Israeli author Ayelet Gundar-Goshen’s latest novel The Wolf Hunt (translated by Sondra Silverston) was first published in Hebrew with the name Relocation. And while the new title has some resonance with the plot, the original name cuts deeper to the concerns that Gundar-Goshen is trying to explore. That is, the split and tension in the…
Australian author Chris Womersley has an eclectic back catalogue; even his two connected novels – Cairo and The Diplomat – are very different creatures. But there are a few through lines, and one of those is crime. While very little of Womersley’s work fits neatly in the usual slots of crime genre, the narratives are…
Sarah Flannery Murphy showed in her first two books her capacity to take a speculative premise and use it illuminate real world issues. In The Possessions, her protagonist had the capacity to channel the lives of the dead and Girl One revolved around a group of young women with extraordinary powers. In both cases, what…
Shelley Burr burst onto the Australian crime scene in 2022 with her rural crime debut Wake which has gone on to win both the British Crime Association Dagger and Ned Kelly Award for best debut, among others. While Wake contained many of the elements of more traditional Australian rural crime stories, Burr managed to put…
In her last few books, award winning author Ann Patchett has increasingly focussed on the domestic. From 2016’s Commonwealth which centred on a group of cousins growing up to 2019’s The Dutch House which focussed on siblings coming to terms with their family’s past. Her latest novel, Tom Lake, treads similar territory from a different…
He Who Drowned the World is the concluding volume in Australian fantasy author Shelley Parker-Chan’s epic Chinese-historical fantasy Radiant Emperor Duology. The first book of these, She Who Became The Sun, was a jaw-dropping debut which went on to make numerous award shortlists, including the Hugo Award,ugo Awar and won the 2022 British Fantasy Award….
Sometimes the best way to describe a book is to compare it to its influences. While there are plenty of other clear predecessors to choose from, one easy way to describe Alex Hay’s pacey debut The Housekeepers is as a cross between Ocean’s 8 and Downton Abbey. That is to say, in a nutshell, that…
I don’t usually talk about cover art of the books that I review but just this once, I have to say that the Australian cover of Stef Penney’s excellent historical novel The Beasts of Paris does not do it justice. Some of the action of The Beasts of Paris is set in and around the…
Martin Cruz Smith’s Russian detective Arkady Renko has been kicking around since 1981’s Gorky Park. Even in that book he was already a senior investigator. If Renko aged at the same rate as his reality that would make him pretty old by now. Luckily for readers, Renko follows the rules of most fictional detectives in…
In Crook Manifesto, multi award winning author Colson Whitehead returns to the Harlem of Ray Carney for some continuing adventures in crime in his follow up to 2021’s Harlem Shuffle. Similar in structure to the first book, Crook Manifesto comprises three long short stories, each some time on from the last. Through these stories Whitehead…
