the sequel to her Davitt and Ned Kelly Awards shortlisted debut novel, Please Don’t Leave Me Here, but...
Crime Scene: FRED VARGAS A Climate of Fear. Reviewed by Derek Dryden
This enjoyably quirky and nourishing police procedural is typically Vargas. The Inspector Adamsberg series, of which A Climate of Fear is the eighth instalment, all contain a delicious quirkiness and sense of fun that springs from the pen of this best-selling French...
Crime Scene: MELINA MARCHETTA Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil. Reviewed by Ashley Kalagian Blunt
Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil engages many of today’s pressing political issues within a well-crafted crime fiction plot. Melina Marchetta’s seventh novel, a realist crime story aimed at adults, is a switch from her previous fantasy and Australian-based YA books....
Crime Scene: STEVE P VINCENT The Foundation: Jack Emery 1; Fireplay: Jack Emery 0.5. Reviewed by Michael Jongen
The Foundation is the first book in a fun and gripping thriller series featuring a tough and resourceful Australian journalist. We first meet Jack Emery in The Foundation as he wakes from a drunken slumber, late for his morning meeting at his newspaper. Life is tough;...
Crime Scene: JANE HARPER The Dry. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm
There is a very good reason for all the buzz around about The Dry, another great debut thriller from an Australian writer. In a country with a lot of mythology built around rural connections, it has always come as a surprise how much of Australia’s rural-based...
Crime Scene: ZANE LOVITT Black Teeth. Reviewed by Chris Maher
Zane Lovitt, winner of the 2013 Ned Kelly Award, has produced an original Melbourne take on the noir crime novel. Black Teeth is peopled by loners. A protagonist who suffers breathless anxiety in public, his neighbour who cloisters herself away in her flat, an absent...
Crime Scene: ANN TURNER Out of the Ice; LA LARKIN Devour. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm
Two Australian thriller writers have each set their latest novels amid the beauty and danger of Antarctica. Antarctica is one of the planet’s last great wilderness areas – for some, a place ripe for plundering, for others, an area that must be protected. Ann...
Crime Scene: BRIAN STODDART A Straits Settlement. Reviewed by Bernard Whimpress
A third Le Fanu crime novel in under two years will keep Brian Stoddart’s growing army of readers happy. When the story opens in the 1920s we find Chris Le Fanu undertaking higher duties as Acting Inspector-General of Police for the Madras Presidency with continuing...
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