Fiona Hardy
Website: https://fionathehardy.com/
Twitter: @readwatchtweet
Fiona Hardy puts together the crime column for the Readings Monthly newsletter and also blogs about children’s books at Fiona The Hardy. In her spare time she sells books and talks too much to customers at Readings Carlton.
Reviews
The 22 Murders of Madison May by Max Barry
I like to review Australian crime books, partly because it’s always good to boost local writing – it’s something that Readings has championed since the beginning – but also because it feels like auth…
Nancy Business by R.W.R. McDonald
Four months after 12-year-old Tippy Chan, her uncle Pike and his boyfriend Devon started The Nancys – an investigative team that solved the brutal murder of Tippy’s teacher – a new case blows up, qui…
The Long, Long Afternoon by Inga Vesper
In a picture-perfect house in 1959, model housewife Joyce Haney goes to the mall for some shopping, returns home, and then vanishes, leaving behind nothing except a bloodstain on the kitchen floor, a…
Shore by Fleet Foxes
As cynical as we’ve all become, there’s nothing quite like listening to a new release from a band so consistently strong and beautiful that you can’t help but feel hopeful. The new Fleet Foxes album …
The Spiral by Iain Ryan
I could tell you that Iain Ryan’s The Spiral is an immersive, captivating crime book, but that wouldn’t be enough to explain it. I could say it’s a twisted, psychological fever dream, but that’s not …
Shore Leave by David Whish-Wilson
Frank Swann is not cut out for any kind of crime legwork anymore. He’s tired, he’s sick all the time, and nobody can figure out what it is that’s wrong with him. All he knows is he can’t get halfway …
The Devil and the Dark Water by Stuart Turton
In the seventeenth century, the East India Trading Company has a tight grip on the world. Those who sail as merchants rule absolutely, and everyone who works for them is ruthless, amoral, and evil. S…
Electric Blue by Paul F. Verhoeven
Sometimes it’s pretty easy to categorise a crime book. I’ll say ‘procedural’, or ‘psychological thriller’, and while every book is original, you’ll have an idea of what to expect. Then you get a book…
The Girl in the Mirror by Rose Carlyle
Summer and Iris are identical twins – asymmetrically, so when Iris looks at her sister, she sees her own reflection. But where Summer has succeeded – handsome husband, loving friends, immense wealth …
The Safe Place by Anna Downes
Emily is a receptionist and an aspiring actress in London when her life falls abruptly apart. Fired from her job, dropped by her agent and kicked out of her disgusting flat all at once, she’s at her …
He Started It by Samantha Downing
To say a book has a twist is sometimes a spoiler: you’ll find yourself living in a constant state of suspense, waiting for when it’ll happen. I don’t think saying that He Started It has twists is any…
A Conspiracy of Bones by Kathy Reichs
Okay, full disclosure: there are some Very Famous Authors I’ve never read, and Kathy Reichs is one of them. I haven’t even watched a full episode of Bones, the TV show based on her Temperance Brennan…
The Better Liar by Tanen Jones
Leslie is alone, in Las Vegas, there to collect her sister Robin. It’s been years since she’s seen Robin, but in order to get the inheritance her father promised her, both of them need to be there to…
True West by David Whish-Wilson
If you want to get truly knocked about by a book, True West is what you want in front of you. Set in Western Australia in 1988, this is the visceral tale of Lee Southern, a young man driving south, a…
Heaven, My Home by Attica Locke
Ranger Darren Mathews is finally on something of a good thing after a hell of a bad time. He’s on a team investigating the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas, his previously failing marriage is tentatively b…
The Godmother by Hannelore Cayre and Stephanie Smee (trans.)
This striking little oddity comes with a hefty dose of French fame – it won the European Crime Fiction Prize, the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière, and has been made into a film starring one of th…
Lapse by Sarah Thornton
Deep in the middle of both winter and the AFL season, there are few things more readable than ex-corporate lawyer Sarah Thornton’s Lapse. When Clementine Jones leaves her old, untenable life in Sydne…
Six Minutes by Petronella McGovern
I picked this up because the name ‘Petronella McGovern’ is absolutely far too delightful to avoid, and kept reading because I was hooked. Three-year-old Bella – days shy of her fourth birthday – is a…
The Nancys by R.W.R. McDonald
Eleven-year-old Tippy Chan lives in the poky New Zealand town of Riverstone with her mother, her best friends, a suitably acerbic teen neighbour, and too many memories of her father. This is all very…
Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud and the Last Trial of Harper Lee by Casey Cep
Harper Lee – author of the slightly well known To Kill a Mockingbird – was by Truman Capote’s side when he wrote the brilliant work of fictionalised nonfiction, and arguably the first ‘true crime’ ta…
Eight Lives by Susan Hurley
When a young Vietnamese-Australian doctor makes a medical breakthrough, inventing a drug that could essentially help broken immune systems fix themselves, everything seems as golden as the name besto…
Two Girls Down by Louisa Luna
Jamie Brandt has just about had enough of her two girls – in the same way any parent who loves their kids can also tire of them after a long week – when she leaves them in the car outside Kmart to pi…
The Lost Man by Jane Harper
Jane Harper won so many awards for her debut novel, The Dry, that I could use my entire word count just listing them. But if I did that, I wouldn’t have the chance to tell you to go and read this, he…
Sea Glass by Grand Salvo
Paddy Mann’s seventh album as Grand Salvo, and – the first in six years – follows his full-hearted embrace of a theme for each record he creates. The opening track, ‘A Flux of Moments’, swells with t…
Wanderer by Cat Power
Six years after her electronica-influenced album Sun, Chan Marshall returns with a pared-back, self-produced album that she has dedicated to all those who wandered before her, a notion that weaves it…
The Spotted Dog by Kerry Greenwood
There are few in the crime world quite as capable at both solving mysteries and baking an excellent sourdough as Corinna Chapman: baker extraordinaire, sometime detective, and general lady-about-town…
Leave No Trace by Mindy Mejia
Mejia’s first book, The Last Act of Hattie Hoffman, was a wonderful study of a small town dealing with large problems. In Leave No Trace, the trouble is much more personal. The city of Duluth is rock…
Loose Units by Paul F. Verhoeven
Decades after a youthful Paul Verhoeven inadvertently sees a crime scene photo that he’s never been able to shake, he sits down with his ex-cop father John to find out why. Why he couldn’t shake it, …
Retribution by Richard Anderson
For those resolutely suburban readers, like me, the allure of rural crime is relentless: all those long, dark roads, the expansive farmland where anything can hide, and a certain type of character wh…
The Nowhere Child by Christian White
One rainy Melbourne evening, photography teacher Kim Leamy is approached in the cafeteria by a man who has news that will knock Kim right out of her orbit: he believes that she is not Kim Leamy, but …
News
The best new crime reads in July
I like to review Australian crime books, partly because it’s always good to boost local writing – it’s something that Readings has championed since the beginning – but also because it feels like authors here are doing much more interesting things…
The best new crime reads in June
Four months after 12-year-old Tippy Chan, her uncle Pike and his boyfriend Devon started The Nancys – an investigative team that solved the brutal murder of Tippy’s teacher – a new case blows up, quite literally, right nearby. Riverstone, Tippy’s New Zeala…
The best new crime reads in April
At a prison in Nevada, the annual friendly baseball game between the officers and the minimum-security inmates is due to take place. A bus load of family members is coming to cheer on the guards, as they have done every year for the past decade or so. Only this ye…
The best new crime reads in March
In a picture-perfect house in 1959, model housewife Joyce Haney goes to the mall for some shopping, returns home, and then vanishes, leaving behind nothing except a bloodstain on the kitchen floor, a screaming baby, and a terrified young daughter.
Det…
The best new crime reads in February
I could tell you that Iain Ryan’s The Spiral is an immersive, captivating crime book, but that wouldn’t be enough to explain it. I could say it’s a twisted, psychological fever dream, but that’s not quite it. I could tell you it’s an Australian campus thriller, and…
Nine terrific crime reads in November & December
Frank Swann is not cut out for any kind of crime legwork anymore. He’s tired, he’s sick all the time, and nobody can figure out what it is that’s wrong with him. All he knows is he can’t get halfway through a conversation without feeling nauseous, but people are still knocking on his door all the time, asking for help. First, there’s the brothel owner needing …
