Yeah this one is not all it’s cracked up to be. Mackintosh provides one good ending with an out-of-left-field baddie I never would have guessed, then provides another surprise ending which has holes in it so big you could try a truck through. Unnecessary. And none of her main characters ever feel more than two-dimensional, though there is […]
Thriller
Quick Sand by Malin Persson Giolito
A good rule of thumb is that if a publisher bothers to translate a Swedish crime novel into English, it’s usually a winner. That is certainly the case with Quick Sand. It’s so good it makes me salivate. There are six people in the classroom in the opening sequence: eighteen year old Maja Norberg is […]
All the Missing Girls by Megan Miranda
Well there’s not that many missing girls – two actually, but that’s sufficient for a lot of hand wringing and midnight phone calls and rushing about. Our protagonist Nicolette returns to her home town ten years after her best friend disappears. Nicolette’s dad is suffering from dementia and she’s hell bent on getting him to […]
Girl in Snow by Danya Kukafka
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 […]
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 […]