Crime reviews
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 Devil’s Grip by Neal Drinnan
It was said that Darcy Wettenhall was the world’s foremost expert on the subject of Corriedale sheep. Stanbury, the stud that he owned and ran with his elderly cousin Janet and his son Guy, had earne…
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’ …
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…
The Scholar by Dervla McTiernan
Regular Readings Monthly readers will no doubt remember how obsessed we were by Irish born, Perth-based Dervla McTiernan’s debut crime novel. After turning the final page of The Rúin in early 2018, s…
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