Crime

Lenny Marks Gets Away with Murder by Kerryn Mayne

Reviewed by Aurelia Orr

Lenny Marks doesn’t want happiness: it is too unreliable and fleeting. Instead, she prefers contentment, order, and isolation over the company of others. Ever since her mother left her as a child, and her stepfather blamed it all on her…

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Dark Mode by Ashley Kalagian Blunt

Reviewed by Aurelia Orr

Dark Mode is a skin-crawling psychological thriller that begs you to consider what exactly it takes for someone to gain your trust. Is it how long you’ve known them? Is it simply talking to them frequently, sharing memories and interests…

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Judgement Day by Mali Waugh

Reviewed by Julia Jackson

Like last April’s Daughters of Eve by Nina D Campbell, Mali’s Waugh’s debut Judgement Day contains a strong female lead as well as strong themes of family violence. Detective Jillian Basset is the first senior detective I’ve encountered struggling with…

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Crows Nest by Nikki Mottram

Reviewed by Annie Condon

Nikki Mottram has used her professional social-work experience to create a likable but troubled character, Dana Gibson. Dana has accepted a short-term contract as a child protection worker in Queensland. She has left her job, home and husband in Sydney…

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A Routine Infidelity by Elizabeth Coleman

Reviewed by Lian Hingee

With the current state of the world right now, it’s no wonder that the cosy crime genre is having a real moment. From Richard Osman’s bestselling Thursday Murder Club series to Sulari Gentill’s self-referential The Woman in the Library

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Clarke by Holly Throsby

Reviewed by Fiona Hardy

When the police officers arrive at Barney’s house, nobody on the street is surprised. It’s been years since Ginny Lawson disappeared from that home, and everybody’s been waiting for confirmation of the inevitable truth: that she is buried under the…

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Better the Blood by Michael Bennett

Reviewed by Fiona Hardy

More than 150 years ago, on the top of Maunga Whakairoiro – or as the colonisers called it, Mount Suffolk – a picture is taken of a Māori chief, hanging from a tree, six victorious soldiers in the foreground. Despite…

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Stone Town by Margaret Hickey

Reviewed by Fiona Hardy

A teenage boy takes a girl and her sister to Stone Town’s eerie bushland in the dark of night, in the hopes of impressing her with the alarming shrieks of a Barking Owl – but they find the dead body…

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The Woman in the Library by Sulari Gentill

Reviewed by Fiona Hardy

Under the soaring dome of the Boston Public Library, four people meet. Whit, studying to become a lawyer and doing his best to fail; handsome novelist Cain; tattooed Harvard student Marigold; and our protagonist, Freddie, who has arrived in America…

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Daughters of Eve by Nina D. Campbell

Reviewed by Julia Jackson

In Sydney one bright clear day, a high-profile barrister is publicly gunned down on the courthouse steps. Not long after, another bloke in Melbourne suffers the same fate, and then another in Sydney. Before long, the violence escalates across Australia…

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