Crime Scene: PETER DOYLE The Big Whatever. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm
Music and popular culture provide the backdrop to this long-awaited new Billy Glasheen novel. It’s no surprise that Peter Doyle, authority on popular culture, slide guitarist, university professor and social historian, has written a series of novels that...
Crime Scene: BRIAN STODDART A Madras Miasma. Reviewed by Bernard Whimpress
Murder, drugs, sex, politics, history and geography provide the substance of Brian Stoddart’s fast-paced first novel set in India. In 1920 a young woman’s body is found floating in the ‘putrid shallows’ of the Buckingham Canal in Madras: She lay on her back,...
Crime Scene: ALEX HAMMOND The Unbroken Line. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm
This unpredictable legal thriller is no courtroom drama and brims with action. The first novel in this series, Blood Witness (shortlisted for the 2014 Ned Kelly Best First Crime), set Will Harris up as a strong and believable central character. A lawyer with a social...
Crime Scene: JUNE WRIGHT. An appreciation by Karen Chisholm
June Wright is one of the early writers who forged a way for the current vibrant Australian crime fiction scene. Unfortunately the crime novels of June Wright have been largely forgotten and unavailable for many years. That situation is now being rectified,...
Crime Scene: KATHERINE HOWELL Tell the Truth: An Ella Marconi novel. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm
This is the end – for now – of the Ella Marconi series by Australian thriller writer Katherine Howell. In 2007 paramedic Katherine Howell caused quite a stir in crime-fiction fan circles with the release of her debut novel Frantic. Detective Ella Marconi made her...
Crime Scene: NIGEL BARTLETT King of the Road. Reviewed by Lou Murphy
A missing child, a man framed – this debut thriller has a searing ferocity. It’s everybody’s worst nightmare – the mysterious disappearance of a child. David Kingsgrove is a gay man in his 30s, a freelance journalist who lives in an apartment in Sydney. His...
Crime Scene: CS BOAG the Mister Rainbow series. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm
This gloriously retro private eye series is purely for fun. Crime fiction tends, in the main, to take itself very seriously. Murder after all, isn’t a laughing matter, and the exploration of who did what to whom sometimes demands the playing of a very straight...
Crime Scene: MICHAEL CONNOLLY The Burning Room. Reviewed by Peter Corris
Connelly makes the most of his crisscrossing plots and delivers a disturbing picture of a fearful America. I’m forced to ration my reading due to my poor eyesight and I favour history, biography and historical novels over other books. Once an omnivorous reader of...
Crime Scene: EMMA HEALEY Elizabeth is Missing. Reviewed by Jean Bedford
A crime has been committed and Maud knows this – but what was it? She can’t remember. Eighty-two-year-old Maud Horsham is losing her memory. But some things are firmly stuck in her mind – the most important being that her friend Elizabeth is missing. She knows this...
Crime Scene: MICHAEL ROBOTHAM Life or Death. Review and overview by Karen Chisholm
One of Australia’s great storytellers: Michael Robotham’s crime fiction and the tantalising premise of his new novel. Michael Robotham’s latest novel, published ten years after his first, was more than 20 years in the making. In a recent interview, the author...
Crime Scene: HELEN GARNER This House of Grief: The story of a murder trial. Reviewed by Lou Murphy
Questions of masculinity and notions of guilt and innocence are probed in Helen Garner’s disquieting examination of the tragic death of three young boys and the murder trial of their father. Most Australians will be familiar with the high-profile case at the...
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