by NRB | 8 Aug 2013 | Crime Scene, Fiction |
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...
by NRB | 1 Aug 2013 | Crime Scene, Fiction |
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...
by NRB | 14 Jul 2013 | Crime Scene, Fiction |
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...
by NRB | 4 Jul 2013 | Crime Scene, Fiction |
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...
by NRB | 18 Jun 2013 | Crime Scene, Fiction |
This mystery is set in a Columbia emerging from the drug wars and haunted by memory and loss. The Sound of Things Falling, a noir fiction account of Colombia’s drug wars and their devastating legacy, is at once a tormented chronicle of survival and a beautifully...
by NRB | 13 Jun 2013 | Crime Scene, Fiction |
Things that go bump in the night add to the suspense in this cautionary tale of young adult friendships. Marketed as Young Adult, Sweet Damage is the second novel from Rebecca James delving into the nature of friendship and relationships in a way that works for older...
by NRB | 21 May 2013 | Crime Scene, Fiction, SFF |
This intriguing and original time-travelling thriller is not for the faint-hearted. Lauren Beukes is known for her genre-bending. Her first novel, Moxyland (2008), was a futuristic cyber-punk story combined with social realism and her second, Zoo City (2010), posited...
by NRB | 14 May 2013 | Crime Scene, Fiction |
Le Carré’s espionage fiction remains in a class of its own. John le Carré’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963) created a new kind of espionage fiction and set a standard only ever equalled by le Carré himself in some of the other books featuring the mild...
by NRB | 7 May 2013 | Crime Scene, Fiction |
A classic of foreboding and suspense set in the Victorian High Country. There are a few authors out there who write books that just about guarantee that sleep will be lost, and lights will be left on for quite some time after finishing them, and as with Brown’s...
by NRB | 9 Apr 2013 | Crime Scene, Non-fiction |
The real-life hanging of a 19th-century baby-farmer inspired award-winning poet Judith Rodriguez to tell the story in a variety of literary forms. I am Minnie Thwaites. I am under Melbourne. Wherever lime goes, where it seeps, where the sour juices of the city are...
by NRB | 28 Mar 2013 | Crime Scene, Non-fiction |
This true crime account attempts to explain the mind of a manipulative killer. It’s a cliché, but in this case it’s apt; if you came across a scenario like this in crime fiction you’d be hard pressed to stop your eyes from rolling. As is often the...
by NRB | 12 Mar 2013 | Crime Scene, Fiction, Non-fiction |
History, mystery, truth and fiction; these two books expose the underbelly of south-east Queensland. In complete control of the genre, Matt Condon adds his own secret herbs and spices to his collection of murder mysteries: an uncanny knack for writing great...
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