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
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 …
Into the Night by Sarah Bailey
After the events of Sarah Bailey’s debut The Dark Lake left Detective Sergeant Gemma Woodstock unable to be the partner, mother and human that everyone in the regional town of Smithson needed her to …
Live and Let Fry by Sue Williams
Honestly, how I’m expected to go past a title with a pun like this is beyond me. In the third book starring small-town fish-and-chip-shop-owner-and-also-detective-but-not-officially Cass Tuplin (the …
All the Beautiful Lies by Peter Swanson
In the seaside town of Kennewick, Maine, the body of a bookseller is found at the bottom of the cliffs he loved to walk along. His son, Harry, makes his way from the college graduation he will now mi…
The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton
Get in your horse-drawn carriage and bunker down in your crumbling countryside home for this one, readers – you’re going to need all the time you can get for reading and contemplating your way throug…
If I Die Before I Wake by Emily Koch
Sometimes, when reading a gripping crime novel, you feel almost paralysed with helplessness as things go terribly wrong for your protagonist and all you can do is read in a panic as the author leads …
Little Secrets by Anna Snoekstra
The regional Australian town of Colmstock is rife with desperation. Since the closing of the town’s automotive factory caused the job market to fall apart, much of the population has slumped into mis…
A Dangerous Language by Sulari Gentill
About halfway through this book, I had to put it down – for something trivial like sleep, or dinner, or spending time with my family – and saw a review on the cover comparing Gentill to Evelyn Waugh.…
Codename Villanelle by Luke Jennings
Call your spouse, tell them you have an important work meeting. Slip on a pair of green contact lenses, slide on a black wig, and get in an unassuming taxi. Find the bar you need – the note is writte…
And Fire Came Down by Emma Viskic
Since Emma Viskic’s debut novel Resurrection Bay took out two of Australia’s biggest crime awards – the Ned Kelly Award for Best First Fiction and a slew of Davitt Awards – readers have been waiting …
The Scandal by Fredrik Backman
In a small, nearly-forgotten Swedish town in the forest, hockey is the reason the sun rises. After years of financial despair, of closed businesses and schools, and kids who want nothing more than to…
Security by Gina Wohlsdorf
On the Californian coastline, a glorious new hotel awaits its opening. Manderley Resort will be the most sophisticated of places to stay, thanks to highly detailed planning: from the opulent surround…
The Cleaner by Elisabeth Herrmann
Espionage novels are like a long swim in stormy weather – by turns comforting, slightly terrifying, and a thorough workout. It is, of course, absolute heaven to sit there on your couch with a glass o…
A Dangerous Crossing by Rachel Rhys
On a summer’s day in 1939, Lily Shepherd boards the cruise liner Orontes, gaining assisted passage to escape her bleak English life for the shores of Australia. She leaves behind a family stricken on…
All the Missing Girls by Megan Miranda
From the moment Nicolette Farrell hears her brother’s message – that they need to sell the family home – she knows she has to go back to her hometown of Cooley Ridge and deal with the other thing she…
The Last Act of Hattie Hoffman by Mindy Mejia
I’ve long been a sucker for American stories set away from the intensity of their cities and in the country’s open heart: those wide endless prairies; the sheriffs who know everyone and ride the thin…
Night School by Lee Child
I often try to put local and small-press authors as my books of the month, mainly because they’re great, but also because Readings has an extensive history of author support that I’m very proud to be…
Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil by Melina Marchetta
Like many readers, I’ve adored Melina Marchetta since my English teacher issued Looking for Alibrandi as a Year 11 text and we all gleefully discussed it in class since all of us actually happily rea…
Wilde Lake by Laura Lippman
As usual, there was a fair internal fight about what should be this month’s Book of the Month (as I’m not allowed to take up eight pages with my extended thoughts on each title), but something about …
Black Teeth by Zane Lovitt
If you are a local who decides to rush out and buy Black Teeth just after you read this review, you’ll find yourself with the ultimate literary luxury: reading a book in July in Melbourne set in a Me…
Sunset City by Melissa Ginsburg
Short and anything but sweet, Sunset City paints a neon-soaked picture of Houston’s grimiest places, visited by a drunk and bereaved Charlotte Ford, trying to find solace after the death of her oldes…
The Perplexing Theft of the Jewel in the Crown by Vaseem Khan
Inspector Ashwin Chopra (retired) has a perplexing task in front of him indeed after taking his wife to Mumbai’s Prince of Wales Museum to see England’s crown jewels, only to have them stolen just as…
The Poison Artist by Jonathan Moore
In a San Franciscan hotel, Caleb Maddox cleans the cut on his forehead. His girlfriend threw a crystal tumbler at his head, and it didn’t miss. It’s all he can do to fix himself up and then go and fi…
All Things Cease to Appear by Elizabeth Brundage
Over the few days I read this book, I wouldn’t steal small moments to read a page when I could, but instead find a place to relish the act of reading with the same slow-burn intensity the book itself…
All These Perfect Strangers by Aoife Clifford
Pen Sheppard is listless in her mother’s country home, lost again in the world of her childhood – her mother’s bad boyfriends, a town full of fakery, gossip as currency, and reputations that never di…
News
The best new crime reads in October
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. Kerry Greenwood – of Phryne Fisher fame – returns to the present with another tale of Corinna’s industrious adventures, this time inv…
The best new crime reads in September
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 rocked when a store theft turns into something more deadly and the young man at the centre of it is the near-mythical Lucas Blackthorn: The Lost…
The best new crime reads in August
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, how his father coped with so much worse, and how videogame reviewer and pop-culture nerd Paul veered so much away from the paths of actio…
The best new crime reads of the month
Honestly, how I’m expected to go past a title with a pun like this is beyond me. In the third book starring small-town fish-and-chip-shop-owner-and-also-detective-but-not-officially Cass Tuplin (the first one: Murder with the Lot), Cass is accosted one day by fellow resident and ex-let’s-not-mention-it Vern, who’s got a new girlfriend…
The best new crime reads of the month
In the seaside town of Kennewick, Maine, the body of a bookseller is found at the bottom of the cliffs he loved to walk along. His son, Harry, makes his way from the college graduation he will now miss to farewell the father he loved. Harry feels the heaviness of his loneliness in the world when he arrives, his college days so …
Best new crime reads of the month
Get in your horse-drawn carriage and bunker down in your crumbling countryside home for this one, readers – you’re going to need all the time you can get for reading and contemplating your way through this one. Stuart Turton’s blistering debut novel opens as a doctor named Sebastian Bell is stumbling through the …
