JM GREEN Too Easy. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm
Too Easy continues an absolutely terrific series that falls on the noirish side of comic farce. In 2015 JM Green’s debut novel Good Money launched social worker – and accidental detective – Stella Hardy onto the mean streets of Melbourne’s inner suburbs. It was...
IAIN RYAN The Student. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm
The Student is fast-paced, dry as dust, gritty Australian regional noir. The Student is set around a university campus in Gatton, Queensland, in 1994. Nat is a student dealing weed supplied by Jesse, another student and friend. Between them they have a very good...
SARAH BAILEY The Dark Lake. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm
A debut novel set in a small Australian town, The Dark Lake is a police procedural with a hefty dose of romantic tension. DS Gemma Woodstock and Rosalind Ryan went to the same school. Back then Woodstock was obsessed with Ryan, who seemed to have it all. From a...
Crime Scene: SULARI GENTILL Crossing the Lines. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm
Known for her Rowland Sinclair historical crime series and her YA Hero trilogy, Sulari Gentill delivers something very different with this new novel. What if you wrote of someone writing of you? In the end, which of you would be real? Crossing the Lines is an...
Crime Scene: MARK BRANDI Wimmera. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm
In 2016 the unpublished manuscript of Wimmera won the UK Crime Writers’ Association debut dagger – now it’s published and we can see why. Set in the late 1980s in Stawell, a town on the edge of the Wimmera farming region in north-western Victoria,...
Crime Scene: DAVID COHEN Disappearing off the Face of the Earth. Reviewed by Robin Elizabeth
David Cohen masterfully captures a repellent main character in this comic mystery novel. David Cohen’s new novel has been described as ‘a warped comedy with a body count’ by Brisbane writer Nick Earls. It is set in Brisbane and is packed with...
Crime Scene: GARRY DISHER Signal Loss. Review and series overview by Karen Chisholm
Garry Disher has two successful major crime series out – very different from each other, both of the highest possible standard. In 1991 the first of the Wyatt series, Kickback, was released. In an unusual twist for local crime fiction at the time, Disher had created...
Crime Scene: ROSS GRAY The Dragon’s Skin. Reviewed by Kylie Mason
The Dragon’s Skin heralds an innovative and powerful new voice on the Australian crime scene. Ben Bovell has strapped a bomb to his chest and taken his daughter hostage in her childcare centre. He will only speak to David Edge, a disgraced former copper...
Crime Scene: ANDREW NETTE Gunshine State. Reviewed by Lou Murphy
Gunshine State is an Aussie pulp thriller chock-full of colourful characters, aliases, street-wise philosophy and unrelenting action that sustains it to the very last. Meet Gary Chance, a 32-year-old ex-army crook with a distinctive missing left pinkie and a heart for...
Crime Scene: JAYE FORD Darkest Place. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm
Darkest Place is Australian thriller writer Jaye Ford’s fifth book of stand-alones involving women under threat who are definitely not victims. In 2011 Jaye Ford released Beyond Fear, telling the story of a girls’ weekend away at an isolated country hideaway....
Crime Scene: B MICHAEL RADBURN The Falls. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm
Emotion, reaction, damage and recovery are at the core of B Michael Radburn’s dark thrillers. In 2011 The Crossing arrived in the Australian crime fiction landscape, combining aspects of the supernatural with the story of Taylor Bridges as he dealt with the extremes...
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