Karen Chisholm
Another re-read, and a book I've been dipping into for most of this month.
From the Blurb:
When the irresistably attractive French convict Gaston Vandeloup escapes to the goldfields of Ballarat, he sets out to meet the remarkable Madame Midas. Charming, intelligent and forthright, she finds her fortune in Ballarat's fabulous mines and returns to marvellous Melbourne where she lives in magnificent style. But, in that city of con men and opportunists, her wealth makes her prey to deceit and crime, destined to end in murder ...
Karen Chisholm
Due for release at the end of January, the first in a new series.
From the Blurb:
Spring 1981. Newly promoted and posted to Carrickfergus CID, Detective Sergeant Duffy has hardly had a chance to unpack when he's landed with two very different cases: what may be Northern Ireland's first ever serial killer and a young woman's suicide that may yet turn out to be murder.
Karen Chisholm
From the "new to me" pile (probably because this is a first book :) )
From the Blurb:
Kate Forman has an enviable life: a loving family and a perfect husband, Paul. But late one night Paul comes home drunk and covered in blood, mumbling about having killed something - or someone.
Karen Chisholm
Re-released to coincide with the upcoming ABC TV series, so a reread seems in order. Particularly as this is the first book in the series.
From the Blurb:
Karen Chisholm
Started this book for our next f2f bookclub meeting, so himself will have time to read it as well.
From the Blurb:
Karen Chisholm
It's Lunar New Year, and the upcoming year is the Year of the Dragon so that seemed like as good a reason as any to pluck this off the long lurking shelves.
From the Blurb:
A fierce typhoon strikes Tokyo one night, flooding the city streets. Someone removes a manhole cover, and a little boy out searching for his pet goes missing and is believed drowned in the sewers. Is it murder?
Karen Chisholm
Bought to you by the "been lurking a long time stack" and just because I wanted to....
From the Blurb:
Karen Chisholm
A complicated classification as this is a book that I've had since Wakefield started publishing their classics of Australian crime fiction. It's also a book that I read years ago, so this was a reread. Which I've now finished so it's not even technically "Currently Reading"...
From the Blurb:
'The blood of Adonis, thought Sarah, remembering the church that was built like a pagan temple, Coquelicot rouge - the symbol of a dying man whose blood stained the hillside in spring.'
Karen Chisholm
It never fails to astound me how one person, reading all the time, can still be so very very far behind. I should have read this ages ago.
From the Blurb:
At seventeen, Jodie Cramer survived a terrifying assault at the hands of three strangers. Her schoolmate Angie was not so lucky ...
Now thirty-five, Jodie is a teacher and mother of two - and her past is a horror she's buried deep. When she sets out for a weekend in the country with three friends, all she has in mind are a few laughs and a break from routine.
Karen Chisholm
Somehow or other I've got behind with this series. Urgent catchup required.
From the Blurb:
In the fishing community of Fjällbacka, life is remote, peaceful - and for some, tragically short.
Foul play was always suspected in the disappearance twenty years ago of two young holidaymakers in the area. Now a young boy out playing has confirmed this grim truth. Their remains, discovered with those of a fresh victim, send the town into shock.
Karen Chisholm
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/books-obit...(link is external)
Reginald Hill has died and The Telegraph obituary is both a lovely tribute and a reminder of why it is that Mr Hill wrote some of my all time favourite books, how it was that he will always be one of my favourite authors.
Karen Chisholm
For a group read on Murder & Mayhem and because I wanted to read this after finishing The Complaints (which I must finish writing up before I get terminally confused).
From the Blurb:
Karen Chisholm
Another from the "new to me author" stack.
From the Blurb:
How could one man inspire such hatred?
Professor Lars Helland is found at his desk with his tongue lying in his lap. A violent fit has caused him to bite through it in his death throes. A sad but simple end. Until the autopsy results come through.
Karen Chisholm
From the New to Me Author category (well not surprisingly probably - debut book), She's Never Coming Back comes with a very very big marketing talk up.
From the Blurb:
When Yvla, a loving mother and wife, fails to come home from work, her husband is not initially suspicious. But as time passes he becomes frantic with worry. And by the time he finally contacts the police, he is almost hysterical. Given the mysterious circumstances of her disappearance he becomes the number one suspect.
Karen Chisholm
The upside to days on end of 40 degrees is that there's not a lot you can do (except for the hourly firewatch patrols / hosing down animal rounds). So we've been doing a lot of reading. Another from the "Favourite Author" pile.
From the Blurb:
In early 1933, Rowland Sinclair and his companions are ensconced in the superlative luxury of The Hydro Majestic - Medlow Bath, where trouble seems distant indeed.
And then Harry Simpson vanishes.
Karen Chisholm
Whilst I can normally manage to cobble together one of those dreaded "Top 10" listings for some of the mailing lists or, just before Christmas, on the Sisters in Crime(link is external) website, I hate doing them. It's such an arbitrary number, and doesn't even allow me the luxury of a favourite book per month. So instead, a few reminders to myself on what really stayed with me from last year's reading list of 135 books.
R.J. Ellory
Karen Chisholm
Selected because it's one of those books I've had around here for many years, and despite having read it multiple times now I realise I've never posted anything about it here...
From the Blurb:
Strange coincidences entangle Richard Ross in a crime he did not commit and draw him deeper and deeper into unethical international dealings he had desperately tried to avoid.
Karen Chisholm
A book finished over Christmas / New Year from the "been lurking around here for quite a long time now" stacks.
From the Blurb:
Ten years ago Andrea Hayes was the IRA's most brilliant bombmaker. Then, sickened by an incident that went horrifyingly wrong, she gave it allup. Now she lives a safe suburban life, her true identity hidden from even her husband and daughter Katie. But when Katie is kidnapped, Andrea realizes that her past, chillingly, has come back to haunt her.
Karen Chisholm
I've been forming (well desperately trying to form) a cunning plan for this year's reading. Whilst my A-Z of review books idea worked fairly well, it caused all sorts of personal angst when books arrived that didn't fit into "the plan". Not, I hasten to add, do I adhere all that well to any form of plan these days, but.... this year I've come up with a theory.
Every month I'm going to try to pick up a Book by a Favourite Author, one that's been lurking in the stacks here for way too long, something from a New to Me author, and then anything else I damn well feel like.
Karen Chisholm
The "Favourite Author" category brings me straight to Little Star by John Ajvide Lindqvist. Perfect stinking hot summer's day reading!
From the Blurb:
When embittered ex-pop-star Lennart Cederström finds a baby left for dead in a plastic bag, he is uncertain what to do - until he hears her cry. It is a clear, haunting, perfectly pitched note, and Lennart decides she will be his project. A child raised in isolation: the vehicle for a pure, uncorrupted music.
Karen Chisholm
Finally getting the opportunity to get some Christmas / New Year reading done!
From the Blurb:
Syd Fielding is on a fishing trip when he hears a horrifying scream ... What he doesn't yet know is that a young man is being fed to a saltwater crocodile.
Karen Chisholm
Nothing like a new Peter Corris / Cliff Hardy novel for the Christmas / New Year summer reading season!
From the blurb:
Cliff Hardy has his PI licence back - but does he still have what it takes to cut it on the mean streets of Sydney?
Karen Chisholm
Catching up with some books from this year that I should have read by now.
From the Blurb:
Thea Farmer, a reclusive and difficult retired school principal, lives in isolation with her dog in the Blue Mountains. Her distinguished career ended under a cloud over a decade earlier, following a scandal involving a much younger male teacher.
Karen Chisholm
I'm not sure what it is about me, but ever since I was a little girl I've been an absolute sucker for spy or military style thrillers. I blame George Smiley.
From the Blurb:
A British agent is brutally murdered, a President is in danger and the fate of the small West African nation, Malfajiri, lies in the balance. But does the rest of the world even care?
Enter Alex Morgan, the new star agent of INTERPOL’s Intelligence, Recovery, Protection & Infiltration Division: INTREPID.
Karen Chisholm
Crime Fiction... but the tale of a very specific type of house burglar, as opposed to murder and mayhem.
From the Blurb:
Karen Chisholm
Okay - so I really am in the middle of reading this book, for once (rather than just catching up).
From the Blurb:
One mild summer evening Lily and her husband are enjoying a meal while their baby daughter sleeps peacefully in her pram beneath a maple tree. But when Lily steps outside she is paralysed with terror. The child is bathed in blood.
Karen Chisholm
Another just finished, as opposed to reading now, this is the third Kimmo Joentaa novel from Jan Costin Wagner.
From the Blurb:
Every year since the tragic death of his wife, Detective Kimmo Joentaa has prepared for the isolation of Christmas with a glass of milk and a bottle of vodka to arm himself against the harsh Finnish winter. However, this year events take an unexpected turn when a young woman turns up on his doorstep.
Karen Chisholm
From the Blurb:
Join Salisbury Forth on twenty adrenaline-fuelled days as a courier of contraband in the alleyways of inner Melbourne, a city of rolling power outages, fuel rationing and curfews.
Life’s stressful, post-pandemic: a vaccine dispensed Australia-wide has caused mass infertility and people are scrambling for cures. This would be fine for the hormone business, except the new government has banned all remedies except prayer.
Karen Chisholm
Less of a currently reading, and more of a just finished, this is one of the books that's been in my dip into whilst waiting basket.
From the Blurb:
It is December 2001 and Argentina is in meltdown. Pablo Martelli, once in an elite branch of the police force known as the "National Shame", is a shadow of his former self, scraping by as a bathroom-appliance salesman.
Karen Chisholm
Melbourne author, Angela Savage, has won 1st prize in Sisters in Crime Australia’s 18th Scarlet Stiletto Awards – the first crime writer with one or more crime novels under the belt to do so in the 18 years of the short-story competition.
“It’s a turn-up for the books,” says judges’ spokesperson, Phyllis King. “The Stiletto Award has previously gone to writers who might have published lots of stories but haven’t yet managed a novel.”
Karen Chisholm
Read this over the weekend, just about in a single sitting actually.
From the Blurb:
1945. The war is over. But there are no medals for Danny McRae, just amnesia and blackout's, twin handicaps for a private investigator especially with a filthy rich client on the hook for murder.
Karen Chisholm
Okay, so I was hoarding this for over Christmas reading. But will power is not something I'm known for...
From the Blurb:
A brutal home invasion shocks the nation. A man is murdered, his wife bound, gagged and left to watch.
But when Detective Sam Shephard scratches the surface, the victim, a successful businessman, is not all he seems to be. And when the evidence points to two of Dunedin's most hated criminals, the case seems cut and dried ... until the body count starts to rise.
Meanwhile, Sam is in big trouble again ...
Karen Chisholm
From the Blurb:
In the first thaw of spring the body of a young woman surfaces in the River Torne in the far north of Sweden. Rebecka Martinsson is working as a prosecutor in nearby Kruna. Her sleep has been disturbed by haunting visions of a shadowy, accusing figure. Could the body belong to the ghost in her dreams?
Karen Chisholm
This is particularly fantastic news - not just because Readers Feast is such a beautiful shop, with staff who know what they are talking about, but Mary is also a very strong supporter of crime fiction worldwide. (She's one of those reading mentors that I used to follow very very closely).
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/a-new-feast-for-lovers-of-books-201111...
Karen Chisholm
Really needed another ereader in this house. Honestly we did. But what we really were contemplating was a tablet. I'd never in a pink fit buy a shopping device disguised as an ereader - hardwiring myself to a single bookshop / outlet / format - loathe that sort of lockdown in everything - hardware / operating systems / platforms - anything. So have been looking at various tablet options, and had already purchased a few cheap Android devices just to get a feel for what's around. (Perfectly useable, not quite as flexible as what I ultimately wanted, even though we use all the devices ar
Karen Chisholm
Between 1996 and 1997 three young women - Sarah Spiers, Jane Rimmer, Ciara Glennon - vanished after visiting nightclubs in the affluent suburb of Claremont. With no eye witnesses and no apparent motive, police became locked in a deadly race to catch this killer before he struck again. The bodies of Jane and Ciara were found, dumped in desolate bush areas. Sarah is still missing. The families' agony is endless.
Karen Chisholm
From the Blurb:
Orphaned by an act of senseless violence that took their mother from them, half-brothers Clarence Luckman and Elliott Danziger start life with two strikes against them. Raised in state institutions, unaware of the world outside, their lives take a sudden turn when they are seized as hostages by a convicted killer en route to death row.
Karen Chisholm
Every now and again I mostly just want to be entertained... and this book looked like it could be just the thing. Given the author, I'm not going to be surprised if it turns out to be a lot more than that.
From the Blurb:
Ugly. Irascible. Intolerant. Clever.
From one of our sharpest legal minds comes a brilliant new charact er, Harry Curry--scion of the establishment and criminal defender extraordinaire. A class traitor, some say.
Karen Chisholm
Okay, so here's the thing. I pick up The Impossible Dead thinking oh goodie... the second Malcolm Fox book. Only I've not read the first one. Could have SWORN I'd read the first one - but no. Good grief. Reading it now.
From the Blurb:
Karen Chisholm
From the Blurb:
Danielle (Dani) O'Rourke's gala evening at the Devor Museum ends in catastrophe when the body of a young artist plummets from her office window. The police label it murder and suspect Dani, the museum's chief fund-raiser. Self-preservation and an insider's understanding of how money moves the art world drive her to investigate who might have a motive for murder. Dani's playboy ex-husband and a green-eyed cop complicate matters as her search moves through the fashionable worlds of San Francisco and Santa Fe.
Karen Chisholm
Needless to say, the Booker Prize Winner. I rarely, if ever, chase award winners of this nature down, but something about the blurb, and Stella Rimington's comments about this winner made me want to sneak a peek.
From the Blurb:
Karen Chisholm
Yes ... well ... brave statement land 'Don't bother with Stieg Larsson, Kallentoft is better - Magnus Utvik, leading Swedish book critic'
From the Blurb:
'An investigation consists of a mass of voices, the sort you can hear, and the sort you can't. You have to listen to the soundless voices, Malin. That's where the truth is hidden.'
The snow covered all tracks, as the killer knew it would. But it couldn't hide the victim, the man who now hung naked from a lonely tree on a frozen plain.
Karen Chisholm
From the Blurb:
Inspector Singh is home - and how he wishes he wasn't. His wife nags him at breakfast and his superiors are whiling away their time by giving him his usual 'you're a disgrace to the force' lecture. Fortunately for Singh there is no rest for the wicked when he is called out to the murder of a senior partner at an international law firm, clubbed to death at his desk.
Opening Lines:
Karen Chisholm
Bought to you by the pile in the corner that I should have read years ago....
From the Blurb:
Mixed in deep despair and on the verge of suicide, writer Genesis Hawke seeks to free his creative muse by using a newspaper advertisement to lure an at-large serial killer into giving his life story. But nothing is quite what it seems as Hawke soon discovers he is dealing with much more than the ego of a maniacal murderer.
Karen Chisholm
True Crime Davitt Award winner for 2011 - and a book I got a chance to chat to the author about briefly at SheKilda. Extremely worthwhile to read if for no other reason than to realise the importance of the High Court of Australia.
From the Blurb:
In 1994 Pamela Lawrence was brutally bashed to death in her jewellery shop in Perth. Fairly quickly, police suspicion fell on a young, psychologically fragile drifter named Andrew Mallard; he was ultimately charged and convicted of this murder. It took 13 years for this injustice to unravel.
Karen Chisholm
There's nothing at all like a complete and utter satellite failure to give you some reading time. Email is still off the air if you're wondering why everything has gone silent. We're having to cobble together an alternative system as the satellite will probably be out for a week. (That's if they can ever fix it - at the moment they are saying they don't even know what the error message means....) But really, that's okay. The NBN is just an enormous waste of public money....
Karen Chisholm
Having had to completely revise my "over serial killers" stance post O'Donovan's first book The Priest, more than very pleased to see the second arrive.
From the Blurb:
Karen Chisholm
Between the 7th and 9th of October, in a hotel on Swanston Street in Carlton, Melbourne, a heap of people gathered for SheKilda 2011.
Having been lucky enough to get a gig on the Organising Committee - this is the first chance I've had to mutter anything about the weekend from my own perspective. I've had a bit of "day job" catching up to do as the organising workload got pretty intense in the leadup to the weekend, and, well I am not keen on writing opinion pieces....
Karen Chisholm
From the Blurb:
Redemption is born of guilt, and weighs heavy on even the strongest man.
Traumatised by the disappearance of his daughter Claire, Taylor Bridges' marriage breaks down, and he exiles himself to Glorys Crossing in Tasmania. Taylor is the only ranger in this isolated town adjoining a national park... a town dying a slow death as the rising waters of the new dam project slowly flood it.
Karen Chisholm
Looking for something slightly more on the Comfort Read scale night before last I switched to this book on one of the tablet E-Readers. It's just so lovely to spend time in the mayhem and lunacy of Denton. Which I know sounds weird given the subject matter of the book, but at least with a Frost novel you know that he'll right the wrongs at the end, no matter how much the hierarchy gets up his nose and in his road.
From the Blurb:
Karen Chisholm
From the Blurb:
Chaos reigns in the sleepy village of Aromoana when shipping containers wash up on the beach and are looted.
Detective Constable Sam Shephard knows first-hand the desperation of the scavengers - she's got the scars to prove it.
Plus a skull in the sand.
And a body pulled from the ocean.
The undercurrents from one morning's madness are far-reaching. Who else will be caught in the backwash? Can Sam stem the tide?
Opening Lines:
Karen Chisholm
There's nothing like being up to your elbows in the doing of something to make sure that you're going to be late in the writing about something. Besides - there's nothing more boring than somebody banging on about what they did last weekend.
Karen Chisholm
From the Blurb:
Black Saturday, February 7, 2009.
Roger Wood is the cop on duty at Kinglake when the most devastating fire in the nation's history roars through the ranges onto his beat. His task is to defend his town against the colossus that threatens to destroy it.
And, over the course of one nightmarish day, that is what he will do. Even at the risk of his own life.
Even after he receives the dreadful phone call telling him his own wife and kids are caught on the front line of the inferno.
Karen Chisholm
From the Blurb:
When a Kalahari ranger is found dead in a dry ravine, his corpse surrounded by three Bushmen, the local police arrest the nomads. Botswana's Detective 'Kubu' Bengu investigates the case and is reunited with his old school friend Khumanego, a Bushman and advocate for his people. Khumanego claims the nomads are innocent and the arrests motivated by racist antagonism. The Bushmen are released but, soon after, another man is murdered in similar circumstances. Are the Bushmen to blame, or is it a copycat murder?