Crime Scene: CANDICE FOX Hades. Reviewed by Lou Murphy
There’s a constant sense of danger as concurrent stories of past and present creep towards each other in this intricate and gritty novel. Hades is not the kind of book to snuggle up in bed with at night – it would undoubtedly give you nightmares. This disturbing...
Crime Scene: PD VINER The Last Winter of Dani Lancing; LESLEY THOMSON The Detective’s Daughter. Reviewed by Jean Bedford
The not always benign power of memory, and the vagaries of coincidence: these two recent British crime novels are shining examples of the flexibility of the genre. Every now and then crime novels come along that bend the genre and take it into new possibilities. The...Crime Scene: GARRY DISHER Bitter Wash Road; BARRY MAITLAND The Raven’s Eye: A Brock and Kolla Mystery. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm
Garry Disher introduces a new character and Barry Maitland continues his successful Brock and Kolla series. Bitter Wash Road is the latest police procedural from Garry Disher. Introducing a new protagonist, and set in the isolated South Australian wheatbelt, this is a...CHRIS WOMERSLEY Cairo. Reviewed by Robyne Young
Award-winning novelist Chris Womersley delivers a provocative portrait of the artist as a young art thief. There is a sense of anticipation and foreboding present throughout Chris Womersley’s third novel, Cairo, as its teenaged protagonist Tom Button, with a...ROBERT HARRIS An Officer and a Spy. Reviewed by Peter Corris
The Dreyfus Case, notorious for its betrayals and anti-Semitism, inspires this new thriller from the author of Fatherland. In the Acknowledgments to his new novel Robert Harris thanks his wife: … who has been obliged to share our house with successive waves of Nazis,...Crime Scene: DAVID WHISH-WILSON Zero at the Bone; STUART LITTLEMORE Harry Curry, Rats and Mice. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm
Frank Swann PI moves through the wild and sometimes dangerous world of 1970s mining-boom-town Perth, and in the law courts of Sydney, Harry Curry rests his case. In Zero at the Bone, the second book in this series, Frank Swann has moved more sideways than on. Working...Crime Scene: ANDREW TAYLOR The Scent of Death. Reviewed by Peter Corris
The winner of the 2013 Ellis Peters Historical Dagger Award, this impressive historical crime novel gives a hard-edged depiction of the mindlessness of war. The historical crime novel is a sub-genre and a tricky one. The writer has to satisfy, as it were, two separate...Crime Scene: ANGELA SAVAGE The Dying Beach: Jayne Keeney PI in Krabi; PETER COTTON Dead Cat Bounce. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm
Two recent Australian crime novels – a PI mystery set in Thailand and a police procedural in Canberra – give a strong sense of place. The Dying Beach is the third Jayne Keeney book from Angela Savage, following on closely from Behind the Night Bazaar and The...Crime Scene: JENNY SPENCE No Safe Place. Reviewed by Morgan Smith
This novel introduces a new, very 21st-century Australian crime series full of tension. For women crime readers ‘of a certain age’, Melbourne debut novelist Jenny Spence has nailed her demographic with an intelligent female protagonist who loves literature and is old...Crime Scene: ROBERT GALBRAITH The Cuckoo’s Calling. Reviewed by Jean Bedford
This is an accomplished and complex crime novel from the alter-ego of J K Rowling. The draft of this review was written before I knew ‘Robert Galbraith’ was the pseudonym of J K Rowling. The knowledge hasn’t changed my opinion of the book, but it...Crime Scene: ANNIE HAUXWELL A Bitter Taste; ALEX HAMMOND Blood Witness. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm
The second in a series set in London and a debut legal thriller show some of the exciting variety of Australian crime fiction on offer. In A Bitter Taste, Catherine Berlin, still suffering from the injuries incurred in In Her Blood (2012), has been fired from her job...
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