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Attica Locke’s THE CUTTING SEASON
Black Water Rising was one of the best crime debut’s I have read and was shortlisted for The Orange Prize, a rarity for a crime novel. So it was with much excitement and a little trepidation that I...
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Adrian McKinty’s I HEAR THE SIRENS IN THE STREET
THE COLD, COLD GROUND knocked my socks off earlier this year and is definitely my stand out crime read for the year. So when I was lucky enough to get hold of an early copy of the follow up book in...
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Jack Irish
I think the Jack Irish series by Peter Temple is not just the best crime series in Australia but rivals any crime fiction series in the world. When I first heard they were turning the books into a TV...
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Warren Ellis’s GUN MACHINE
I was recommended this by a bookselling colleague in New Zealand. We have similar taste in crime, especially crime on the dark side which this certainly is. He simply told me to read it which was all I...
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Lavie Tidhar’s OSAMA
The way a story is told greatly affects a reader’s perception. The world we live in shapes our stories to fit within historical and societal contexts. But what if you could retell a story and change...
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Tony Cavanaugh’s DEAD GIRL SING
I was mightily impressed with Tony Cavanaugh’s PROMISE and it narrowing missed by Top 10 books of the year. Second novels can be a bit tricky and after the accolades heaped on PROMISE I’m sure the...
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Andrew Nette’s GHOST MONEY
My knowledge of Cambodia was severely limited before reading this book.I knew they were bombed during the Vietnam War and of course knew about Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge and The Killing Fields but even...
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Ken Bruen’s MERRICK
I‘ve always thought Ken Bruen was made for eBooks. His prose and structure is very, well not poetic but poem like, and his novels are often short, sharp and furious. I got an advance of his latest...
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Kate Atkinson’s CASE HISTORIES
After reading and loving Life After Life I knew I had to go back and read some other Kate Atkinson novels. I went with Case Histories because of the crime element. Interestingly we have never shelved...
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Lauren Beukes’ THE SHINING GIRLS
This is one of those books I sat on. It fact I actually dismissed it. The pitch didn’t grab me: a serial killer who travels through time. I felt serial killer novels were pretty much exhausted...
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Martin Cruz Smith’s TATIANA
Ah Arkady Renko, its good to have you back. Still cantankerous and stubborn and able to not only sniff out trouble but completely ensconce yourself in it. One of the most endearing characters in crime...
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Ivy Pochoda’s VISITATION STREET
“Visitation Street is urban opera writ large. Gritty and magical, filled with mystery, poetry and pain, Ivy Pochoda’s voice recalls Richard Price, Junot Diaz, and even Alice Sebold, yet it’s indelibly...
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George Pelecanos’ THE DOUBLE
This might just be Pelecanos’s best work to date. Which when I look back at his books that is a big call but one I am more than willing to make because George Pelecanos is carving out something pretty...
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Michael Connelly’s THE GODS OF GUILT
I can distinctly remember reading John Grisham as a teenager and really getting into the legal thriller but as his books began to resemble movie pitches rather than novels and as I began to discover...
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P.M. Newton’s BEAMS FALLING
Ex-cop P.M. Newton burst onto the Australian crime writing scene four years ago with her impressive debut The Old School. Newton’s distinctive style and experience brought a point of view sadly missing...
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Laura Lippman’s AFTER I’M GONE
Laura Lippman delivers another absorbing thriller that sucks you in with vivid characters and great plotting. Inspired by a true story of a Baltimore mobster who went missing in the 1970s while under...
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5Q Interview with P.M. Newton, author of Beams Falling
P.M. Newton worked as a cop in NSW for 13 years. In 2010 she published her first novel, The Old School, set in Sydney in the early 1990s featuring Detective Nhu ‘Ned’ Kelly. The follow up, Beams...
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Nic Pizzolatto’s GALVESTON
I have been completely and utterly addicted to (and obsessed by) True Detective so when I found out the show’s creator and writer had written a crime novel I had to read it. And what a cracking book it...
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Elmore Leonard’s RIDING THE RAP
With news that there will be only one more season of Justified next year I thought it was time to complete my Raylan Givens reading. I’ve read the Raylan Givens books completely out-of-order. I started...
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Jesse Ball’s SILENCE ONCE BEGUN
This is one of those great novels that blends up truth and imagination so well that the lines between fact and fiction are so blurred you don’t even know where to begin trying to unravel it. It also...
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