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A fast read and for the most part a fine story about an undercover cop busting up a forgery outfit. Everyone has their own agenda and is ready to double or triple cross everyone else.
Shorter than expected as there's an additional two short stories of related gangster's nature's. The first story has a nice twist, though it wasn't unexpected.
The second short story is a little dire and really is skip able.
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 …
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.
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.
Look it was fine. It wasn't laugh out loud funny, but there were some good chuckles.
Maybe Tom Holt just isn't quite right for me.
I probably should see the film huh?
This was a decent read given it's a novelization of a film and for the most part I think it works OK. It's a fairly quick and undemanding read and has some nice moments.
I'm sure the film is better though!
E-book exclusive extras:1) Christie biographer Charles Osborne's essay on Elephants Can Remember;2) "The Poirots": the …
This is my second read of this one and I had the loose concept of how the murder was done and the key points still in my head from last time I read it.
While it's great to see Adriana Oliver and essentially get some insight into how Agatha herself felt about her work near the end of her life, the writing here isn't as vibrant as her earlier work. What Elephants Can Remember appears to be is taking some of her notes on a story that she was working on and padding it out into a novel by having the various people monologue at either Poirot or Oliver (or each other).
I think even without having read it before, it's very likely that you'll get the jist of the murder about half way through. It's a shame that it's such a poorly written novel as the murder could have …
This is my second read of this one and I had the loose concept of how the murder was done and the key points still in my head from last time I read it.
While it's great to see Adriana Oliver and essentially get some insight into how Agatha herself felt about her work near the end of her life, the writing here isn't as vibrant as her earlier work. What Elephants Can Remember appears to be is taking some of her notes on a story that she was working on and padding it out into a novel by having the various people monologue at either Poirot or Oliver (or each other).
I think even without having read it before, it's very likely that you'll get the jist of the murder about half way through. It's a shame that it's such a poorly written novel as the murder could have been quite clever if she had have gotten to it earlier. As it is though, it's a bit of a miss.
Four months have passed since the shadow stone fell into Kell's possession. Four months since …
It's been a little while since I read the first book and so I'm not sure quite how I would have felt about this one straight off the back of the last. I had a lot of "Oh yeah, that was a thing" moments.
This really feels like a season of an anime.... But a lot of it feels like filler. I'll read the last one (a not overly surprising ending but very cliff hangery).
It was probably a mistake to read a novel about a virus sweeping across the land even at the end of 2021.
This is a rather dark and strange tale and I really struggled to get through it. No one is very likable. In parts it's quite hard to follow, but at times I suspect that it's a choice rather than a failure.
Welcome to... THE THURSDAY MURDER CLUB
In a peaceful retirement village, four unlikely friends meet …
In a retirement village, Joyce is asked a question by member (well leader, let's be honest) of the Thursday Murder Club Elizabeth about how long it would take to bleed out from a certain wound. They meet in the jigsaw room every Thursday hence the name. There she meets the tough as nails but heart of gold Ron and the ex-psychologist Ibrahim.
Together they solve cold cases. But when a murder occurs related to their retirement village it uncovers secrets that end up closer to home.
Mechanically the story alternates between Joyce's journal entries and a third person view but it does have a fairly decent pace.
The characters a very likeable and have very distinct approaches, Elizabeth has many contacts and is very observant (with a history that's very hush hush), Ron is rough around the edges, Ibrahim is more for the analysis (and I suppose the little grey …
In a retirement village, Joyce is asked a question by member (well leader, let's be honest) of the Thursday Murder Club Elizabeth about how long it would take to bleed out from a certain wound. They meet in the jigsaw room every Thursday hence the name. There she meets the tough as nails but heart of gold Ron and the ex-psychologist Ibrahim.
Together they solve cold cases. But when a murder occurs related to their retirement village it uncovers secrets that end up closer to home.
Mechanically the story alternates between Joyce's journal entries and a third person view but it does have a fairly decent pace.
The characters a very likeable and have very distinct approaches, Elizabeth has many contacts and is very observant (with a history that's very hush hush), Ron is rough around the edges, Ibrahim is more for the analysis (and I suppose the little grey cells style) and Joyce acts as our entry into the club but is one of those people who really wants everyone to like her but not in a painful way.
And with Donna and Chris in the story you also get some police procedural thrown in for good measure.
There's a lot of mysteries in here that get uncovered, though it's not one of those tales that you're expected to be able to solve it before the characters do. The ride however is an intriguing one and looking forward to what the sequel presents.
Heralding the multi-platform Time Lord Victorious project, The Knight, the Fool and the Dead is …
This one drops you straight into it and it's a rather fast read... it's a somewhat disappointing finish as it ends on a rather big cliff hanger which isn't resolved until you pick up All Flesh is Grass. But it's also slightly confusing as it picks up from other media (some audiobooks and a comic). But it's fairly manageable (at least without the comic).
The story itself is about death and the Doctor's relationship with it. It's hard to know exactly how I'll feel about this one until picking up All Flesh is Grass, so maybe I'll have to come back and re-review this.
A political betrayal. A constitutional crisis. A hidden correspondence.
Gough Whitlam was a progressive prime …
Most of the chapters relate the background and fight to get the Palace Letters released, I've now made it to the section where the letters have been released and what they reveal and it paints Kerr in a very poor light. He's constantly seeking approval from the palace, despises Whitlam ideologically and seems to think that the position of G-G is something that it never has been and will never be again.