Shelley Burr is an excellent author and this is an outstanding read. I didn’t pick the ending at all, which I reckon is a good thing when it comes to mystery/noir storytelling. 9.5/10 for me.
I’m on Pip Fioretti’s first novel “Bone Lands”.
Set in 1911 up near Wilcannia and Bourke, Augustus Hawkins is a police trooper, wounded in the Second Boer War. Being in that neck of the woods, up in sheep country, most of the men are partial to a quiet sociable beverage.
The locals were celebrating the new King (George V)’s coronation with a ball, and Hawkins, after stopping off to sample the company of the local school teacher, finds 3 of the adult and teenage children of the major squatter, brutally murdered. And the squatter wants “justice”
Two detectives are sent from Sydney. It doesn’t go well.
It’s all pretty descriptive of the times, the locale and the workforce. Still a way to go,
I picked up Shelley Burr’s latest yesterday, so that’s next.
Edit: Who’s organising this killing? What will Gus do next? A couple of places I got a bit lost. Still a good read. Sequel was released a week or so back.
One thing that popped up was the ready use of hanging, but in frontier country as this was, I don’t see there was any alternative. Provided it wasn’t race-based or a fit-up.
A new Michael Connelly out today, with a new character based on Santa Catalina Island. Or was it around Renee Ballard? Or was that the next TV series with Maggie Q.
Just finished The Clues In The Fjiord by Satu Ramo. This is her first novel.
Ilove nordic noir and this one didnt disappoint. Set in Iceland - introducing detective Hildur Runarsdottir. Really good read for those who love the genre. She has since written 2 more books which hopefully i can get hold of.
Finished Shelley Burr’s third novel Vanish, which relies heavily on one of first two books. Could be read on its own.
Onto Michael Connelly new book Nightshade.
Just finished Michael Connelly’s fortieth novel, Nightshade. It’s a new character, Det Sgt Stilwell (don’t remember if he’s ever given a first name), who’s been offloaded by an LA County detective squad because of conflict with his former squad members, and sent to Santa Catalina Island, the main one of a group of barrier islands about 30km offshore from LA. Santa Catalina has figured in earlier Connelly novels, particularly The Narrows where Terry McCaleb (Blood Work) and the character The Poet turn up.
Fairly standard Connelly but if you’re a fan, you won’t be disappointed.
The Bluff, by Joanna Jenkins…a follow-up to her debut novel, How to Kill a Client.
Ruth has taken a break by leaving her city law firm and heading up to the Northern NSW town of Myddle. The town lawyer asks her to locum for him so he and his wife can take his first holiday in 30 years by the traditional grey nomads’ trip around Australia.
And then everything hits her…crazy mother reporting her 17yo daughter missing and everyone, including the drunken cop, ignoring her because they all thought she ran away. There’s a woman, a vegan mystic no less, who’s got a grip on Dash, whose wife Evie owns the farm with the Bluff, for an eco-tourism resort.
It’s written in a slightly unusual form, with each chapter is the view from a different person.
It’s still pretty readable. 8.5/10
EDIT: NOT SURE I CAN DO 4 POSTS IN A ROW
Panic by Catherine Jinks. I’d read a previous book which was good. Main character was a COVID contract tracer, who recognised that her next contact was her daughter’s DV abuser and had to take measures to ensure she didn’t realise the connection. He twigged, anyway.
This next one, Bronte was in a big circle of online contacts, and when she realised that her BF was porking her roommate, she left fly with a massive online rant which alienated all her own friends and her workmates such that she had to leave JB Hi-Fi. She got a bed and board job out near Bathurst and landed in a wellness retreat owned by Nell, who’s a smidge demented. But Nell’s daughter and son-in-law are sov-cits with all of the bullshit that entails - real screw- loose jobs. She runs into a couple of local cops, who of course, are hated by the nutjob sov-cits.
And from then on, it’s panic central.
Really enjoyed this one and I’m just about ready to give it the big 10/10.
Got another 7 or 8 on the back of the couch, and heading to Warrnambool tomorrow with a few more on the list. Will hold off on the next Javier Cercas book set in southern Catalunya.
Simply because I thought I should read one of her books and judge it for myself, I am about a quarter of the way through Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead. So far it’s my judgement that I doubt that it would be possible to devise a more clichéd plot, more stereotypical characters or more stilted, lifeless dialogue then Ms Rand has packed into this soap opera novel. I can see what the end is already, and I have more than 22 hours to go. The highlight (lowlight?) so far has been the scene I’ve just finished, in which the heroic, principled and uncompromising architect raped the proud, cold, untouchable boss’s virgin daughter, and she discovered that she liked it.
I’ll keep going for the time being. There’s a battle going on between the part of me that wants to see whether I’m right about the end and just how bad her writing can get, and the part that is saying that this is a complete load of crap and I just can’t be bothered.
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Lyrebird by Jane C aro
Set in the Barrington Tops wilderness area in the Upper Hunter Valley, Jessica Weston is a 19-yo ornithology student walking through the forest when she hears a woman scream for her life calling Help Me in Spanish. She knows that lyrebird can exactly mimic anything it hears. She reports it to the police, who take notice, but for want of any other evidence, let it go cold.
Twenty years on, a young woman’s body is found buried pretty much where it was reported. A young girl (at the time) identifies a shoelace as one she gave to her Filipina nanny as she was returning to the Phillipines to look after her mother.
But the nanny wasn’t returning.
The original police detective is asked to return, after retiring a year earlier on the death of her husband.
Very good.
Mrs Two Dogs who is an avid reader read and rated Lyrebird without going gaga over it. Said the ending was a bit contrived.
Skull River, by Pip Fioretti. Sequel to Bone Lands.
Gus Hawkins is assigned to Colley, a dying gold mining town in 1912. It’s not on any current maps but about 8 hours by horse from Bathurst.
His first day there, he’s assigned to go elsewhere, with the guy he’s replacing, but on the way, he comes under fire and his junior is killed and later mutilated.
Pretty rough old town. Lots of characters…not sure you can really compare it with the American West but it’s relatively lawless. It’s a good read. Bone Lands should be read first.
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She’s got a new one out called ‘Whisky Valley’. You may be interested.
I’ve got so many misgivings about her debut novel, I’ll give this one a miss.
Got it yesterday. About to start.
Edit…I’m seeing what @OBITV complains about.
Ruth, you’re not Miss Marple…you can let the police do their job and stop putting yourself in danger.
Ruth’s recovering from her troubles in Echo Lake and working on a museum in the Southern Highlands. Her son’s down (and it struck me that mothers in books just don’t have straight kids) and her son’s schoolmate Billy Mah is now a virtuoso violinist with a rare violin. But he’s mysteriously murdered.
Doubt I’ll read any more of hers.
UPDATE—
Barren Cape by Michelle Prak. Mak is a young woman struggling to find accommodation in in or around Adelaide. All of her friends are in the same boat, turning up to estate agents immediately a rental hits the usual channels, and one day while out on a drive, finds a seaside resort which has been left half-finished, but it does provide shelter if not other necessities. Swears her friends to secrecy, but that’s always going to work out well.
Pretty good read…not heavy on the mystery though. She has another book from a couple of years ago that slipped my shopping expeditions.
A couple of my favourite Australian authors have new books on the way this year.
Margaret Hickey’s ‘An Ill Wind’ features a controversial huge wind farm built on the outskirts of a Victorian country town. It’s due out next week and I have no doubt it will be excellent.
Garry Disher has another of his Hirsch stories due for release with ‘Mischance Creek’ out in the first week of October. Again, given the quality of his previous output and the appeal of this series, it’s a must buy for me.
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Read Last Man Standing - The Barry Michael story yesterday. Just been released and is a graphic story on boxing and criminals in Melbourne. Worth a look
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