February 2019

Lillian Armfield by By Leigh Straw

Reviewed by Anna Bober Lillian Armfield: How Australia’s First Female Detective Took on Tilly Devine and the Razor Gangs and Changed the Face of the Force is the title of Leigh Straw’s latest foray into the Sydney’s criminal world of the 1920s and ‘30s. As an avid reader of crime, and as someone who is

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Hunter by Jack Heath

Reviewed by Rod McLary Hunter is Jack Heath’s second adult book. Prior to his first adult book – Hangman published in early 2018 – he was a successful author of children’s and young adults’ books. In reviewing Hangman in these pages in January 2018, I wrote [f]or a young writer who has just written his

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The Wedding Guest by Jonathan Kellerman

Reviewed by Rod McLary Mark Twain once said ‘apparently, there is nothing that cannot happen today’. Strange as it may seem, this quote is quite apposite in relation to Jonathan Kellerman’s latest Alex Delaware story. The Wedding Guest begins as expected in that there is a wedding. However – and it is an important ‘however’ –

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On Merit By Paula Matthewson

  Reviewed by Wendy Lipke Although I personally cannot see the $ value asked, in such a pocket-sized book, especially one about politics in Australia, this book, On Merit, is just one published under the genre Little Books on Big Ideas. The author, Paula Matthewson, is a political columnist with The New Daily and editor

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The Secret Runners of New York By Matthew Reilly

  Reviewed by Gerard Healy A 16 year-old girl named Skye moves to New York and enrolls, with her twin brother Red, at an elite private school. While she navigates the difficult world of wealthy classmates, we are told of the strange disappearance of three other new girls in the recent past. Red gains entry

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Driving into the Sun by Marcella Polain

Reviewed by E.B. Heath An old Chinese adage counsels that ‘A picture paints a thousand words’ … well, whoever in the Middle Kingdom came up with that had not the opportunity to read Driving into the Sun.   What is going on in this novel would require an image the length of the Bayeux Tapestry, and

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The House of Second Chances by Esther Campion

Reviewed by Wendy Lipke Esther Campion’s second novel The House of Second Chances includes some of the characters who dominated the storyline in her first novel Leaving Ocean Road although the author states that this second book is not designed to be a sequel. The House of Second Chances is set predominantly in Ireland, a

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