Crime Scene: ROBERT GOTT The Holiday Murders. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm
This novel of murder and military intelligence in wartime Melbourne is inspired by history. While The Holiday Murders isn’t, sadly, a new William Powell book, Robert Gott has delivered another masterful crime novel steeped in Australia’s past. It’s...Crime Scene: ANTTI TUOMAINEN The Healer. Reviewed by Jean Bedford
This dystopian Finnish crime novel is well above the ordinary. The Healer is set in Finland in the near future of drastic climate change. Floods, earthquakes and disease have ravaged most of the world, causing widespread cultural upheaval, the disintegration of...Crime Scene: KATHERINE HOWELL Web of Deceit. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm
The lives of paramedics entwine with a police investigation to remind us just how good Australian crime writing can be. Web of Deceit, the sixth book by ex-paramedic Katherine Howell featuring Detective Ella Marconi, continues to build a solid, clever...Crime Scene: BELINDA BAUER Rubbernecker. Reviewed by Jean Bedford
The anatomy student, the coma victim – and a satisfying new direction from Belinda Bauer. I have to admit I was disappointed to find that the new Belinda Bauer wasn’t a continuation of the Jonas Holly series, but I was soon immersed in the very different world created...Crime Scene: JOANNE DRAYTON The Search for Anne Perry: The Hidden Life of a Bestselling Crime Writer. Reviewed by Paula Grunseit
Crime novelist Anne Perry began her life as Juliet Hulme, who in 1954 was convicted of murder. Heavenly Creatures, Peter Jackson’s eerie film about the Parker-Hulme murder (starring Kate Winslet) is not easily forgotten. Set in 1954 in Christchurch, New Zealand, it...Crime scene: PAMELA BURTON The Waterlow Killings: A Portrait of a Family Tragedy. Reviewed by Tom Kelly
This sensitive account of a family tragedy details the terrible consequences when the mental health system fails. How’s this for a great horror/who-done-it plot? Nick Waterlow is a world-renowned art curator, past director of the Biennale, with an Order of...Crime Scene: TANA FRENCH Broken Harbour
Tana French’s Irish Gothic noir delivers more than the average crime novel. This is the fourth in Tana French’s Dublin Murder Squad series. Each novel stands alone, but takes a character from the previous one and is told from his or her point of view. The first,...Crime Scene: IAN RANKIN Standing in Another Man’s Grave
Rebus is back, as individual and interesting as ever. After five years out in the cold of retirement (literally: he’s been working cold cases as a civilian) Rebus has managed to wangle his way back to CID as a semi-official investigator in Standing in Another...Crime Scene: DENNIS LEHANE Live by Night. Reviewed by Peter Corris
This book is among the best of Lehane’s novels. With books like Mystic River and Shutter Island to his credit, Dennis Lehane has a very good track record, and Live by Night is up there with his best work. Talk about grabbing the reader’s attention: this is how...Crime Scene: LEE CHILD A Wanted Man
In 1997 Killing Floor crashed Lee Child onto the thriller scene as a major new talent. A Wanted Man is the 17th Jack Reacher novel. Reacher is a macho super-hero, an ex-army cop, who is now a transient. His appeal for me lies in the fact that, unlike most...Crime Scene: DEREK B MILLER Norwegian by Night. Reviewed by Jean Bedford
Simply one of the best crime novels of the year. Transcending genre, and blending genres, Norwegian by Night is partly a getaway/chase/escape thriller; partly a police-procedural; partly a social novel about family, displacement, guilt, grief and war, and, throughout,...
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