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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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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This a lovely little domestic thriller involving two rather big secrets and the married couple who keep them from one another.

It’s the day of Livia’s 40th birthday and the party she’s been dreaming of for twenty years is about to commence. To her credit, she knows throwing herself a lavish party is a little shallow, but she’s didn’t have much of a wedding and heck, she’s got such a lovely dress that needs wearing. Livia has some secret knowledge regarding her daughter Marnie that she hasn’t shared with her husband, Adam (don’t be slack – read the book to find out what it is). When is the right time to tell him? Should she tell him at all? Therein lies the dilemma.

Livia is secretly relieved that Marnie, who lives overseas, won’t be able to make it home for the party. But little does she know that Adam has secretly arranged for Marnie to fly home, as a surprise. As the day progresses Adam gains his own secret knowledge about Marnie (again, read the book people!). Does he tell Livia before the party or allow her a few more precious hours of happiness? Therein lies the second dilemma.

Watching these twin tortured souls orbit around one another and interact with their friends and family while each harbouring a deeply disturbing secret is way more interesting than it sounds. B.A. Paris is getting better at creating complex, likeable characters and this is a better, classier thriller than her previous novels. It relies less on unexpected twists and more on character and a long, slow ratcheting up of tension.

I finished the book in a blissfully uninterrupted couple of hours on the couch (thanks, boys, for maintaining a full set of limbs). I just had to find out what happened to Marnie. So take my advice; dodge your duties, embrace your inner sloth and see if The Dilemma has the same effect on you. 3.5 stars.

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Jump to the present and one of the family members is presented with disturbing news, forcing her to confront the fact that ‘before’ can never really be untangled from the present.

Life Before is an affecting, slow burning Australian thriller that takes its sweet time delivering a narrative of the shocking events of the past. You know some peculiar and nasty form of tragedy is on its way but that doesn’t make it less terrible when it finally arrives.

The past in this novel seems so much more vivid than the present; the book would have been sufficiently satisfying as a story about the car accident and its immeadiate consequences. The story set in the present seems a little forced, and the protagonist, Lori, is quite a colourless character. Is it really credible she would never have told her husband the truth of what happened to her family, or about the existence of a brother she knew was still alive? Debatable. But anyway, it’s a beautifully written, vivid portrait of a family before and after tragedy, and well worth a read. 4 stars.

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