4 minute read
Crime Fiction
Peace | Garry Disher | $29.99 | Text If you’re looking for this year’s The Dry, look no further. Disher, winner of the Ned Kelly Lifetime Achievement Award, is the Godfather of Aussie rural noir. But he’s not just a writer of great crime fiction; he’s a writer of great fiction, full stop. His soulful depiction of landscape and small town life made me think of Kent Haruf, and there’s no higher praise than that. Peace starts innocuously, with Constable Hirsch, an honourable but imperfect copper, investigating a misdemeanour, but it changes gears with a shocking crime on a remote farm that will have you turning the pages long into the night. Gold standard.
— John
The Lying Room | Nicci French | $29.99 | Simon & Schuster A tense standalone domestic thriller will keep fans of the genre in the dizzying dark until the very end. Our protagonist Neve is the one her family and friends rely on. But being everything for everyone has worn her down and prompted her to start an affair with her married boss. Then he’s murdered, and she makes a series of gobsmacking decisions which deeply entangle her in the criminal investigation. Neve finds herself being boxed ever more tightly into a corner and I was feeling the heat right up until the surprising conclusion. — Kate
The Wife and the Widow | Christian White | $32.99 | Affirm Press White’s second thriller follows two women who each find themselves in situations where they must question the secret lives of their husbands. As with his debut The Nowhere Child, White’s screenwriting experience shines with sharp dialogue and a pacy plot which will have you tearing through the pages. And the setting is just as characterful, a fictional island in the Bass Strait off the coast of Victoria in the dead of winter— the chill and the gloom of the island is the perfect antidote to stinking hot summer days.
— Kate
Dead Man Switch | Tara Moss | $32.99 | HarperCollins Slink through the back streets of post-war Sydney! The beginning takes us to the infamous Olympia milk bar in its hey-day. Billie Walker, a chic yet formidable PI, takes on a missing person’s case that leads into the dangerous heart of Sydney’s underbelly. Trying to fill her fathers’ shoes and save his detective agency, Billie and her assistant Samuel pull out all the stops to solve this case. Dashing and daring, this first book in a new series is a hoot for anyone who likes local history or a rollicking good mystery.
— Dean
You Don’t Know Me | Sara Foster | $32.99 | Simon & Schuster Is it possible to move on from someone you never got to say goodbye to? When Noah sees Alice his first thought is she looks exactly like someone he’d rather forget, but he soon realises Alice is nothing like his old high school crush. As their hearts entwine so do their secrets, and soon they realise their love for each other might not be able to keep them together. A twisty saga full of love, fear, and betrayal, this gut-wrenching novel builds up a world around you only for it to come crumbling down. You won’t be able to put it down.
— Ayesha
Unbelievable | T. Christian Miller & Ken Armstrong | $19.99 | Penguin Random House I recently raced through the whole Netflix limited series Unbelievable. I found the series gripping, heart-wrenching and revealing. At its conclusion, I found myself wanting to read the work of literary true crime on which it is based. The story’s telling by journalists Miller and Armstrong began with the 2015 Pulitzer Prize-winning news article “An Unbelievable Story of Rape,” which was later expanded into a book. The book, like the series, follows two stories. In the first, we follow 18-year-old Marie in Washington. In 2008, Marie was charged with making a false rape allegation after she recanted her original statements to police. In the second, we follow two female detectives in Colorado who discover they are each independently investigating the same serial rapist. The two threads reveal how a sex crime victim’s credibility is distressingly tenuous, and so dependent on sensitive, diligent investigators. Readers who appreciated Michelle McNamara’s I’ll Be Gone In the Dark will be similarly compelled by this story, and by Miller and Armstrong’s compassionate journalism. — Kate
