by NRB | 6 Jun 2012 | Crime Scene, Non-fiction |
Two recent books focus on Arthur Upfield’s half-Indigenous detective Napoleon Bonaparte. Arthur William Upfield (1 September 1890 – 13 February 1964) was an Australian writer best known for his 29 works of crime fiction featuring half-Aboriginal Detective Inspector...
by Jean Bedford | 17 May 2012 | Crime Scene, Fiction |
‘Before Lisbeth Salander, there was Kathy Mallory.’ So it says on the front cover of The Chalk Girl, and so it is. Set in New York, the first Mallory novel was Mallory’s Oracle, published in 1995; The Chalk Girl is the tenth. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo was...
by Jean Bedford | 11 Apr 2012 | Crime Scene, Fiction |
Two new novels add to the Nordic crime fiction tsunami. Liza Marklund and Jo Nesbo are both mega-bestselling international authors, as the covers of their books proclaim, and among the most widely read of the present wave of Scandinavian crime writing. Marklund’s...
by Jean Bedford | 31 Mar 2012 | Crime Scene, Fiction |
Secrets literally buried in the past come to light in this evocative mystery. This is the second novel in the ‘Lewis trilogy’, featuring Fin MacLeod as the detective brought back to his remote home island of Lewis, the northernmost point of the Outer Hebrides. In The...
by NRB | 29 Mar 2012 | Crime Scene, Fiction |
Murder, dispossession and revenge fuel this passionate debut. It may have a body on the first page, but The Boundary is no ordinary crime novel. Yes, there is a lawyer-hero (the troubled Miranda Eversley), there is a good cop and a bad cop, bad lawyers, a weak...
by Jean Bedford | 20 Mar 2012 | Crime Scene, Fiction |
‘[Heyer is] a superlatively good writer of honourable escape.’ A S Byatt As a teenager, I devoured all of Georgette Heyer’s historical novels. These Old Shades and Powder and Patch have to remain among the best historical romances ever written, and Heyer...
by Jean Bedford | 8 Mar 2012 | Crime Scene, Fiction |
Crime and mayhem in a small village on the moors. Belinda Bauer’s first crime novel, Blacklands (2010), won the Crime Writers Association (UK) Gold Dagger Award. It was followed in 2011 by Darkside and the third in the series, Finders Keepers, is published this...
by Jean Bedford | 28 Feb 2012 | Crime Scene, Fiction |
Stieg Larsson has done for the Scandinavian crime novel what Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code did for the conspiracy/adventure novel. Fortunately for crime fiction fans, most of the precursors and followers of Larsson are very good writers, with serious social issues to...
by Jean Bedford | 28 Feb 2012 | Crime Scene, Fiction |
The first crime novel from ‘an established Swedish author’ writing under a pseudonym – another name to watch. She’s Never Coming Back is the story of a kidnapped wife and mother (Ylva Zetterberg). Her husband, unaware that she is being held captive across the road...
by NRB | 19 Feb 2012 | Crime Scene, Non-fiction |
Why watch Underbelly when this factual account of the 1970s Kiwi-led drug empire is so gripping? Richard Hall’s The Mr Asia Connection (originally published as Greed: the Mr Asia Connection in 1981) traces the rise of Terry Clark from small-time, small-town boy in New...
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