Karen from AustCrime's Blog – April 2007 Archive (12)

Murder is Never Pretty... Even When the Corpse is a Blonde, Joe Blake

Latter day Australian Pulp Fiction at it's best, Murder is Never Pretty... is, well hilarious.

Part of the attraction is that it's 100% true to the style and phrasing of the pulp writers of bygone times - but it's all set in current day Perth - dare one say the mean and dirty streets of Perth?

When a beautiful (are there other kinds in pulp?) blonde is murdered (shot / naked of course) in her suburban unit the local police put a call through…

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Added by Karen from AustCrime on April 30, 2007 at 3:33pm — No Comments

Review - The Laughing Policeman, Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo

Title: THE LAUGHING POLICEMAN - The Martin Beck Series

Publisher: Harper Perennial

Author: Maj Sjowall & Per Wahloo

Edition released: April 2007

ISBN 978-0-00-724294-8

248 pages

Genre: Crime Fiction

Reviewed by: Karen Chisholm

Harper Perennial have recently started republishing the Martin Beck series by Sjowall and Wahloo - originally written between 1965 and 1975. (The full series as at this book, is outlined below.) These books are often… Continue

Added by Karen from AustCrime on April 24, 2007 at 1:54pm — No Comments

Focus On: New Zealand Writers

There are some great crime writers from NZ around who deserve a lot more attention than they sometimes get.

http://www.austcrimefiction.org/index.php/Category:NZ_Writer

Lists the ones we've identified this far.

Many of these writers don't base themselves in NZ and don't necessarily write about NZ. Some that you might like to track down:…

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Added by Karen from AustCrime on April 23, 2007 at 9:29am — No Comments

Cold Day in Hell, Richard Hawke

Title: COLD DAY IN HELL

Publisher: Scribe Publications, Australia

Author: Richard Hawke

Edition released: April 2007

ISBN 978-1-921215-12-4

288 pages

Genre: Crime Fiction

Reviewed by: Karen Chisholm

Fans of wise cracking, hard men with hearts of gold style Private Investigators are going to be very pleased to catch up with Fritz Malone in Richard Hawke's second book COLD DAY IN HELL.

Set in New York, COLD DAY IN HELL opens up with famous late-night… Continue

Added by Karen from AustCrime on April 21, 2007 at 2:54pm — No Comments

Review Pile Update

With a sense of perfect timing my review pile has had a bit of a boost over the last week.

It's perfect timing because himself is off to Santa Clara on Sunday, for a couple of weeks for work and a bit of hiking in the Sierra Nevada's so I'm getting in the chocolates and books :)

The new ones are:

The Murder Bird, Joanna Hines

Malice Box, Martin Langfield

All She Ever Wanted, Patrick Redmond

The Reckoning, Sue Walker

and

The… Continue

Added by Karen from AustCrime on April 18, 2007 at 6:30pm — No Comments

Statistics!

Okay, whose bright idea was it to list the total number of discussion posts that you've made on Crimespace.

I have got to shut up occasionally :)

Added by Karen from AustCrime on April 18, 2007 at 11:42am — 2 Comments

Broken Skin, Stuart MacBride

Title: BROKEN SKIN

Publisher: Harper Collins

Author: Stuart MacBride

Edition released: April 2007

ISBN 978-0-00-725075-2

439 pages

Genre: Crime Fiction

Reviewed by: Karen Chisholm

There's something immensely satisfying about reading a book that tackles some very tricky subject matter head-on, with enough of the

gory details to illustrate rather than titivate and just the right

level of gallows humour. BROKEN SKIN is the third book…

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Added by Karen from AustCrime on April 16, 2007 at 9:59pm — 1 Comment

Just Finished, Going to Pick Up

I just finished The Assassin's Gallery by David L. Robbins.

This is a book that I would have been highly unlikely to pick up if it hadn't been sent to my partner in amongst other review books. When I was restacking his review piles, I read the blurb and well, got caught. Great example of speculative fiction. For a full review you can wander over to my blog at http://tinyurl.com/38dkbt

Next I'm definitely getting stuck into Broken… Continue

Added by Karen from AustCrime on April 12, 2007 at 5:50pm — No Comments

LCC Hawaii Here I come

I have, as they say in the classics, done the deed.

I'm a signed up registrant for LCC 2009 in Hawaii.

Sometime late in 2008 I should imagine there will be some worrying going on around here.

I've told the dogs its only for a few days - they don't look convinced.

How on earth do you explain abandonment to a flock of chooks......

Added by Karen from AustCrime on April 11, 2007 at 6:37pm — No Comments

Reviewing Books from a Reviewers Perspective

Being a very recent entrant into this publishing reviews game it's been interesting to watch a lot of the chatter from readers, other reviewers and writers getting around these days.

Writing reviews is an extremely nerve-racking game, or at least it is for me. Doesn't mean it's not fascinating, but there are days when you start to read a book and you can feel the cold sweat breaking out.

I sweat it if I'm finding I'm loving the book and I sweat it if I'm hating it and the… Continue

Added by Karen from AustCrime on April 10, 2007 at 12:42pm — 3 Comments

Shadow Alley, compiled by Lucy Sussex (YA Mystery)

Cross posted from http://blogs.sakienvirotech.com/AustCrimeFiction

First published in 1995, Shadow Alley is a compilation of short crime stories written around the premise of

detectives when they were teenagers.

A majority of the authors stuck to this premise, whereas some chose instead to write about teenage characters within the stories themselves.

Kerry Greenwood…

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Added by Karen from AustCrime on April 5, 2007 at 12:20pm — No Comments

Poll - Do you Read Australasian Books?

We're running a very simple little poll over on AustCrime Fiction at the moment just to bet a bit of a feel for the impact of our local authors. This result will be going to some of our local publishers so if you have time we'd appreciate your input:

http://www.austcrimefiction.org/index.php/Reader_Poll

Added by Karen from AustCrime on April 4, 2007 at 12:17pm — 6 Comments