Read in June
Recently a few of us have been working on catching up with reading all the books on the longlist of nominees for the 2008 Ned Kelly's. So I managed to catch up with a couple of them this month, but I also managed a few other good books. (The Neds are marked with **)
Dreamland, Tom Gilling
My Rating: Fascinating concept
Full Review at: http://www.austcrimefiction.org/node/4634
First crime novel from a local author - When Nick Carmody agrees to take the fall for his old friend Danny Grogan, he has no idea what he's setting in motion. He doesn't know that the path he chooses will be a thousand times more dangerous than the one he's leaving behind. Or that he will fall in love with a woman who enters his life in the most unpredictable way.
----
Done Deal, Tony Berry
My Rating: Fun debut
Full Review at: http://www.austcrimefiction.org/node/4637
First novel from a local author - Disgraced former British secret service agent Bromo Perkins has high hopes of settling into a quiet and anonymous life in Australia. His plans are brutally shattered when the seductive minder of a local standover man coerces him into settling a dispute between her boss and a rival property developer. As he unravels the dark underside of city hall, Bromo becomes deeper and deeper embroiled in local politics, bribery and ethnic rivalries.
----
Cemetery Lake, Paul Cleave
My Rating: I'd read this bloke's shopping list - not quite as good as The Killing Hour but still nicely creepy
Full Review at: http://www.austcrimefiction.org/node/4646
Third novel from NZ author - A standard exhumation becomes anything but for private investigator Theodore Tate, when bodies begin bubbling to the surface of the cemetery lake. Tate knows he has to let it go and let his former colleagues in the police deal with it. But when the coffin is opened and its occupant is not the old man supposed to be inside, he knows he cannot walk away. He can't let the police keep digging either, because they are getting dangerously close to digging up the real truth: the truth about him. With the evidence mounting against him, Tate must stay ahead of the police and out of jail in order to find a killer. A killer who could turn Tate into the very man he despises.
----
After You with the Pistol, Kyril Bonfiglioli
My Rating: Hilarious
Full Review at: http://www.austcrimefiction.org/node/4655
Cult classics in the UK since their first publication in the 1970s, Kyril Bonfiglioli's wickedly fun mysteries, featuring the Honorable Charlie Mortdecai - degenerate aristocrat, amoral art dealer, seasoned epicurean, unwilling assassin, and general knave-about-Piccadilly. Charlie's back in After You with the Pistol, along with his new bride Joanna, and his thuggish manservant Jock. He's also still drinking too much whiskey - and anything else he can get his hands on - which makes it all the more difficult to figure out what the beautiful and fabulously wealthy Joanna is up to when she tries to convince Charlie to kill the Queen. Suffice it to say, Joanna is not quite what she seems.
----
The Miernik Dossier, Charles McCarry
My Rating: Good old fashioned spy thriller
Full Review at: http://www.austcrimefiction.org/node/4664
An unlikely touring party of five friends embark on a road trip to deliver a brand-new Cadillac from Switzerland to the Sudan. All of them are attached to the UN in Geneva, and all of them are more than they claim to be. Among the travellers are Kalash el Khatar, a seven-foot-tall Muslim prince; British intelligence agent Nigel Collins and is beautiful half-English, half-Hungarian girlfriend Ilona Bentley; Paul Christopher; and Tadeusz Miernik, a shy and bumbling Polish scientist who just might be the leader of a terrorist cell that could set the Cold War alight.
----
A Carrion Death, Michael Stanley
My Rating: Debut that shows great promise
Full Review at: http://www.austcrimefiction.org/node/4668
Poachers, witch doctors, diamond-smuggling and corruption: Welcome to the world of Botswana's Detective Kubu. They find the first body - or what the hyena had left - near a waterhole considered magical by the local bush people. A string of clues suggest that the victim was murdered and his identity hidden.
----
The Tattooed Man, Alex Palmer **
My Rating: Let down at the ending by a really unrealistically overly complicated plot
Full Review at: http://www.austcrimefiction.org/node/4687
Second novel from local author - Paul Harrigan is a top cop who has survived the corruption and political manoeuvrings of the NSW Police. So far ... Grace Riordan has left the Service and now works in the shadowy world of undercover intelligence - so she and Harrigan can't talk about work much. Harrigan is called to a grisly murder scene in Sydney's wealthy north: four dinner guests are seated around the dinner table - all dead. One of them a Senator's ex-wife; one of them a missing corrupt NSW detective. And the mummified condition of the detective's body - identified by a distinctive tattoo - suggests he has been dead for quite some time ....
----
Golden Serpent, Mark Abernethy **
My Rating: Roaringly good thriller
Full Review at: http://www.austcrimefiction.org/node/4702
First novel from local author - Tough Aussie spy, Alan McQueen, was once a star of the global intelligence community, renowned for having shot and killed Abu Sabaya, one of the world's most dangerous terrorists. But that was 2002. During a routine assignment in Indonesia, McQueen - aka Mac - discovers Sabaya is not in fact dead. Instead he's teamed up with a rogue CIA veteran and is armed with a cache of stolen VX nerve agent, which he's threatening to deploy in a dramatic and deadly manner.
----
The Good Thief's Guide to Amsterdam, Chris Ewan
My Rating: Great romp / bit of a rogue character
Full Review at: http://www.austcrimefiction.org/node/4693
Charlie Howard doesn't just write books about a career thief, he also happens to be one. In Amsterdam working on his latest novel, Charlie is approached by a mysterious American who asks him to steal two apparently worthless monkey figurines from two separate addresses on the same night. At first he says no. Then he changes his mind. Only later, kidnapped and bound to a chair, the American very dead and a spell in police custody behind him, does Charlie begin to realise how costly a mistake he might have made.
----
The Roar of the Butterflies, Reginald Hill
My Rating: Joe Sixsmith rides (well walks the golf course) again
Full Review at: http://www.austcrimefiction.org/node/4694
Laid-off lathe operator-turned-private investigator Joe Sixsmith is suddenly very popular, and not just with the ladies. Though he doesn't know a putter from a nine iron, he's being implored to come to the rescue of one Christian Porphyry, the scion of the upper-crust family that owns the most exclusive country club in Luton. Porphyry faces expulsion for the heinous crime of cheating at golf. Inexplicably, political boss/crime czar "King Rat" Ratcliffe is also interested in employing Joe, offering him some very attractive surveillance work in sunny Spain. But Sixsmith's more intrigued by the first case, especially when a possible witness to the alleged indiscretion mysteriously vanishes.
----
The Tenderness of Wolves, Stef Penney
My Rating: Fabulous
Full Review at: http://www.austcrimefiction.org/node/4704
1867, Canada. As winter tightens its grip on the isolated settlement of Dove River, a woman steels herself for the journey of a lifetime. A man has been brutally murdered and her seventeen-year-old son has disappeared. The violence has re-opened old wounds and inflamed deep-running tensions in the frontier township - some want to solve the crime; others seek only to exploit it.
----
Dreamland, Tom Gilling
My Rating: Fascinating concept
Full Review at: http://www.austcrimefiction.org/node/4634
First crime novel from a local author - When Nick Carmody agrees to take the fall for his old friend Danny Grogan, he has no idea what he's setting in motion. He doesn't know that the path he chooses will be a thousand times more dangerous than the one he's leaving behind. Or that he will fall in love with a woman who enters his life in the most unpredictable way.
----
Done Deal, Tony Berry
My Rating: Fun debut
Full Review at: http://www.austcrimefiction.org/node/4637
First novel from a local author - Disgraced former British secret service agent Bromo Perkins has high hopes of settling into a quiet and anonymous life in Australia. His plans are brutally shattered when the seductive minder of a local standover man coerces him into settling a dispute between her boss and a rival property developer. As he unravels the dark underside of city hall, Bromo becomes deeper and deeper embroiled in local politics, bribery and ethnic rivalries.
----
Cemetery Lake, Paul Cleave
My Rating: I'd read this bloke's shopping list - not quite as good as The Killing Hour but still nicely creepy
Full Review at: http://www.austcrimefiction.org/node/4646
Third novel from NZ author - A standard exhumation becomes anything but for private investigator Theodore Tate, when bodies begin bubbling to the surface of the cemetery lake. Tate knows he has to let it go and let his former colleagues in the police deal with it. But when the coffin is opened and its occupant is not the old man supposed to be inside, he knows he cannot walk away. He can't let the police keep digging either, because they are getting dangerously close to digging up the real truth: the truth about him. With the evidence mounting against him, Tate must stay ahead of the police and out of jail in order to find a killer. A killer who could turn Tate into the very man he despises.
----
After You with the Pistol, Kyril Bonfiglioli
My Rating: Hilarious
Full Review at: http://www.austcrimefiction.org/node/4655
Cult classics in the UK since their first publication in the 1970s, Kyril Bonfiglioli's wickedly fun mysteries, featuring the Honorable Charlie Mortdecai - degenerate aristocrat, amoral art dealer, seasoned epicurean, unwilling assassin, and general knave-about-Piccadilly. Charlie's back in After You with the Pistol, along with his new bride Joanna, and his thuggish manservant Jock. He's also still drinking too much whiskey - and anything else he can get his hands on - which makes it all the more difficult to figure out what the beautiful and fabulously wealthy Joanna is up to when she tries to convince Charlie to kill the Queen. Suffice it to say, Joanna is not quite what she seems.
----
The Miernik Dossier, Charles McCarry
My Rating: Good old fashioned spy thriller
Full Review at: http://www.austcrimefiction.org/node/4664
An unlikely touring party of five friends embark on a road trip to deliver a brand-new Cadillac from Switzerland to the Sudan. All of them are attached to the UN in Geneva, and all of them are more than they claim to be. Among the travellers are Kalash el Khatar, a seven-foot-tall Muslim prince; British intelligence agent Nigel Collins and is beautiful half-English, half-Hungarian girlfriend Ilona Bentley; Paul Christopher; and Tadeusz Miernik, a shy and bumbling Polish scientist who just might be the leader of a terrorist cell that could set the Cold War alight.
----
A Carrion Death, Michael Stanley
My Rating: Debut that shows great promise
Full Review at: http://www.austcrimefiction.org/node/4668
Poachers, witch doctors, diamond-smuggling and corruption: Welcome to the world of Botswana's Detective Kubu. They find the first body - or what the hyena had left - near a waterhole considered magical by the local bush people. A string of clues suggest that the victim was murdered and his identity hidden.
----
The Tattooed Man, Alex Palmer **
My Rating: Let down at the ending by a really unrealistically overly complicated plot
Full Review at: http://www.austcrimefiction.org/node/4687
Second novel from local author - Paul Harrigan is a top cop who has survived the corruption and political manoeuvrings of the NSW Police. So far ... Grace Riordan has left the Service and now works in the shadowy world of undercover intelligence - so she and Harrigan can't talk about work much. Harrigan is called to a grisly murder scene in Sydney's wealthy north: four dinner guests are seated around the dinner table - all dead. One of them a Senator's ex-wife; one of them a missing corrupt NSW detective. And the mummified condition of the detective's body - identified by a distinctive tattoo - suggests he has been dead for quite some time ....
----
Golden Serpent, Mark Abernethy **
My Rating: Roaringly good thriller
Full Review at: http://www.austcrimefiction.org/node/4702
First novel from local author - Tough Aussie spy, Alan McQueen, was once a star of the global intelligence community, renowned for having shot and killed Abu Sabaya, one of the world's most dangerous terrorists. But that was 2002. During a routine assignment in Indonesia, McQueen - aka Mac - discovers Sabaya is not in fact dead. Instead he's teamed up with a rogue CIA veteran and is armed with a cache of stolen VX nerve agent, which he's threatening to deploy in a dramatic and deadly manner.
----
The Good Thief's Guide to Amsterdam, Chris Ewan
My Rating: Great romp / bit of a rogue character
Full Review at: http://www.austcrimefiction.org/node/4693
Charlie Howard doesn't just write books about a career thief, he also happens to be one. In Amsterdam working on his latest novel, Charlie is approached by a mysterious American who asks him to steal two apparently worthless monkey figurines from two separate addresses on the same night. At first he says no. Then he changes his mind. Only later, kidnapped and bound to a chair, the American very dead and a spell in police custody behind him, does Charlie begin to realise how costly a mistake he might have made.
----
The Roar of the Butterflies, Reginald Hill
My Rating: Joe Sixsmith rides (well walks the golf course) again
Full Review at: http://www.austcrimefiction.org/node/4694
Laid-off lathe operator-turned-private investigator Joe Sixsmith is suddenly very popular, and not just with the ladies. Though he doesn't know a putter from a nine iron, he's being implored to come to the rescue of one Christian Porphyry, the scion of the upper-crust family that owns the most exclusive country club in Luton. Porphyry faces expulsion for the heinous crime of cheating at golf. Inexplicably, political boss/crime czar "King Rat" Ratcliffe is also interested in employing Joe, offering him some very attractive surveillance work in sunny Spain. But Sixsmith's more intrigued by the first case, especially when a possible witness to the alleged indiscretion mysteriously vanishes.
----
The Tenderness of Wolves, Stef Penney
My Rating: Fabulous
Full Review at: http://www.austcrimefiction.org/node/4704
1867, Canada. As winter tightens its grip on the isolated settlement of Dove River, a woman steels herself for the journey of a lifetime. A man has been brutally murdered and her seventeen-year-old son has disappeared. The violence has re-opened old wounds and inflamed deep-running tensions in the frontier township - some want to solve the crime; others seek only to exploit it.
----
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