by NRB | 29 Aug 2019 | Crime Scene, Fiction |
Adrian McKinty has won multiple awards for his crime novels featuring Belfast detective Sean Duffy. With The Chain he moves into new territory, producing a flat-out thriller. This is one hell of a ride. If you’re looking for a book to keep you up and turning the...
by NRB | 13 Aug 2019 | Crime Scene, Fiction |
Who is Evie? JP Pomare’s taut debut thriller has already been shortlisted for crime writing awards. A man holds a young girl against her will. She bolts, reaching the front door of the house, but the man catches up and drags her back inside. He forcibly...
by NRB | 22 Feb 2018 | Crime Scene |
Burke writes about Louisiana, McKinty about Belfast, but these two crime writers have more in common than you might think. Over the last weeks, I’ve been reading Irish-Australian writer Adrian McKinty’s Sean Duffy series (you can read Karen Chisholm’s...
by NRB | 15 Dec 2016 | Crime Scene |
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....
by NRB | 15 Nov 2016 | Crime Scene |
Metafiction is pushed to the limit in Dear Mr M, a sardonic and self-conscious thriller. This is a multilayered story told with conviction through multiple viewpoints: the jaded downstairs neighbour of ageing bestselling author Mr M, the writer himself and the...
by NRB | 27 Oct 2016 | Crime Scene |
This enjoyably quirky and nourishing police procedural is typically Vargas. The Inspector Adamsberg series, of which A Climate of Fear is the eighth instalment, all contain a delicious quirkiness and sense of fun that springs from the pen of this best-selling French...
by NRB | 14 Jun 2016 | Crime Scene |
A new femme fatale is born in Maestra, an addictive erotic thriller set against the glamorous backdrop of the European art world. Meet Judith Rashleigh: sexy, educated, poised. By day she is employed as a junior art expert at British Pictures, one of London’s best art...
by NRB | 15 Aug 2014 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
A year or more ago, in an idle hour, I came up with the idea of writing an ABC of crime fiction. It wasn’t intended as a ‘how to’ exercise, there are enough of those around, but as a survey of the elements, themes and ideas central to crime fiction. I wrote a...
by NRB | 23 Jan 2014 | Crime Scene
The not always benign power of memory, and the vagaries of coincidence: these two recent British crime novels are shining examples of the flexibility of the genre. Every now and then crime novels come along that bend the genre and take it into new possibilities. The...
by NRB | 5 Nov 2013 | Crime Scene, Fiction |
Garry Disher introduces a new character and Barry Maitland continues his successful Brock and Kolla series. Bitter Wash Road is the latest police procedural from Garry Disher. Introducing a new protagonist, and set in the isolated South Australian wheatbelt, this is a...
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 | 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...
JUNE WRIGHT Mother Paul series. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm6 December 2024June Wright has faded from view, but in 1948 her novel Murder in the Telephone [ … ]
ANDREW O’HAGAN Caledonian Road. Reviewed by Catherine Pardey5 December 2024This new novel from the author of Mayflies is set in London, but Glasgow is [ … ]
IAIN RYAN The Dream. Reviewed by Ben Ford Smith3 December 2024Iain Ryan’s latest novel continues his fascination with 1980s Queensland and [ … ]
MARINA YUSZCZUK Thirst. Reviewed by Ann Skea28 November 2024Argentinian writer Marina Yuszczuk puts her twist on the vampire novel in [ … ]