CRIME BOOK OF THE MONTH:

If She Did It by Jessica Treadway

Hanna and Joe Schutt are unsure about their awkward daughter Dawn’s first love, the handsome yet unnerving Rud, but are pleased to see their daughter happy – until the night they are viciously beaten by a croquet mallet in bed, leaving Joe dead and Hanna with facial injuries so acute that they leave her, nearly three years later, still with visible scars and a brain injury that impedes her memory of the night. So when Rud, jailed for the attack, wins an appeal, Hanna needs to try to recall what really happened that night so that she can put him back behind bars. She must also defy those around her, even her best friend and other daughter, Iris , who both insist that the killer was not Rud at all, but someone much closer to her heart.

I think I’ve considered, in the past, that memory loss in books often feels contrived, but Treadway’s skill as an author – she’s a creative writing professor –never made me feel like Hanna’s injury was cheap. No, she did not want to remember the day her beloved husband died, but she never seemed to be actively pushing it away. Likewise, when Dawn does things that arouse suspicion, Hanna does not dismiss them without consideration, but asks questions, fights back, and searches for reality in a world split apart. She wants her daughter, long adored despite being maligned at school for her lazy eye and slight oddness, to love her, to be loved, to shake off everyone’s view of her, and to be happy. Dawn or not, someone is a threat to Hanna’s life now, and she needs to break into her own mind to find out who it is. This is a stay-up-late, stare-at-your-child-suspiciously-the-next-day thriller.

Camille by Pierre LeMaitre

LeMaitre, once a literary professor and now happily drowning in crime-fiction awards, finishes up his incredibly popular Camille Verhoeven trilogy with a book about the detective himself – a man with the kind of shattered past writers enjoy giving poor innocent protagonists. Four years after the death that broke his heart, Camille has a new love, Anne Forestier, who stumbles onto a robbery on the Champs-Élysées which is as heart-racing and brutal as anything LeMaitre has previously penned. Shot, beaten, but alive, her hospital stay is further darkened by the knowledge that someone is after her. But the man who loves her has never been known to abide by the rules, and if someone is after Anne, then Camille is after them.

Gun Control by Peter Corris

Corris, the ‘godfather’ of Australian crime fiction and an enjoyable writer if there ever was one, has been writing Cliff Hardy books for 30 years – and here, in book 40, his fans rejoice again. Hardy is hired by Timothy Greenhall, an ex-shooting champion, to find out who was behind Timothy’s son’s grisly murder. The case goes from city to country, from dodgy to straight to beautiful cops, and on the road with bikers who may be more help than horror. The first death isn’t the last – it never is – and as guns fire over Sydney, Hardy just needs to dodge the bullets and save the day.

The Exit by Helen FitzGerald

The first crime book I ever read – Agatha Christie’s wonderful By the Pricking of My Thumbs – started in a nursing home with an ‘old dear’ waffling on about murder and being patted gently on the head as things became much more sinister. Here, Catherine, a young woman begrudgingly working at a nursing home, meets Rose, a resident who suffers from dementia and wanders in and out of the present and her long-distant past. Rose is convinced something is wrong in room seven. Cynical at first, but humouring one of the few residents she can tolerate, Catherine begins to suspect that Rose’s desperate ravings contain some truth, and that danger is just down the hall.

The Port Fairy Murders by Robert Gott

In 1943, the early days of Victoria’s homicide department, Detective Joe Sable and Constable Helen Lord are on the trail of George Starling, a remnant from the book’s prequel, The Holiday Murders. Meanwhile, in scenic Port Fairy, a double murder occurs that homicide originally considers fairly cut and dry, but it’s not like Robert Gott to make anything easy when it could instead be thrilling. This series takes a look at the conflicts of a past that sometimes seems not so far away – religious intolerance, industrial problems, gender politics – against a backdrop of a beautifully preserved Greater Melbourne area and its undercurrents of blisteringly brutal violence.

The Prince by Vito Bruschini

Need a meaty historical crime fiction fix? Then read The Prince, a novelisation with its hooks in truth that follows Prince Ferdinando Licata, a rich landowner with all the generous charisma and bloodthirsty violence you need in the fictional founder of the Sicilian mafia. Starting in 1920s Sicily as Licata’s manipulation of the poor and defiance against the fascists sees him booted out of Italy, it moves to the 1930s and Licata in a new little town where he can flex his power – New York – and then back to Italy during the Allied invasion of WWII. Smart, well-researched and gloriously epic.

Second Life by S.J. Watson

From the author of the smash hit Before I Go To Sleep comes the story of Julia, middle-aged and lacking excitement until her younger sister, Kate, is murdered in Paris. Feeling guilty that she wasn’t helping her sister enough and that their complicated past is sending her emotions all over the place, Julia discovers that Kate enjoyed salacious internet shenanigans and so goes online to find someone who knows what happened to her. However, the temptations of anonymity, pretence, and handsome men may lead Julia into a new and sinister world.

Bad Seed by Alan Carter

Newly minted Acting Detective Sergeant Cato Kwong turns up at the scene of a multiple homicide and recognises the bodies even when their faces are, well, unrecognisable. Rich property developer Francis Tan, his wife, and two of his three children are dead. Now, trying to find out who killed his old friend, Cato must dive into the world of shady online deals – and resurface alive.

Fiona Hardy