Though Kukafka looks about 17 years old in the author photo on this book, she has a pretty good grip on the human condition, particularly the awkward, endless days of adolescence, filled with small horrors. No one in this slow burning murder mystery is all good or all bad and the writing is beautifully cliche-free. […]
Bombproof by Michael Robotham
A pretty classy thriller from Robotham, with his typical sense of compassion for hopeless humanity entangled with the action. A totally unbelievable ending but hey – SPOILER ALERT- you do want the hapless protagonist Sami Macbeth to walk even though he has blown up a police evidence safe, travelled on the underground with an accomplice […]
The Party by Robyn Harding
Who is to blame when a sixteen year old girl gets wasted on illicit alcohol and drugs at a slumber party, falls through a glass table and ends up losing her eye? Are the parents of the girl hosting the party responsible? Only in America. Isn’t SHE a bit responsible? Certainly her appalling friends are […]
Friend request by Laura Marshall
This is one of those books where you get to the end and wondered why you bothered – that’s a few hours of your life you’re never getting back. There’s no real emotional depth here and it’s hard to love a thriller when you don’t care about the characters enough to find the prospect of their […]
Zone One by Colson Whitehead
After the catastrophic events of what survivors call Last Night, what’s left of humanity try to impose order on Zone One, formerly known as New York. Our protagonist Mark Spitz is quite a beautiful bumbler, smart or lucky enough to have stayed alive after most people have turned into flesh eating zombies: “[h]is aptitude lay […]
Force of Nature by Jane Harper
I was one of approximately three people in Australia who loathed Harley’s much lauded first novel The Dry. I approached this one with some hesitation, especially when I read the blurb on the front cover “LOST, COLD, DESPERATE…. DANGER RUNS DEEP”. How can danger run deep? Is danger a creek?? Anyway, this novel is better […]
Here and Gone by Haylen Beck
This is a ripper of a little thriller, just begging to be made into a movie. Audra flees from her abusive husband and imperfect past and goes on a cross country road trip with her two children. In the middle of small town Arizona her car is pulled over by a cop who promptly plants […]
Say You’re Sorry by Michael Robotham
This little thriller, published in 2012, is my favourite of Robotham’s. Two teenage girls disappear in England; three years later one of their bodies is found, close to a farmhouse where a couple have been murdered. Why? It takes psychologist Joe O’Loughlin and his built-like-a-brick-shithouse sidekick Ruiz it figure it out. All Robotham’s characters are […]