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...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...JUAN GABRIEL VÁSQUEZ The Sound of Things Falling. Reviewed by Rosana Bouzas
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...Crime Scene: REBECCA JAMES Sweet Damage. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm
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...LAUREN BEUKES The Shining Girls. Reviewed by Jean Bedford
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),...JOHN LE CARRÉ A Delicate Truth. Reviewed by Peter Corris
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...Crime Scene: HONEY BROWN Dark Horse. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm
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...Crime Scene: JUDITH RODRIGUEZ The Hanging of Minnie Thwaites. Reviewed by Paula Grunseit
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...
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