Crime

A Conspiracy of Bones by Kathy Reichs

Reviewed by Fiona Hardy

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 series. Turns out…

Read more ›

The Good Turn by Dervla McTiernan

Reviewed by Kate McIntosh

The Rúin, the novel which introduced us to Cormac Reilly, an Irish detective transferred to Galway and handed a cold case which leads him to unexpected places, was my stand out crime novel of 2018. The Scholar, released…

Read more ›

The Better Liar by Tanen Jones

Reviewed by Fiona Hardy

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 sign the…

Read more ›

True West by David Whish-Wilson

Reviewed by Fiona Hardy

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…

Read more ›

Heaven, My Home by Attica Locke

Reviewed by Fiona Hardy

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 back together, his drinking is mostly…

Read more ›

The Godmother by Hannelore Cayre and Stephanie Smee (trans.)

Reviewed by Fiona Hardy

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 the most perfectly French…

Read more ›

The Devil's Grip by Neal Drinnan

Reviewed by Jason Austin

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 earned a reputation for being…

Read more ›

Lapse by Sarah Thornton

Reviewed by Fiona Hardy

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 Sydney behind, she chooses the regional town…

Read more ›

Six Minutes by Petronella McGovern

Reviewed by Fiona Hardy

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 at her playgroup, being minded by…

Read more ›

The Nancys by R.W.R. McDonald

Reviewed by Fiona Hardy

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 normal and fine, but this little…

Read more ›