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The fourth book in the bestselling Chronicles of St Mary's series which follows a group of tea-soaked disaster magnets as …
"Certain Dark Things combines elements of Latin American mythology with a literary voice that leads readers on an exhilarating and …
Except trouble is never far away where the Thursday Murder Club is concerned. A decade-old cold case leads them to …
"Certain Dark Things combines elements of Latin American mythology with a literary voice that leads readers on an exhilarating and …
Shaun Micallef: Tripping Over Myself (Paperback, Hardie Grant Books)
From Shaun Micallef, beloved host of ABC TV’s news satire Mad as Hell, comes Tripping Over Myself – an insightful …
Ngaio Marsh: Artists in Crime (1938, Geoffrey Bles)
Artists in Crime is a detective novel by Ngaio Marsh; it is the sixth novel to feature Roderick Alleyn, and …
Artists in Crime is a detective novel by Ngaio Marsh; it is the sixth novel …
Content warning Spoiler for probably midway through the book or so
An interesting setup with a varied cast of characters. Blame for the murder is cast towards the only member of the artistic group who is no longer in the residence having indicated that they would go on a walking holiday.
Pretty clearly they too were bumped off.
Marsh is touted as NZs Queen of Crime, somewhat akin to Agatha Christie and sure, that makes sense. I'm not sure her detective is quite as interesting as Poirot, but then I'm jumping into a series that was already well established, so it's a little hard to tell.
Certainly the Australian artist in the story provided a lot of cultural cringe for me and it probably would have been a better book without it. It's hard to tell how realistic the character was given it's over 80 years old, but it was very embarrassing. I'm rather sorry if she met someone like that in real life.
Enjoyable, would probably read another in the series at a later date.
Witness the fate of beloved heroes--and enemies.
THE BALANCE OF POWER HAS FINALLY TIPPED.... The precarious equilibrium among the four …
Winner of the inaugural ASA/HQ Commercial Fiction Prize. The twists keep piling up in this …
There's a lot going on in this version of the City of Yarra in 2007 (a local government area of Melbourne, Australia). The Melbourne Blues scene, football, freeway planning, shady developers, the Melbourne Cup, adoption and local politics all get thrown in to the mix when our main character Brick Brown (part time bartended, part time council worker) enters the archives room in the council building where she works to find the mayor dead with his pants down.
Her Uncle Baz (who's really more of a dad) has gone missing and with the help of the ex-war correspondent Mitch Mitchell and her friends she needs to unravel the weird web of politics to find him.
It sounds heavy, but it is a light romp. Some of the threads which end up being a bit loose at the end get resolved in an "oh by the way" but it was good …
There's a lot going on in this version of the City of Yarra in 2007 (a local government area of Melbourne, Australia). The Melbourne Blues scene, football, freeway planning, shady developers, the Melbourne Cup, adoption and local politics all get thrown in to the mix when our main character Brick Brown (part time bartended, part time council worker) enters the archives room in the council building where she works to find the mayor dead with his pants down.
Her Uncle Baz (who's really more of a dad) has gone missing and with the help of the ex-war correspondent Mitch Mitchell and her friends she needs to unravel the weird web of politics to find him.
It sounds heavy, but it is a light romp. Some of the threads which end up being a bit loose at the end get resolved in an "oh by the way" but it was good all the same.
A Chronicles of St Mary's short story that is sure to entertain. If you love …
Accidentally borrowed this from the digital library (when trying to borrow a different book in the series) and yeah it was the usual St Marys adventure, though after reading Second Chance it's confusing how it relates given the ending of Second Chance.
But as a palate cleanser between the books, it's nice enough.
Ever since his girlfriend left town to deal with her newly acquired taste for blood, …
I really do hope that the next book is a little bit more urban and a little less fantasy. While I enjoy the fantasy parts of the series, I think this one almost went too far.
I'm mostly worried about further books needing to up the ante.
The Chronicles of St Mary's seem to always be an easy read and this one is no exception.
And this one goes through the normal romp in the first part (that ends in a fairly big change to a relationship), a perilous foe in the second and then throws in a curve ball for the ending.
And I kind of almost wish that it setup the curve ball in this book and left the curve ball itself for a later book.
But curious to see where it goes.
