Crime fiction:
Dark Waters
Deborah Sheldon
Brendan Reilly emerges from the murky depths of a dam a changed man, caught between two worlds. In one he’s a respected patch member of the Overlords bikie gang; the other, a scumbag ex-husband and estranged father.
New Yorked
Rob Hart
Ashley McKenna, native New Yorker, does favours; sometimes for money, sometimes for whiskey, but always with his trusty steel umbrella in close reach. When the woman Ash loves leaves him a desperate voicemail - a message he hears the morning after she’s murdered - he grips that umbrella and hunts for her killer.
Black Teeth
Zane Lovitt
A well-paced and thoroughly enjoyable piece of Australian-noir. Draws on the 'feel' of Jim Thompson et al. without falling into age-old American noir tropes.
The Dying Detective
Leif G.W. Persson
Just what do you do to a man who has raped and murdered a young girl when the criminal justice system has no remedy to offer? A modern Scandi-crime take on Arthur Conan Doyle.
The Girls Next Door
Mel Sherratt
Are a series of assaults and the kidnapping of DS Berrisford's niece related, or this something altogether more sinister than it first appears?
The Rules of Backyard Cricket
Jock Serong
South Africa are 6/194 at stumps on Day 3 and I am wrecked by the brilliance of this book. If you have a crime-fiction loving cricket fan in the family, consider your Christmas shopping sorted.
Out of Bounds
Val McDermid
Val McDermid has always positioned her DCI Karen Pirie books as standalone. But how many standalones can you write until you’ve written a series? The answer is 4.
Slaughter Park
Barry Maitland
A stunning conclusion to the Belltree Trilogy’s overarching mystery, an insightful comment on Australian history, past and present.
The Bluffs
Kyle Perry
When a school group of teenage girls goes missing in the remote wilderness of Tasmania’s Great Western Tiers, the people of Limestone Creek are immediately on alert. Three decades ago, five young girls disappeared in the area of those dangerous bluffs, and the legend of ‘the Hungry Man’ still haunts locals to this day.
