We’ve reached that point in the year again. Festive decorations are beginning to amass (seemingly all by themselves) inside supermarket doors, and dinky carols are attempting to stir merriment. Your favourite booksellers are busily engaged in charting the ‘best of the best’ books of 2025 so you don’t have to.
Over in the land of crime fiction and true crime, there have been some simply terrific debuts and new forays into the genre, as well as great books from established writers. Coming up with this list has been pretty difficult. Though typically this blog would focus on crime fiction this year, I thought it worth also highlighting a couple of fantastic true crime books – one historical and the other contemporary – that have been on my radar.
🔍Whodunnits and howcatchems
Five Found Dead
Sulari Gentill
A terrific contemporary take on a Golden Age classic: the locked room mystery, the locked room being the famed Orient Express railway. Replete with an eclectic ensemble of characters updated to include Australian pastoralists and podcasters, wealthy widows, and some braggadocious men, the narrative pot is stirred with a covid outbreak and a dead body for every border crossed! This is a rollicking page-turner, and just so much fun!
Lyrebird
Jane Caro
In Jane Caro’s second book, the desperate screams of a woman as she’s being murdered are mimicked by a lyrebird decades later in a recording captured by an ornithologist. This is a chilling setup for a cold case, and the eventual discovery of human remains brings Detective Megan Blaxland out of retirement to helm the investigation.
Written with great empathy and nuance, Caro astutely illuminates issues around migrant women, insecure working conditions, gender power imbalances, the dire state of our national parks, and the aftermath of loss.
White Crow
Michael Robotham
Being the progeny of a notable crime boss brings lots of complications to PC Phil(omena) McCarthy’s policing career. A small girl found wandering in her pjs leads Phil to the site of a deadly home invasion, a curtain-raiser to a violent jewellery heist. As these interlocking crimes unfold, Phil’s larrikin dad is implicated – leading to Phil’s suspension. Once again, she is forced to defy substantial odds to discover the real culprit.
Robotham’s mastery of his craft is fully displayed here. Compulsive, tense, and with a brilliantly drawn cast, this is possibly Robotham’s best book yet.
Honourable mentions ⭐
The Empress Murders by Toby Schmitz, Legacy by Chris Hammer and An Ill Wind by Margaret Hickey.
🔍 New voices
Forsaken
Matt Rogers
Logan Booth is broken and jaded from years of manipulation by handlers who were not what they seemed. When old friend Jorge Romero, an investigative journalist, turns up murdered, this is enough to send Logan into rage mode. After meeting homeless ex-student Alice, herself a target of contract killers, Logan and Alice team up to discover the powerful architect of, and conspiracy behind, Jorge’s murder, and all their woes.
Set in the noisy and bustling streets of nighttime New York, this a fast-paced thriller between the forces of good and bad!
Unbury the Dead
Fiona Hardy
Readings’ own Fiona Hardy, is a worthy addition here. Her adult debut Unbury the Dead cemented her talent with this genre. Our heroines are mid-twenty-somethings Teddy and Alice. Besties, with a ‘ride or die’ bond, they also do all manner of unpleasant jobs for a Melbourne underworld boss. While Teddy is on the hunt for a young dude who’s gone AWOL, Alice chauffeurs a dead rich guy off for burial. True to form, a sudden discovery pulls the proverbial rug out from under them, highlighting ties between their individual cases.
A unique book, quite unlike anything else out there! Funny, tender and whip-crackingly smart all at once!
Melaleuca
Angie Faye Martin
I came late to this book, only reading it recently. I loved this book for the way the author tackled big issues such as (current and historic) systemic racism, missing and murdered Indigenous women, single parenthood and inter-cultural relationships. Our protagonist is back in her hometown in regional Queensland, ostensibly to care for her ageing mother, when the body of a young Indigenous woman is discovered brutally murdered. In seeking to identify her, an important link to a decades-old cold case is made, unravelling long-held secrets.
Told across two time periods, this is another assured debut for the year.
Honourable mentions ⭐
King Tide by Luke Johnson, Stillwater by Tanya Scott and Strange Pictures by Uketsu, translated by Jim Rion.
🔍 Spies, Lies, Suspicion
The Peak
Sam Guthrie
Secrets, intrigue, contemporary geopolitics, a national security crisis: what more could you want in a thriller? As best friends throughout school and beyond, into their careers in diplomacy and politics, Charlie Westcott and Sebastian Adler were tight, as close as brothers. Now Sebastian, widely touted as a future leader, has done the unthinkable. A blindsided Charlie is left, reeling, to uncover the deep-seeded secrets at the heart of their friendship and Sebastian’s actions. All while a threat to the nation looms large.
With a taut and complex plot that traverses the halls of Federal Parliament to Hong Kong’s Mid-Levels, this is a terrific read!
Clown Town
Mick Herron
Lots has been already said about Mick Herron’s brilliant Slough House / Slow Horses books (now serialised for TV). This latest instalment opens with a gruesome but necessary murder by an IRA enforcer.
River Cartwright, on extended medical leave, when dealing with a missing book from his late grandad’s library discovers a link between this murderous individual and the Service. Cue the rest of the Slow Horses crew, including an enraged Jackson Lamb, to flush out the rogue operative and his handlers at the upper echelons. Say what you will about how disgusting Lamb is, we cannot doubt his efficacy in the field, or the begrudging care for his ‘joes’. Herron is a superlative writer with prose as witty as it is baroque. Each book is as funny and as atmospheric as the last, and this is no exception.
Honourable mentions ⭐
Liar’s Game by Jack Beaumont and The Predicament by William Boyd.
🔍 True that
The Peepshow
Kate Summerscale
Readers will recognise Kate Summerscale from her previous books, including The Suspicions of Mr Whicher. In this latest offering, she delves into one of Britain’s most gruesome serial murders, at 10 Rillington Place.
Quite unlike traditional true crime, this book takes on the perspective of the media at the time, drawing on many archival sources to illuminate the mid-20th century reportage of the murders, the victims, the subsequent investigation and the trial of John Christie. Not for the faint hearted, but a truly fascinating book. One, in particular, for fans of Hallie Rubenhold’s The Five.
The Mushroom Tapes
Helen Garner, Chloe Hooper & Sarah Krasnostein
It is impossible to overlook Erin Patterson’s triple-murder trial and its impact this year. This book, by three highly accomplished Australian female writers, is a unique take on the subject.
Centring on their discussions during and after each court session in Morwell in the Latrobe Valley, these singular voices together tackled the myriad issues at play, the gamut of love through to hate, jealousy, greed, revenge, and money.
Honourable mentions ⭐
Saffron Incorporated by Stuart Coupe and The Mushroom Murders by Greg Haddrick.
