RONNI SALT Gunnawah. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm
Ronni Salt’s debut is historical crime fiction at its best, with a strong sense of place and time and wonderful characters at its core. Ronni Salt will be well-known to denizens of what was Twitter, now X, and followers of independent media. A pseudonym that has...
ROBERT GOTT The Orchard Murders. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm
The fourth book in Robert Gott’s ‘Murders’ series frees its cast from the constraints of the newly formed Homicide Squad and plunges them straight into a baffling case that threatens many of their number. Readers who are new to this series might be fine starting...
DAVID WHISH-WILSON The Coves. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm
David Whish-Wilson is best known for his historical crime fiction set in Perth and surrounds, but The Coves takes us to 1849 San Francisco, gold fever and the Australian gangs who controlled the part of it known as Sydney-town. The Coves is partly the story of a...
Crime Scene: MEG AND TOM KENEALLY The Soldier’s Curse: Book One, the Monsarrat series. Reviewed by Chris Maher
Literary icon Tom Keneally has teamed up with daughter Meg to launch a detective series set in Australia’s brutal past. Readers can feel totally confident in the veracity of the convict-era setting of The Soldier’s Curse. Although Booker laureate Tom needs no...
Crime Scene: BRIAN STODDART A Madras Miasma. Reviewed by Bernard Whimpress
Murder, drugs, sex, politics, history and geography provide the substance of Brian Stoddart’s fast-paced first novel set in India. In 1920 a young woman’s body is found floating in the ‘putrid shallows’ of the Buckingham Canal in Madras: She lay on her back,...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: 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...
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