Karen

I don't know why I read this, but I guess these two have been in the news again recently, I have Virginia Roberts Giuffre's book on the stacks, and I realised I knew next to nothing about Andrew or his ex-wife, other than the occasional bit of gossip that passes as news. Which I kind of suspected this book might turn out to be, or even worse, a massive attempt at reputation restoration.

It was neither. Mostly it's politely scathing, although I could have done without the little bit of motivation explanation - mostly on her part at the end, although to be fair, it was minor and it wasn't wholehearted. I think, on reflection, this book is exactly what it needed to be. Scathing, pointed, detailed and illuminating, without sensationalism, or judgement. This reads as well researched, with plenty of comments and observations from people close to them, as well as facts (like the eye-watering dollar amounts churned through on nothing much), and the never ending pushing, shoving and demanding of yet more money. There's details about both their childhoods, and their meeting, a bit about their marriage, and a lot about their "business" dealings, and associations. It's a litany of what might seem like poor choices, if it wasn't the same story over and over again.

Ultimately came away from this read realising what a particularly appalling pair, in a world full of appalling people. Money-grubbing, attention seeking grifters. Nothing admirable or redeeming about either of them. Let's hope with the burying of his existence going on at the moment they both disappear from view and we can all concentrate our attention, more rightly, on victims.

The author bio for S.R. White reads thus:

S.R. White worked for a UK police force for twelve years, before returning to academic life and taking an MA in Creative Writing at Nottingham Trent University. He now lives in Queensland, Australia.

He's the author of the Dana Russo series (HERMIT / PRISONER / RED DIRT ROAD and WHITE ASH RIDGE), and now this standalone, PACIFIC HEIGHTS with another standalone due out in March 2026, DEAD FALL LAKE. On the plus side then a good sized catalogue, on the negative side, why has it taken me so long to latch onto these novels....

PACIFIC HEIGHTS is an unusually structured police procedural, with five witnesses to the stabbing murder of a local waitress, late at night, in the courtyard of a block of flats, most of which look inwards. Lay-down misère you'd think, it's certainly what Detectives Carl 'Bluey' Blueson and Lachlan Dyson thought, bit of a doddle, exactly the thing for a couple of cops whose careers have taken a downward trajectory in recent times. Sure it's a small investigation team, just those two, the first constable on scene who turns out to be a diamond in the making, a couple of assisting uniformed officers, and a tricky dynamo of an admin assistant. The whole thing seems to hinge on what the five witnesses saw being pieced together into a full picture. Only one of them, the man discovered beside the body covered in the victim's blood, has quite the back story involving one of the detectives, even if he did call emergency services first. Along with three others in the building, all of them also calling for help, all of whom turn out to be pretty adept at answering just what they are asked, and nothing more. Then there's the building caretaker, tucked away in a room doing machinery maintenance, right beside the murder scene, who didn't see or hear anything. None of this is at all helped by the fact that every single witness only saw a little bit of the puzzle. Obscured viewpoints, different angles, different states of awareness, and then there's the question of who would want to stab a young woman right outside her own home. Even as it becomes increasingly obvious that the victim was a piece of work in her own right.

Starting out with pretty high hopes, these two detectives have to firstly get into the rhythm of a working partnership, deal with the complications of the witness and a shared fraught past, and then fathom what is the question that they haven't realised they should be asking.

To be honest it's not really that hard to pick the likely suspect in this scenario, but this was a novel very much about the journey, not the destination. The building of a partnership between two similar, yet different cops was engaging, as was the working relationship they had to develop with their admin assistant and the young constable, the four of them rapidly becoming a good team. Switching the investigation from that seemingly lay-down scenario to a more messy, complicated, odd feeling set of testimonies and a young victim who may have more than a few skeletons in her own closet, happened seamlessly, as the detectives struggled to nail their obvious case to a suspect, and an arrest. The interactions between this small team were really the focus of this novel, pulling in a little of the personal, but really concentrating on the difficulties of how you recover a career from a mess of your own making whilst still doing the job itself.

All in all, the focus or structure of PACIFIC HEIGHTS felt different, and the end result was engaging reading, especially given it's not going to be too tricky for a reader to pick the suspect, their motive and a couple of very good theories as to how opportunity came about.

Senior Constable Paul Hirschhausen and his small community are once again put to the test in the fifth of this outstanding rural noir series.

Paul Hirsch is out and about on his huge, drought-ridden South Australian beat doing firearms audits. Checking that guns are stored properly, the ammunition kept separate, not lying around on the back seats of utes as occasionally happens, and definitely not missing. A mandatory duty that always involves a lot of tea, slightly stale biscuits (the ones put away for ‘good’), and welfare checks. People out here are doing it tough – the drought is one of the worst ever, livestock are being culled in huge numbers, and everyone’s at their limits just trying to hang on. Not that Hirsch is expecting a lot of problems, it’s more welfare checks than anything else. Which is why he should have known something was up with Al Stanyer.

Hirsch brooded as he headed back the way he’d come. He could’ve stayed longer with the guy. What a life: far from the nearest town, shitty internet, bugger-all mobile phone reception. No bus at the end of anyone’s driveway out here, let alone a bank, doctor or dentist less than an hour away. If someone like Alastair Stanyer fell off a ladder or suffered from some other chronic painful or life-threatening condition, he might wait eight or twelve weeks to get an appointment.

Hirsch is a good rural cop, even if he ended up out here as punishment. He’s concerned about the people on his patch, a natural observer, and patient. Good at keeping in touch, being supportive, he knows when silence is needed. That’s not to say he’s a pushover, though, and he’s not convinced by his boss’s go-easy approach when one of the local no-hopers turned sovereign citizen starts throwing punches and pushing his luck.

He climbed to his feet, shrugged off offers of help and trudged, half-bent over, back to the police station. Got behind the wheel and called Sergeant Brandl as he set off sedately after yet another of the pissant small-town outlaws that were the bane of his existence.

Nothing is as simple as the search for Trent McRae, a man who thinks throwing punches at cops is fine, that the government and its agencies are illegitimate, that number plates are part of the conspiracy (although his suspect ute is fully registered and owned by his mum), and is a dab hand at all the crackpot ideas these people spout. He is deeply embedded in a couple of local fringe groups that seem to spend a lot of time and effort sending out threatening missives and standing around shouting pointless abuse at bank officials repossessing local farms. There are also the more dangerous aspects – violence and attacks on Hirsch are increasing, and weapons caches start appearing. Meanwhile, there’s illegal rubbish dumping, targeted road rage, and the council and its mayor making themselves desperately unpopular with everyone – not just the SovCitz bunch. Then an old accidental death / missing persons case has to be revisited as worrying connections and evidence are revealed.

There has been a steady increase in local crime fiction that addresses the sovereign citizen movement, although nothing quite like Mischance Creek. Disher, as always, is master of the art of misdirection, complicated scenarios made easy, and the slow, measured build. His deceptively laid-back storytelling style is enough to draw the reader into the action without ever making it seem obvious there’s something really big building here.

Hirsch followed Erica Woodhead back to her mother-in-law’s house, learned that Audrey McRae knew nothing about any shotgun, said goodbye to Sergeant Brandl and returned to Tiverton feeling crabbed and carping, full of gaps and absences.

The search for the now missing Trent McRae and Alastair Stanyer goes hand in hand with the firearms audit, the rubbish dumping and other more day-to-day policing tasks, alongside the personal – ongoing grief over the death of Hirsch’s father and his mother’s struggles to adjust. Then the discovery of a long-dead body, and the mystery of a dog found on the road, seem to be the tipping point. And as always, there are the little gems of observation that just nail Hirsch’s life in rural Australia, which also might hint at what’s to come.

He tossed his empty cup before shouldering through the hall’s heavy main doors. Into a warren of meeting rooms at the rear, and finally into a room normally reserved for the Country Women’s Association. Charles III reigned here, on the main wall – with his mother on a side wall, as if reluctant to cede him the throne.

Out on the edges, in communities where everything has been stripped away due to drought and years of government neglect, it’s easy and convenient to blame the fringe dwellers who latch onto a version of belonging that doesn’t fit conventional standards. But we are currently watching the playbook rolled out worldwide: the conmen, grifters, control freaks and evil people who get into communities and work them for their own ends. Be it influence or numbers, it probably comes down to distraction – when the zone is flooded with epic levels of noise, it’s hard to maintain focus on the main game – the corruption, the illegalities, the money and power grabs.

In the Hirsch series, Disher has always given voice to those who live a difficult, and different lifestyle. Battlers and the lost, people proud of where they come from, and desperate to maintain that connection into the future. The dodgy, the downright awful and the profoundly decent people who live in areas away from the cities and services. Those that thrive in that world, and those that hang on by the skin of their teeth. In Mischance Creek he’s also drawing out an explanation for why fringe dwellers are drawn to fringe ideals, and how easy those communities are to manipulate. Giving the reader something very different to consider when looking to explain or blame.

This review first posted at Newtown Review of Books.

Two novels, and one collection of short stories in now and I think we can all agree Bryan Brown has a "style". Short, clipped sentences, dry as dust observations, dark and cunning humour and a sense of fringe communities that are quite content with their little eccentric weirdo selves. Although, to be fair, THE HIDDEN, also comes with a pretty hefty ick factor. If you're not a fan of ridiculously horny people behaving like ridiculously horny people with tedious consistency, then this may not be the novel for you. And if you're horrified by cockfighting and the low life scum that inhabit that particular dark little recess of human behaviour, then definitely head into this one pre-warned.

Having been a huge fan of Brown's two earlier offerings SWEET JIMMY (the short story collection) and THE DROWNING (the first novel), then you may have been as keen as me to pick up THE HIDDEN. In the end, it all did come together, but the journey to that ending was one of considerable ups and downs. As the story commences you do get an awful lot of characters thrown at you with little to no context, and it has to be said, an increasingly high level of that sexual tension ick. If everyone in this community is as constantly on the hunt for a sexual partner as the opening third of this novel indicates, then I'd be tempted to question what they're putting in the local water supply. Of course, that doesn't include the local weirdo who is using covert cameras to get his kicks watching local women in their bedrooms and bathrooms. Mind you, the subtext seemed to be that he wasn't quite as bad as the poor, now dead, drug addict who was supporting her habit by working as a sex worker. There was a whiff of misogyny there that was ... well ... let's go with disappointing.

But to be honest by that stage I was distracted by cockfighting and the idea that this was just a bit of a misguided bloke trying to do right by his new Asian bride, and the she'll be right bloke that set him on the straight and narrow oh so gently. I was rapidly heading less into disappointed and more into profoundly bloody annoyed territory by then.

I get that this was quirky, and a bit out there, and all a bit nudge nudge wink wink, which was part of the considerable appeal of SWEET JIMMY to be frank, but this time, I was spinning from "convinced" to "what the" moments so frequently I got dizzy. Given I have a well documented aversion to animal cruelty, and I do so love my roosters (all 8 of them at the time of writing), added to that ick thing, and I'd stick THE HIDDEN firmly in the YMMV category.

It's not uncommon for crime fiction from any location to address societal issues up front, and DUST by journalist / author Michael Brissenden is doing exactly that - tackling drought, and the deprivation in rural communities that goes alongside that, as well as the rise of the Sovereign Citizen / Cooker communities, who are increasingly taking root in these areas.

DUST has, as it's central character, young Aaron Love. The son of a missing, but not much missed father, he's one of those fringe-dwelling kids that has looked after himself from a very young age, living / existing perhaps is a better word in a caravan park of the edge of Lake Heddon. An area and a community that's seen better days, since the lake dried up, and the major employers disappeared. When Aaron discovers the body of a journalist on the dried lake bed, it turns out he's been investigating the disappearance of Aaron's father Tobias, and his connections with a trucking company, Feingold. Sent to investigate this obvious murder, Martyn Kravets is a detective with demons of his own - the accidental shooting of his colleague being fresh in his mind, and the circumstances in which that happened always a chance to repeat.

So a lot of damaged people, in a profoundly damaged and neglected landscape, with drugs, and dust, and dirt as far as the eye can see. There's not a lot of hope on any side, yet somehow, young Aaron persists. He's a decent kid, despite his father being a violent, useless creature, and his love of this broken place, and some of the people around him shine through.

It would be possible, in the hands of a lesser author, for the clichéd characters here to get a bit much, or way too annoyingly predictable, yet there's real potential for connection and understanding here, supported by a plot which again, is heading into reasonably well ploughed furrows, yet remains twisty, compelling and all too believable. I will admit that the sense of dust, and dirt and unrelenting heat rang a lot of bells, almost to the point of twitch developing with the years of drought we have experienced recently, all of which made the reading of this novel feel very real, and very immediate.

As did the plot built around some very dodgy illegal going's on, and the convenience of the cooker communities in covering that up, the flooding the zone with noise thing again. I've seen that idea explored in quite a few novels now, and it's an interesting take with resonance. The wildly polarised political and societal viewpoints provided in this novel were both realistic, and chilling. Summed up perhaps in one line that stayed with this reader:

Can’t help feeling like the world’s gone and shifted off its axis.

Never headed for happy endings all round, DUST resolves itself in a series of observations of a world in microcosm. Environmental collapse, political polarisation, opportunistic users and crooks, and people just trying to make a go of it with what very little they have in the face of some very determined abuses of power, money and people.

The indefatigable Miss Phryne Fisher returns to solve what may be her most puzzling murder.

Set in Bendigo, Victoria, it was interesting to read the acknowledgements / author's note on this one because it definitely read like the research of location was spot on. From the carpeted steps down to the dining area, the wooden bar, and the rooms at the Shamrock Hotel, through to the differences between All Saints and St Paul's, even down to the original bellows driven pipe organ and the hint that it might be time to consider an upgrade to something more automated, everything felt just right. The tram lines, the Joss House, the mineheads, it all sat comfortably, which should never be a mandatory requirement in fiction, certainly makes a reader familiar with a location feel right at home. And if there was one thing that Kerry Greenwood excelled at, it was making her readers feel right at home. Right from the first clothing descriptions, or the details of sumptuous meals, drinks and, always, the lovers and the attractions of Miss Phryne Fisher, the reader is invited into this world with great goodwill and joie de vivre.

In this particular outing the murder is quite startling, when a difficult Deacon is murdered in the middle of the investiture service for her dear old friend, and now Bishop of Bendigo, Lionel. Even more startling because the victim was seated at the front of the cathedral, alongside fellow Deacons, all eyes on the altar at the time, although there are a few people in the crowded congregation who had a fleeting glimpse of somebody in a black cassock, moving nearby to the victim.

Phryne immediately finds herself working alongside the local, talented and under-appreciated (or more accurately wrong-religioned) young Constable Watson, and Inspector Mick Kelly from Daylesford (followers of this series will recognise him from earlier books), and her faithful, and somewhat discomforted to be in Anglican circles, companion Dot Williams, to solve a very baffling case indeed. It turns out that this is a church riven with politics and personal animosities (which is why her friend Lionel was tapped on the shoulder for the Bishop's role), surrounded by a congregation full to the brim with business scams, blackmail and social scandals the likes of which only the indefatigable Miss Fisher can elbow, wade, cajole and charm her way through. Ably assisted by the local constabulary of course, and Hugh Collins, seconded from Melbourne to join the hunt.

Of course this was a wonderful outing, and the plot here was nicely twisty and complex, with the murder starting out as a mystery with a hat tip to a locked room, and moving on to one of those nicely complicated and very personal stories that wrap up and intertwine a heap of people and their pasts and futures.

It's only after finishing the novel, and reading the acknowledgements and the author's bio that the full weight of where we are with the Phryne Fisher series hit home. Dot's selection of her wedding dress in the Myer Emporium now for a wedding we'll never attend. Lin's wife about to give birth to a baby we'll never meet. Peony and Carnation starting out on a life in Bendigo together we'll never get to follow. And what of Tinker and his ambitions to become a Detective, and Mr and Mrs Butler, and Phryne as she never aged, never gave up, never allowed anyone to get the better of her ever again.

Thanks to the publishers for this final, wonderful MURDER IN THE CATHEDRAL and thank you Ms Greenwood for this world.

Ernest Cunningham is dying, in his own words, on the ice-cold floor of a steel box about the size of a fridge with, he's calculated, around fifteen hours of air left inside it. You'd think, under those circumstances, the dwindling ink in his pen would be put to good purpose, getting to the point, maybe sharing some messages for loved ones, some wisdom from his previous record of solving murders, anything but the story of a bank heist, well 10 bank heists to be precise. And a lot of information on exactly how he ended up in this predicament. But, being Ernest Cunningham, he also plays fair.

I was raised on a diet of Golden Age detective novels - the 'fair-play' mysteries where the clues are front and centre for the reader - which came in mighty handy when I found myself getting caught up in, and transcribing, real-life murders. I've always prided myself when I chronicled those three cases in my first three books, on being a reliable narrator. Everything I show is the truth, exactly how I saw it. The reader and the author solve the mystery together. There are no hidden facts or deliberate omissions.

Any readers who have encountered the first three novels in this series: EVERYONE IN MY FAMILY HAS KILLED SOMEONE, EVERYONE ON THIS TRAIN IS A SUSPECT and EVERYONE THIS CHRISTMAS HAS A SECRET will attest to the fact that (with hindsight mostly) the author (be it Stevenson or Cunningham) has done just that. But that hindsight bit is the "clue" here. Don't know about any other readers, but the rides here are so hectic, so much fun, so multi-layered, and almost multidimensional, with interwoven timelines, suspects aplenty, complicated plots and epic levels of murder and mayhem, that I'm always struck at the end by what I missed and darn well should have seen at the time. I mean it is all there, but I suspect it will be only on the third or fourth reading of the books that you'll get all those ducks / clues / deaths / timelines / motivations / involvements and suspects lined up neatly. Notes may be required. A whiteboard came in handy here.

In EVERYBODY IN THIS BANK IS A THIEF, the blurb, to be fair again, does warn you up front

Ten suspects. Ten heists. A puzzle only Ernest Cunningham can solve.

So you know it's not a straightforward bank robbery, and you even know up front who the suspects are:

THE BANK ROBBER THE MANAGER THE SECURITY GUARD THE KID THE FILM PRODUCER THE PRIEST THE RECEPTIONIST THE PATIENT THE CARER ME

The complications come about as the various "heists" are identified, including (but oh so not limited to) a missing Manager's Brother, the past of this particular bank, the film that's based on Cunningham's earlier books, the reason Cunningham and his fiancée Juliette are even in this bank in the middle of nowhere, and some pretty spectacular and gruesome spontaneous combustions. The whole "mystery" hinges, unsurprisingly on the various connections amongst this cast of characters. Good luck pre-guessing any of those. Even better luck come the end of this highly entertaining and absolutely enthralling novel if there just isn't the occasional "clue" that you find yourself wondering how the bloody hell you missed it!

Book Five now in the Reggie da Costa series of historical crime fiction set in and around Melbourne (with some trips to Geelong incorporated in this one), THE WHITE FEATHER MURDERS really has cemented these novels as a favourite in these parts.

If you're new to the series, it really would be best to start out at the beginning, although in that first novel, Reggie isn't quite to the forefront nor quite as engaging as he later becomes. That's not to say that the first novel, THE DEATH MASK MURDERS, isn't a great introduction to this series as the historical setting, and sensibility is right there from the beginning.

A bit of background though for those that haven't read any of the books, Reggie is the senior crime reporter at Melbourne's Argus newspaper. He's a bit of an endearing dandy with a love of fine clothes, fast cars, and his hopelessly daft mother. Her social life, and messed up love life is an ongoing theme through these books, as is Reggie having to step in and fix things for her on an ongoing basis. As is the case again late in the action of THE WHITE FEATHER MURDERS.

The main cast now also includes brother and sister Ruby and Dusty Rhodes, who first appeared in book 3 in the series, A DEADLY GAME, when Ruby's twin sister disappeared and Reggie got involved in the search. Now engaged to Ruby and with Dusty as his sidekick reporter at The Argus, Reggie's got himself a very useful crew of allies with Ruby fearless, and Dusty dogged when it comes to chasing down leads, both committed to keeping Reggie, his mother, and the people they care about safe, whilst also solving baffling cases. This time it's multiple deaths that are connected by the white feathers left at the scene, and the scurrilous poison pen column regularly appearing in rival newspaper (and Dusty's previous workplace), The Truth. Add to that a corrupt and very dodgy policeman and things get very dangerous for life, limb and careers all round. All whilst the wedding of Reggie and Ruby gets closer if Reggie can make it in one piece.

It's a series that really does benefit from reading in publication order, simply because there's quite a bit of backstory to the personal and professional lives of these characters, although it shouldn't be a trial to work your way through them, nor would it be an absolute loss to start with this current release. There's a strong sense of history and place about these books, combining a lot of the Melbourne Underworld from the time (there's a strong thread about the death of Squizzy Taylor through this novel), the newspaper world (is it sad to mention that I'm old enough to remember The Truth and it's particular "style" of journalism - I mean hard to forget their headline at the time of Billy Sneddon's death....), and the way that society functioned at the time. In particular the expectations used to restrict and control women, the way an interstate move would be considered enough to escape a reputation for corruption, the lack of immediate communications, the amount of staking out, and physical running about to chase down leads or find out information.

At the core of it though is an interesting plot, with the lack of obvious connection between a very different set of victims, a firebrand president of the Melbourne Woman's Christian Temperance union, a drug addicted nurse, a hypocritical politician, a very dodgy doctor and a priest. Individually maybe targets, but what made the writer of an anonymous poison pen column hate them enough to expose them? What's the significance of the white feather thing? Can Reggie da Costa work it out before the killer disappears back into anonymity?

On Halloween, a group of teenage students meet in the woods near Sally in the Wood, a road steeped in local lore and rumored to be haunted by the ghost of a murdered girl. By the end of the night, one student will be dead.

Teenagers from an exclusive boarding school, a deep dark English wood, myths of haunting, rituals and rumours, and Halloween combine in ONE DARK NIGHT to create a creepy, claustrophobic thriller that's steeped in family and community simmering tensions.

The story is told from three main viewpoints: School Counsellor Rachel, her ex-husband DC Ben Chase, and their rebellious teen daughter Ellie. Rachel works at Folly View College, an exclusive upmarket boarding school, is very recently divorced from Chase, who has a new girlfriend which is causing quite a bit of tension with Rachel and the fallout isn't helping teenager Ellie who is rebelling against her parents and the world in general.

The discovery of the body of one of Ellie's school friends, battered and broken at the bottom of a stone folly deep in the woods where the students were partying on Halloween doesn't help the family dynamic as Ellie's parents come to realise she's been keeping a lot of secrets from them, and Chase's investigation is complicated by the involvement of his fractured family in the school, and the group of teenagers who are integral to explaining what happened that night.

Tension then, a lot of of it of the domestic variety, a lot of it revolving around the school with a creepy caretaker and handsome art teacher to add to the mix and a bully and a troubled homeless recluse at the fringes. The storyline here is bolstered considerably by the creepy sense of place, creating an atmosphere that infects everything and everybody, well supported by a sense of pace that never quite allows the reader to settle, always pushing, always keeping the pieces of the plot moving deftly around the storyboard.

Whilst the mystery itself is well served by ONE DARK NIGHT, upon reflection, it's the underlying messages that have the most potency, not just that bullying and gaslighting exist, but how the online world can be used as a toolkit to find the vulnerable, hone the targeting, and manipulate the unaware and unwary.

A beautiful young law student is dead. Falling from her third-storey window onto concrete below in chilly Dunedin, the house is a shared with other university students. The question is did she fall (suicide), was she pushed (murder), coerced (equally murder) or is this staged (suicide with complications). And is her being the beautiful one, with straight A's, a long term devoted boyfriend, and a future all mapped out something to do with all of this or a distraction.

Building on a what feels like a convenient set up of the rich beautiful pain in the neck girl, with a poor but seemingly devoted boyfriend Xander, who is tight with her family, and grateful for the largesse that comes his way, add in the quiet, nowhere near as dazzling or life of the party flatmate Ronnie, and create a love triangle for the ages, and this could all feel a bit contrived. And it does at points, also a bit on the circular side as Ronnie and Xander sneak about and Ashleigh behaves like a spoilt brat, and the rest of the household get to actively dislike her, and suddenly you realise you're not short of suspects, although there's always something a bit brittle, stagey or showy about Ashleigh and the reader can't help but wonder would she throw herself out of a window in the ultimate of "grand gestures".

More of this review on my website.

The second psychological thriller from Lyn Yeowart, THE HOLLOW GIRL, is set in the West of Victoria around Ballarat, Ararat and Horsham, employing the dual timelines of the 1960's when a home for 'girls in crisis' near Horsham known as Harrowford Hall, takes in young, unmarried, pregnant girls, and the 1970's when Ballarat based newly qualified (and controversially as far as her awful boss is concerned) female DS Eleanor Smith is assigned to investigate the murder of a nurse at the now closing Hall.

Starting in the 1970's, Eleanor Smith is a wonderful character, brought to life by a unique voice, determination, and grit in the face of the childish and frankly pathetic behaviour of her boss - who is one of those quintessential 1970s piggish men who should have been obliterated from the face of the earth, and even more pathetically seem to linger on. She's palmed off on this low-profile murder case (the victim is female after all), and assigned a "helper" of a very new constable who is part of a fast-track programme getting newly graduated cops to shadow detectives - so less help / more work experience student, although he does turn out to be handy at taking notes, and tracking down the local fish and chip shops and Chinese takeaways.

Full Review on my website.

THE DEEPER THE DEAD is the third book in the New Zealand based police procedural series feature DI Nyree Bradshaw at the centre of a personal and professional storm. This is definitely one of those sets of books that would be worth reading in order, Bradshaw has a backstory which will allow readers to see the full picture behind the storm that is going on in her personal life, although you can definitely see the impact.

In the last book in the series Bradshaw found herself sort of guilted / sort of keen to accept custody of her very young granddaughter, whose mother had recently died. Her father, Bradshaw's son, is in jail but even before that she had a fractured relationship with him, and would be the first to admit that motherhood wasn't her thing, but police work, and solving crimes most definitely is. So taking on a young girl's care and welfare right now is quite the thing, especially as she's still flat out with cases, and the social workers are hovering. Not a great combination for Bradshaw's often tetchy temperament, especially as the current case is a double homicide on a private island in the Far North. An island that can only be reached by boat, which is wet going. And the weather's generally wet, and somebody's taking liberties with her crime scenes, and paying very fast and loose with the truth.

More of this review on my website.

A group of short stories, this a both gripping, and incredibly clever crime fiction, set within a scenario that will be familiar to some Australian readers.

The central premise of this collection is the reverberations of a serial killer's crime in the lives of ordinary people. The connections are both unexpected and more obvious, but the impacts less predictable, and sometimes disconcertingly random. Each story provides a glimpse into the way that one person's actions create an outward ripple effect, how complicated connections can be, and more importantly, how chance plays such a big part in so many lives.

Full review on my website

The author of this series of now 2 novels, is a bestselling historical fiction writer, and you can tell just how impeccable her research is, even without reading the author's notes at the end of both novels, expanding on the thinking, and investigations that went into the construction of these stories.

Featuring the now twenty-five-year old, and widowed, Tatty (Tatiana) Crowe, the first female undertaker in Sydney, her life now, post the death of her awful husband, is going well. The business, originally her husband's family's, is doing well under her guidance, they are providing a sensitive service to paying customers, and plenty of free services where required. The household is functioning smoothly and there is much that you'd think Tatty would be well within her rights to rest on the laurels of. But there's something happening to women and babies in Sydney, with an increasing number of dead babies being found, and an increasing number of women dying from botched abortions.

Full review on my website.

I have no idea what made me pluck this one out of the library's lists, but I am so very glad I did. The blurb gives some hints about the set up of INNOCENT GUILT, but it didn't say anything that made me think this would be as compelling, and as engaging as it was until I noticed Christopher Brookmyre's quote: 'A pedal-to-the-metal trip into the scariest places in the human mind'. I mean if HE thinks that it gets into the scariest places in the human mind, then I'm in.

It all kicks off when an uninjured woman, covered in blood, clutching a blood covered baseball bat walks, on her own, into DI Leah Hutch's police station in London. She's silent, perhaps in deep shock, unable, or is it unwilling, to explain what has happened, to who, and more importantly where. So everything starts off with Hutch and Randle's team not sure if they are looking for a victim, or a badly injured survivor. Until a man is found battered to death in a nearby park, with journalist Odie Reid in the vicinity after a tip off. Reid is badly in need of a journalistic scoop to recover her flagging reputation and career, so she sets out initially determined to link the death to the woman in custody, only it turns out that the evidence shows this is not as straight-forward as it seems.

Full review on my website.

The Orient Express instantly conjures up images of luxurious travel, fine dining, people dressed in their very best, quiet and attentive staff gliding unseen and unremarked through carriages, Inspector Hercule Poirot and 12. Always 12 people.

And so it is with FIVE FOUND DEAD in which one imagines author Sulari Gentill had an enormous amount of fun constructing a story that's partly a hat tip to Agatha Christie's well known novel, and the entire golden age of mystery writing.

In this outing the 12 are the "Bar Council", a group of passengers pulled together by their backgrounds - law enforcement, private investigators, spies, a lawyer and her brother the crime writer. They are called upon by the train manager when a compartment is discovered one morning, empty of its occupant but covered in blood. Of course it's a train so that compartment will be close to somebody, but it's the lawyer and her brother Meredith and Joe - the "main characters" of this outing for want of a better description, and a recently retired French policeman who have the "honour" of being in the cabins either side of the crime scene. As the "Council" convenes to try to solve the mystery of the missing man, and what the crime scene means, a dangerous new COVID variant has been discovered, and two carriages are quarantined from the rest of the train, which also finds itself stranded between France and Italy as authorities react (badly) to this biothreat.

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I absolutely get that this author is doing something different, and therefore very confrontational here, and there's a sense of humour and some expectation exploding going on. But, I don't know, it all felt a bit ... staged? Over the top on purpose. Maybe gleeful. I'm not sure, either way, somewhere just past half way through the book, we end up in a sodding bloodbath, and it all started to get very bizarre and I'd been skipping the worst of the bits that were making MY stomach churn and I found myself fondly recalling there were some shelves that needed dusting, and really I should probably do those dishes piling up, and let's face it - when housework starts to sound appealing, I'm in the wrong book.

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The promotional material pushes the connection, and it's hard not to get a vibe of THE SLAP from the blurb of this one - young families, a tragedy at a bbq that implodes relationships, crumbles friendships and all, but fear not if you're feeling like this is another commentary on parenting, because I will confess that's kind of the worry I had going in as well, and not the feeling I had coming out the other side of Hannah Tunnicliffe's THE POOL.

The catalyst of this story is events at a bbq, nine years ago in Melbourne, after which prince of spin, life of the party, father, Baz King vanished. It's easy to imagine that he's simply done a runner, what with a history of dodgy dealings and a plethora of reasons for him to disappear himself, but there's a lot of suspects on that day including ex-wife Birdie, new wife Madison, colleagues, friends and a complicated interweaving of children, staff, lovers, and married partners who also have lovers. And a eye-watering and skin-crawling tendency towards flaunted privilege, tacky interpersonal relationships, misogyny, and, it has to be said, some truly bloody awful parenting.

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CUTLER, the novel, features Paul Cutler, the former undercover operative, now working "off the books" in the dangerous and unpredictable world of investigator for hire. In this story he's tasked with finding the truth about the disappearance of an Australian marine scientist, whilst on a Taiwanese distant water fishing vessel, working in the incredibly murky and dodgy world of deep sea trawling and fisheries. With the complication being Bevan's father has his own fleet of distance trawlers, and may not quite be the legal cleanskin he seems to be. Once Cutler starts to scratch the surface of Bevan's disappearance, a slew of dark, horrendous crimes against people, ocean's, environment and just about everything else in their paths, comes to light.

Whish-Wilson has a number of strengths when it comes to his fiction writing. For a start he's a serious, dedicated researcher who is motivated by wrongs in the world. Read the author's note and acknowledgements at the back of this novel and you can get a very clear sense of what triggers his thinking, and how he goes about his work. He's also blessed with the ability to write lean, mean, pointed and unflinching prose in a way that, confronts, but never repulses to the point where readers are forced to look away (remembering always that the subject matter in this one is pretty bloody awful all the way down).

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There have been a number of Australian crime fiction books recently that are tackling the effects of poverty / deprivation / loss and family breakdown in small towns, on small boys in particular. A TOWN CALLED TREACHERY is following, successfully, in the footsteps of authors like Mark Brandi and Stephen Orr, all three of whom have delved deeply, and sympathetically into damage, and resilience.

Life is very hard for eleven-year-old Matty Finnerty. Mother dead, father's absent even when he's around, and his grandfather is slipping further and further into dementia, he's not got a lot to be proud of, or to seemingly look forward to.

Which makes his chosen role-model an obvious, yet disconcerting choice. Stuart Dryden is a rundown, drunken journo, more attached to the pub (where he lives) than his job, his interest finally twigged by a grisly local murder. Or is it Matty, with his disposable Kodak camera and a way of sneaking in under people's guard that is intriguing him?

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The first in a new series from NZ author Rosy Fenwicke, THE SECRET OF THE ANGEL WHO DIED AT MIDNIGHT is a police procedural novel introducing DSS Kate Sutton.

Set in a wine-growing region of New Zealand, the sense of place in this one is pretty strong, drawing on a small town, with tensions between the old residents and newcomers staying very close to home. The victim in this novel is the local GP, Dr Geoffrey Scott, a man who has taken over his father's practice, a well known figure in the small community in which he's lived his life, his wife being the incomer. Younger, an artist, and right from the start seemingly somebody very different from her quiet, garden loving husband. Turns out that the relationship between these two is complicated, as it the truth behind Dr Geoffrey Scott's own position.

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When the Director of the Mt John Observatory Professor Evelyn Major is murdered, just as an international conference is kicking off at the observatory overlooking Lake Tekapo, there are a lot of academics in the vicinity, with a lot of secrets, making the pool of potential suspects surprisingly wide. Enter Criminal Psychologist Nellie Prayle who loves solving complicated murders, and finds plenty to be going on with in this web of rivalry, infidelity and emotional turmoil. One thing is for sure, this investigation does not lack for motives, nor does it lack intrigue.

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If you're looking for something that's wild, ranty, full to brim with nobody (including the good, bad, and slightly deluded) winning at anything, then GLASS BARBIE could be just the ticket.

It's a roller coaster ride alongside wild man, crackhead, Karl Copley. He of the big mouth and small brain, who somehow convinces an old mate, now a senior cop, Richie McMullan the two of them can rescue Copey's high school sweetheart Barbara Konstantinou (the Barbie from the title), who is being held for ransom by bikies. I mean why wouldn't a senior cop buy into a plan which doesn't bother to take into account a hefy bit of reluctance on the part of the victim, and a few more complications than just kidnapping. Basically it's a couple of weeks in their madness whilst the reader hangs onto the edge of the page, wondering what the, why the, when the, oh they won't. Will They?

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It seems, to this reader at least, that there are a couple of main "types" of crime fiction these days. The new, unusual, clever idea stuff that breaks new ground and the tried and tested world of old ground. The problem with the old ground version is that it's sometimes very easy to sound like same old same old. Which adage most definitely does not apply to STILLWATER.

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There is obviously considerable expertise at the heart of these novels, this author knows his stuff, and is writing about a life that he's lived. He rarely lets that get in the way of telling a ripping yarn however, even though, as mentioned, the start of this one is building a lot of context into the action to come. Once the mission really reaches a telling point, the pace, the threat, the feats of daring and the thinking, plotting, planning, and extremes that intelligence agencies go to, to thwart the intentions of others is breathtaking, as are the potential consequences. There's nothing lone wolf about de Payn though, he's the central character, but there's a team of very good people around him, with the surprise return of one character from the earlier stories that will delight followers of the series.

Where or how, or even why an intelligence agent as experienced as de Payn goes after this novel, or even what will be his role, is another question altogether, and, as with each of these stories, it seems there's not a lot left in the tank, but in this one in particular, you have to wonder where to from here.

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