Podcaster Rachel Krall is covering a rape trial in a small US town; at the same time she is investigating the death of a young woman in the same town twenty five years ago. The book is part courtroom drama and part examination of how class, money and steroetype affect society’s attitude to young women, and to the men who rape them. Not necessarily a pleasant read but it works as a thriller and leaves you with a lingering sense of horror, and a little hope. 4 stars.

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Now don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of trashy thrillers but this one is not even fun; it’s just ridiculous. Identical twins, right? Iris and Summer. Summer goes missing off the yacht the twins are sailing through a remote part of the ocean. The other twin, Iris, assumes her identify (yawn) with a plan to claim the hundred million dollars promised by their equally ludicrous father in his will to the first of his children to have a baby and give it his surname (eye roll). I mean, let’s not even bother with the massive holes in the plot. They are impossible to discuss without giving away some of the more irritational twists and anyway you’re not likely to read it because I suffered through this book (all the way through) so you don’t have to. You’re welcome.

Now if you too are a fan of the good trashy thriller genre, here’s some suggestions for what to read instead of the way overhyped The Girl in the Mirror. Try The Couple Next Door by Shari Lapena, The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley, The Rumour by Lesley Kara, In a Dark, Dark Wood by Ruth Ware and Something In The Water by Catherine Steadman.

Two stars for The Girl In The Mirror. Seriously, life’s too short….

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My favourite Nordic crime writer has delivered again. A man is found hanging from a rock with a nail in his chest – so, not suicide then- and a four year old boy who doesn’t know the dead man is found alone in the dead man’s apartment. How? Why? Sigurdardottir is the master of weaving an absorbing narrative that ties everything up neatly at the end.

Gallows Rock is the fourth novel in the Huldar and Freyja series (after The Legacy, The Reckoning and The Absolution). Don’t worry if you haven’t read the first three novels before this one; the characters just muddle their way through in all of them. Hulda is a large and mostly kind police detective who is afraid of commitment and Freyja is a child psychologist with a criminal brother and problems with commitment. Each of the characters – even the bit players- are plausibly flawed and three dimensional. I particularly love the portrayal of Freyja’s young niece – a scowling, pathologically cranky toddler who only smiles at the dog. And the weather in these Icelandic novels is almost a character in itself.

Part thriller, part police procedural, part character study, part meditation on the darkness inside the souls of men (and occasionally, women); Sigurdardottir’s novels have it all. Gallows Rock rocks. 4 stars

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In writing what purports to be the ‘true’ autobiographical account of Elizabeth Macarthur -wife of Australia’s first wool baron- Grenville has actually created a gripping meditation on power in the late 18th century. Women’s power (or lack of it) features strongly, especially with regards to dominion over her own body. The one time a young Elizabeth feels and exercises her own sexual power she becomes pregnant, and marriage to the boorish, insensitive John MacArthur becomes an inevitability. Power over her own body is further diminished: “As a wife, with nowhere to go beyond wifedom, I was no more than a tenant in my body. If the landlord came to the door, I was obliged to let him in.”

During the course of her marriage Elizabeth does however learn subtle ways to manipulate the actions of her unbalanced bully of a husband. And within the confines of the life made by her husband, she creates her own life and finds, as a wise woman once said to her, “A woman can do many things, but she has to bide her time.”

The Elizabeth Macarthur of Grenville’s imagination is such good company; wry, funny, unflinchingly honest yet compassionate. Her voice stays with you well beyond the final pages of the book. But what really resonates is the injustice of the most unrelenting loss of power in the early days of colonial Australia; that of its original inhabitants.

A Room Made of Leaves is a beautiful and haunting piece of historical fiction. 4.5 stars.

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Jonasson has executed the Hidden Iceland series in a rather disconcerting manner; reverse chronological order. In the first novel, The Darkness, his protagonist Hulda is 64 years old and taking a look at one last case before she retires. The second novel, The Island, is set 14 years earlier, when Hulda is 50. And this last one, The Mist, is ten years earlier again, when Hulda is 40 and trying to balance the demands of an unhappy 13 year old daughter with her professional life.

If you’ve read the first two novels in the series, you’re painfully aware of the tragedy about to occur in The Mist and yet powerless to stop it. Publishing the novels in reverse chronological order is an unusual choice, particularly as the crimes Hulda investigates in each novel are not linked to one another. It is difficult to justify, and makes me wonder why Jonasson bothered. If you’re new to the series, I recommend reading the Hidden Iceland series in chronological order (The Mist, The Island and then The Darkness) . There seems to be no great benefit in doing it the other way.

Of the three novels, The Mist has the most intriguing mystery at its heart, and also the most pervasive and unsettling sense of frigid isolation. Two elderly people prepare to endure another routine Christmas in a remote Icelandic farmhouse. As a blizzard kicks in, there is a knock at the door. A man enters. He says he has been hunting but has lost his way. (Spoiler alert; he hasn’t been hunting, and he hasn’t lost his way). Two months later Detective Hulda gets a call to say two bodies have been found at the farmhouse and they’ve been dead for some time. But whose bodies are they, and why? Read on.

At his best (and The Mist is Jonasson at his best), Jonasson is as good as my favourite Icelandic crime writer, Yrsa Sigurdardottir. If you like The Mist, do try Sigurdardottir’s books, particularly I Remember You and Why Did You Lie? Perfectly delectable crime writing for Icelandic-like winter days. 4 stars.

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Fifteen months after their four year old son was abducted from a Christmas market, Marin and her husband Derek are living every parent’s worst nightmare, every day.

Marin and Derek are both harbouring secrets from each other. Marin’s secret is that she’s hired a private investigator to delve into their son’s disappearance. Derek’s secret (or, at least, one of them) is that he’s having an affair. When Marin’s private investigator inadvertently discovers Derek’s affair, she tells Marin about it and sets in motion a series of events that in turn reveal other secrets. Everyone, it seems, has them. Some are darker than others.

When reading this one you’ll need to find a way to overlook the fact Derek is a total wanker and it’s hard to imagiine why Marin stays with him. There is also at least one glaring hole in the plot but that is forgiveable, because it’s a such joy to read something that keeps you guessing.

There is currently a mystifying lack of good thrillers on the shelves of bookshops. Here’s some I’ve read in the last couple of months that I suggest you don’t bother with; Happy Ever After by CC MacDonald, Little White Lies by Philipa East, The Strangers We Know by Pip Drysdale and Mr Nobody by Catherine Steadman.

See, I just saved you a lot of time. Grab a copy of Little Secrets instead. 4 stars.

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All of this is eerily familiar, as are the references to inadequate amounts of PPE on board, the constant spreading of misinformation, the revulsion shown towards anyone who sniffs or coughs, the blustering of those in authority and the selfless acts of kindness and decency from those tending to the sick. How did Meg Mundell get it so right, and tell it with such grace, last year?

And yet the most disturbing part of The Trespassers is when the passengers are finally allowed off the boat, into an isolated detention centre. Here is a fresh kind of unrelenting hell, a void without a way forward. They are forgotten and purposeless; subject to harsh and ridiculous rules and given no information about their fate. The hopelessness of their situation is made all the more vivid for being entirely credible.

The corrupting effect of corporate money and power; a government enslaved to a braying and hateful public; a media incapable of accessing and publishing the truth; Mundell, bless her, leaves no soul unscathed. Thank goodness she allows an element of hope in the ending, or I might have lay on the floor and cried. 4.5 stars.

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Two essentially decent siblings make one horrendous decision – to leave a dead, pregnant woman at the scene of a car accident caused by their negligence – and the consequences of that decision reverberate through every aspect of their lives.

It is 1974. Queensland is teetering on the precipice of massive social change but under the premiership of Joh Bjelke-Peterson, it’s still a comfortable place for corrupt cops to thrive. Siblings Abby and Charlie are attempting to find a way to live with what they’ve done while at the same time dealing with the complexities of family life, everyday life and their own uncertain futures, plus corrupt cops who suspect their involvement in the car accident and aren’t above using it as leverage. As it turns out – SPOILER ALERT – the pregnant woman killed in the car accident was the fiancé of Charlie and Abby’s dad’s and her ex-partner is a drug dealer aligned with corrupt cops being investigated by Abby’s husband, an investigative journalist. Sound complicated? Well, life is complicated. And this novel reflects that. It’s so intelligently multi-layered; it’s a deep dive while most thrillers are just a splash about on the surface.

I don’t know how Kirsten Alexander keeps producing such high quality literature but I sure hope she keeps it up. Riptides is well worth devoting a day to. 4 stars.

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The Mirror and the Light is the third and final instalment in Hilary Mantel’s award winning reimagining of the life of Thomas Crowmwell. You know this one is going to end badly but it takes a really long time to reach the inevitable; 875 pages from the death of Anne Boleyn to Cromwell’s own.

I grew tired of it about two thirds of the way through. I’m not ruling out the possibility that I was just sick of lugging it around and trying to prop it up with numerous pillows to read it in bed; its sheer size makes it the literary equivalent of a ball and chain. After all, there is no doubt Mantel is a brilliant writer. Cromwell’s wry observations of the humans around him, both noble and lowly, and the gulf between what he thinks and what he says are beautifully evocative illustrations of his character. He even starts writing a handbook about how to handle the King but eventually burns it, knowing it could get him burned, which says everything you need to know about his relationship with the King. As the Spanish ambassador Chapuys observes: “Henry is a man of great endowments, lacking only consistency, reason and sense.” Cromwell is all too aware of the dangers of being close to Henry; he is after all the one who arranges his marriages and then contrives to rid Henry of his brides when he tires of them; and yet he cannot move away. He knows Henry may turn on him at any moment but he doesn’t quite believe it, until it happens. After his arrest he understands “all he can do is comply with Henry exactly, til his killing fit passes.”

Cromwell’s end, when it comes, is quite moving, but it takes a very long time coming. I much prefer Mantel’s shorter, sharper Bring Up the Bodies. 3.5 stars.

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The post publication controversy surrounding this novel seems to stem from the question of who has the right to tell migrant stories, and how to depict the countries they are leaving. The author Jeanine Cummins is neither Mexican nor a migrant. Cummins acknowledges this in the author’s notes at the back of the novel, “I wished someone slightly browner than me would write it.” But the advice she gets from a colleague is, I think, sound “We need as many voices as we can get, telling this story.”

The book has also been criticised for reinforcing cliches of Mexico as a lawless, corrupt place made dangerous by drug cartels. But again, this is unfair; Lydia frequently reflects on how beautiful a place her home town, Aculpulco, was before the violence started; she had not contemplated leaving until her family was targeted and she had few other options for survival. The journey she undertakes with her son is harrowing; they witness brutality, corruption, murder and sexual violence but also acts of extroadinary kindness by ordinary Mexican people. It would be interesting to hear whether or not their journey feels authentic to someone who has survived it; for the rest of us, who haven’t, it’s a compellingly story and an important reminder to remain compassionate.

Of course I have a few minor quibbles. The child character of Beto seems a little too well adjusted to be true. And Cummins states in her author’s notes that her husband was for many years an undocumented migrant; she fails to mention he is from Ireland. My assumption that he was from Latin America perhaps reflects my own cliqued notions of undocumented migrants in the USA. Is she a bit remiss here, or am I? And isn’t it good to ask these questions, to examine ourselves? Isn’t that exactly what a good book should make us do? Ignore the controversy; read it and reflect. 4 stars.

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