Sorted on book title (not in series order)
J.P. Pomare won the Ngaio Marsh Award for Best First Novel with his debut CALL ME EVIE. Since then he's carved out a name for himself when it comes to precisely plotted, atmospheric, tense psychological thrillers populated by cleverly constructed characters, designed to keep readers...Read more
The blurb for LAST SEEN LEAVING outlines a particularly interesting concept - high-flying, New York District Attorney, with a happy personal life is struck down by a viral eye infection which renders her blind. Now running a small, suburb based law practice, her ex-fiancée is reported...Read more
New Zealand author Fiona Sussman has created something absolutely remarkable in her blended crime and contemporary fiction novel THE LAST TIME WE SPOKE. Winner of the ...Read more
The Crime Fiction genre is a broad church. Delivery styles, subject matter and purpose can vary wildly from the light-hearted to the darkest noir, from purposely vicious and cruel to accidental and panicked. There's even shades in terms of how or why. Investigation and resolution with all...Read more
In The Legend of Winstone Blackhat, Tanya Moir takes the reader, in a sustained and authentic way, into the world-view of an abused 12 year old. She writes powerfully about a boy, Winstone, (named after a NZ concreting company) who comes from a neglectful and damaging home life....Read more
THE LEWIS PASS is the second book in the Dylan Harper series - the first being THE FORGOTTEN LANDS (I believe aka DEAD GROUND but that needs confirmation - they sound like the same book but it could be a rewrite). Anyway, it's an interesting little series, although it's probably one that...Read more
A debut novel with a very evocative title, LIE DOWN WITH DOGS, is centred around a burnt out, damaged Detective, Kyle Williams. After being shot and losing the love of his life in a disastrous undercover investigation, he's strangely best placed to take on the cold-case murder of two young...Read more
LIFTING is one of those books that is charming, slightly eccentric, sad, happy, and wonderfully engaging. Set primarily within the walls of the oldest department store in New Zealand, Wellington's Cutty's is an institution that's been marked for closure. Non-New Zealander / Wellington...Read more
LOKAHI'S TRIANGLE and KANALOA'S BETRAYAL are book 4 and 5 in the Detective Reef Kahili series respectively. Set in Hawaii these books are about as close to a travelogue love letter to a location, it's people and it's culture that crime fiction can get without forgetting to be crime fiction...Read more
All novels by Finn Bell have guaranteed two things. Wonderful sense of place, and morally ambiguous characters. As it is with THE LOST DEAD where we have three Maori boys, wanted criminals, on the run, barely one step ahead of the cops and the gangs they have annoyed along the way. There is...Read more
THE LOST TAONGA and A SUITABLE TIME FOR VENGEANCE by Edmund Bohan were both entered in the 2018 Ngaio Marsh Awards, with THE LOST TAONGA making it onto the longlist. Both these books are from Bohan's Inspector O'Rorke series (six and seven respectively), historical crime fiction set in New...Read more
In Tom Baragwanath’s latest crime novel, Lorraine Henry knows only too well how small towns and close communities are a blessing and a curse.
Tom Baragwanath first introduced ‘Lo’ Henry in...Read more
Obviously one of the most commented on aspects of THE LUMINARIES is the size. Clocking in at 830+ pages this is not a book for fans of thrillers, or fast reads, not just because of its sheer size, but because of the dense nature of the writing and the story. Set in 1866, this novel feels...Read more
Upside, Neil Cross has written some fantastic recent books. Downside, LUTHER THE CALLING has a connection with a TV series which I've never seen. So interesting to see if a fabulous author has written a fabulous book, regardless of whatever's been going on over on the small screen. ...Read more
If you're new to the Judi Westerholme series, it's one of those featuring a slightly older, marginally wiser, female character who's in too deep and doing the two steps forward, one step dance that quite a few of us might recognise. It's a great series, with a believable, slightly manic...Read more
MADE TO KILL is a noir crime novel with all the required elements. Ray is a wisecracking, slightly bitter and twisted investigator, who takes the punches and wears out the shoe leather. Ada, his female sidekick, is the brains behind the operation, with a full-time job keeping Ray on track...Read more
It's always interesting when an author best known for non crime fiction works steps into the genre. The author of A MADNESS OF SUNSHINE is better known for her paranormal romance works, of which there are around thirty New York Times bestsellers.
Fans of crime fiction...Read more
Set in 1920's India, A MADRAS MIASMA takes place in an India that is looking towards independence from the British. With a strong sense of place, culture and time built in, this is debut crime fiction with potential.
The central character, Superintendent Le Fanu is a complex...Read more
The abuse, stalking, and/or terrorising of young women is something we read about in the news these days with depressing regularity. It's always about the consequences, often of events that were downplayed, covered up or ignored by victims and the authorities. What is it about the way women...Read more
Major earthquakes aren't new in Christchurch, but the last really big one left massive destruction, dislocation and death in its wake. As a setting for a crime novel that time and place make enormous sense, giving an author the chance to delve into a society in flux, and the reality of...Read more
The second Jeff Bradley novel from New Zealand author, Thomas Ryan, certainly made me really want to shunt my as yet unread copy of the first (The Field of Blackbirds) up in priority.
A thriller in construction, THE MARK OF HALAM is fast-paced, big-threat, enemies on all sides...Read more
Alan Carter is the author of the Ned Kelly Award winning Cato Kwong series (PRIME CUT won the Best First Award in 2011), but MARLBOROUGH MAN features a new character - UK born, New Zealand based cop Nick Chester and his family.
Chester's had an "interesting" working life -...Read more
Hopefully more and more of us are looking for answers to the state of the world in the right directions, but then again you look at the state of world politics and the rise of the nationalistic mobs, environmental degradation and climate change denial, and it's getting hard to see any light...Read more
Very very niche, set in a fairytale world (Wyld Enchantment Woods) MIRROR, MIRROR WHO'S THE KILLER? is a non-romantic, paranormal, cozy mystery for adults with talking cats and quirky characters. Needless to say - you're going to have to be the sort of reader that likes this sort of thing...Read more
The novella THE MISTAKE is short, sharp, packed with a punch crime fiction set in Iceland, written by ex-pat New Zealander Grant Nicol. Set in Reykjavik, there's a lot that's laid on the line, as you'd expect in something constrained by length. There's been a brutal murder and the clear...Read more
Never underestimate a tea lady.
Sydney, 1968. When a popular local man is murdered, police are quick to pin the blame on his glamorous model fiancée, who has since disappeared. But Hazel suspects a criminal cover-up and rallies the tea ladies to investigate; a...Read more
There's a particularly interesting idea at the heart of A MOMENT'S SILENCE. A holidaying New Zealander makes a chance sighting out of a bus window, subsequently connecting the dots between the car he saw, and a subsequent bomb explosion. Originally reporting his suspicions in the Cotswolds...Read more
It’s 84 years since Dame Ngaio Marsh published the first Roderick Alleyn novel. Now he’s back, in a crime novel outlined by Marsh during the Second World War and completed by Stella Duffy in 2018.
Dame Ngaio Marsh was a New Zealand crime writer and theatre...Read more
From the cute, silly, chatty end of the cosy spectrum, what I saw were aspects of Nell Forrest and Tabitha Darling, crossed with Helen Hawthorne delivered with a hefty hat-tip to Murder, She Wrote. But I'm not a close follower of cosy crime, so that probably reflects more about my limited...Read more
Miller Hatcher made her debut as a character in NOTHING BAD HAPPENS HERE. In my review of that book I noted that she was "a flawed character, frequently almost pathetic, but there's enough in her back story, and the way her problems presented to make her understandable, if not completely...Read more