Crime/Mystery

Crime/Mystery

Kill Your Husbands by Jack Heath

Reviewed by Rod McLary Jack Heath is the author of the Hangman series of crime thrillers featuring Timothy Blake – a protagonist with a very unusual secret which is progressively disclosed through the four books.  Each of these books is a tense and exciting thriller.  Now the author has begun a new series with each

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Crime/Mystery

Resurrection Walk by Michael Connelly

Reviewed by Ian Lipke This crime story is the latest issue by well-known crime writer, Michael Connelly. He has called the story Resurrection Walk and has succeeded in confusing at least this reader since little attempt is made to explain the origins of the title. The story is clear enough. Connelly writes a number of

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Crime/Mystery

The Drowning by Bryan Brown

Reviewed by Wendy Lipke In 2021, Bryan Brown, a well-known Australian actor, published a book of short stories, Sweet Jimmy, which was also available as an audio book narrated by Brown. His first novel, The Drowning, is to be published in the latter part of 2023. As an actor he has performed in over eighty

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Crime/Mystery

The Secret Hours by Mick Herron

Reviewed by Patricia Simms-Reeve Mick Herron has become synonymous with brilliant depictions of British bureaucracy at its most farcical, politicians egregiously self-interested and the ever looming presence of MI5, sometimes wielding its sway over ministers or turning its destructive eye on its own operatives. The world he has created is dark, cynical, and alarming at

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Crime/Mystery

West Heart Kill by Dann McDorman

Reviewed by Rod McLary From the title of the front page through to the last word on the last page, this is a novel which bends the genre of crime novels in all directions without once losing its momentum or coherence.  Even the title itself – West Heart Kill – is a mystery.  What exactly

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Crime/Mystery

Stop Them Dead by Peter James

Reviewed by Patricia Simms-Reeve Peter James is enormously successful. His crime fiction has been translated into 37 languages and together have sold over 21,000,000 copies. This most recent novel, featuring detective Roy Grace stationed in the county of Sussex, is an example of how he continues to attract a worldwide legion of admirers. It begins

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Crime/Mystery

The Rescue by Andy McNab

Reviewed by Norrie Sanders There is something gripping about a true story that is hard to match in fiction. Knowing that the events took place and that real people experienced them, brings an edge to the narrative. The more so for The Rescue because it is recent history and many of the central figures are

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Crime/Mystery

Past Lying by Val McDermid

Reviewed by Rod McLary After two books in a new series featuring journalist Allie Burns [1979 and 1989 ], Val McDermid has returned to a favourite protagonist Detective Chief Inspector Karen Pirie head of the Historical Cases Unit of Police Scotland.  DCI Pirie has been the primary character in six previous books.  The author has

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Crime/Mystery

The Seven by Chris Hammer

Reviewed by Rod McLary Chris Hammer is one of Australia’s finest crime writers.  His first novel Scrublands won the prestigious UK Crime Writers Association John Creasy Award for a debut novel in 2019; and was shortlisted for other awards in Australia and the United States.  This book The Seven is the third in a series

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Crime/Mystery

Payback in Death by J.D. Robb

Reviewed by Wendy Lipke Nora Robert’s fans, especially those who follow her In Death series under the name of J. D. Robb will enjoy her latest story, Payback in Death. In this story, the well-known characters play their usual role in bringing the perpetrator to account. However, the characters who maintain the focus in this

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Crime/Mystery

Vendetta by Tony Park

Reviewed by Wendy Lipke In his twenty-first novel, Vendetta, Tony Park has once again taken his reader to South Africa and specifically in this story, to the South African apartheid-era Border War. The book includes two storylines, 1987 in Angola and the present in South Africa and Namibia. In the current storyline, middle-aged veteran of

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Crime/Mystery

Mole Creek by James Dunbar

Reviewed by Wendy Lipke Written in the third person, the story begins in Soul Alley, Saigon in 1969 where a young soldier finds himself in a sticky situation after a night of drinking. The story then swings to 50 years later, still in Saigon, with two Russians conspiring together and the deaths of two seemingly

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Crime/Mystery

Crook Manifesto by Colson Whitehead

Reviewed by Patricia Simms-Reeve Contemporary thrillers depict an aspect of lives that are ordered, sedate almost staid when compared with Harlem Shuffle and Colson Whitehead’s latest novel, Crook Manifesto. Its pages cover the actions of people caught in a complex web of the struggle to survive by any means available to them, be it violence,

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Crime/Mystery

The Caretaker by Gabriel Bergmoser

Reviewed by Rod McLary The beginning of this new novel by Gabriel Bergmoser is deceptively simple and straightforward.  Charlotte Laurent aspires to be a writer and is currently enrolled in a Creative Writing course at a university in Melbourne – but she is not convinced of her ability to write anything until she meets Leo

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Crime/Mystery

The Bone Hacker by Kathy Reichs

Reviewed by Rod McLary Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free. The above line from Bob Dylan’s rather enigmatic song Mr Tambourine Man is the epigraph to this new novel by Kathy Reichs which features Temperance Brennan; and its relevance to the narrative becomes clear at the novel’s dénouement.  The

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