Robert Graves two books on the Greek and Roman myths have stood the test of time for me.
Found Dave Warner’s first book recently. No, not that Dave Warner, this is the one who sang ‘Suburban Boy’ back in the ‘70s. ‘City of Light’ is a murder mystery, very much in the style of Raymond Chandler. Making me smile.
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There’s a few of them with Snowy whatever who played for East Freo, with Dan Bentley, a cop up in Broome.
Warner was at one time under suspicion for the Claremont Murders because he was so interested in them.
His latest book, set in San Francisco in 1967 with 2 Oz coppers going over there to investigate a state premier’s missing daughter. They get involved with Janis Joplin inter al.
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Cheers @Alan_Noonan_10. I saw he was doing local libraries in Perth last month to promote his latest book. This first one is OK, if a little derivative but if I see any more of his work I’ll give it a shot.
Spent about 10 days on Dinuka McKenzie’s latest…very readable, and now onto Dervla McTiernan’s What Happened to Tina?
Not sure why she’s set it in Vermont. There are enough mega-rich, entitled arseholes in Australia to behave like Simon’s family.
Interested to hear what you think of it…
Might be a couple of days. My old glasses are now useless. Only have a need for reading glasses now, rather than multifocals, so up to the chemist for the cheapos later.
Boy…the light’s a lot brighter. I might have to pause being a misery-guts for a week or so.
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Thanks - will give this a listen.
Been listening to Adrian McKinty’s series Sean Duffy - set amongst the troubles.
Finished “What Happened to Nina”.
Very satisfactory ending. I’m starting to think that world population needs to be reduced and starting with the Jordans, their PR firm and lawyers and security firm, that would be a fair initial position.
Someone told me there’s a new Margaret Hickey so a trip to KMart is in order. Can’t see any evidence though.
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The new Margaret Hickey “The Creeper”, which is set in Victoria’s high country, is due out on 31st July and is a compulsory buy for me.
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Onto Red River Road by Anna Downes.
Another story of the dangers of single women travelling amongst the feral Wake in Frighters of WA.
Margaret Hickey either lives or teaches in Beechworth so nice and close to the high country. Just finished High Country on Binge. It’s certainly a beautiful landscape. Corny ending though for the show.
I’ve finished the 3-body problem and in a word - underwhelming
I know that the next 2 books in the series are meant to be better, bit honestly not sure I’ll bother.
3-body had a weird structure, 200-odd pages of mysterious stuff, 200 pages explaination. No real build to a dramatic finish, it’s all revealed earlier. Some interesting big ideas mixed with moments of “why am i reading this sciencey crap about folding a proton into 11 dimensions?”
I guess I’ll watch the Netflix series now.
Another couple of new releases due at the end of July are Hayley Scrivenor (author of “Dirt Town”) with her second novel “Girl Falling” and one of my favourite writers Steve Cavanagh with his latest effort “Witness 8”.
I’ve also just realised that S. R. White’s fourth book in the Detective Dana Russo series, “White Ash Ridge” was released earlier this year so there’s another one on order.
S R White was Hermit and Prisoner, n’est-ce pas? I think I’ve only read Hermit, but have Prisoner here. I’ve never got into Steve Cavanagh. I think I read one.
That’s him. His other book was “Red Dirt Road” and I rate all his output to date.
On a sadder note, Booktopia has gone completely titsup it would appear.
Booktopia has gone into liquidation.
Sad. I tried to use them over Amazon etc since Book Depository got killed. At least they were Australian.
sigh
Finished Red River Road. It has you guessing all the way through up to a surprising ending.
And found this morning that Margaret Hickey has roots down here and is cousin to a prominent local family. Cutters End is apparently Toolong. I haven’t been to Toolong itself but Toolong Rd is just outside PF. It’s also where a 18-yo PF boy was killed Wednesday, hit by a truck while riding a week-old eScooter sans helmet.
Five people who run a fledgling charity convene at a remote country hotel and one is found bludgeoned to death with a tree branch.
The story is the slowest of slow burns and there is no strong hint of who the murderer might be until close to the end of the book.
I enjoyed it and would recommend it to fans of outback noir / police procedurals. 8/10
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If anyone is into fantasy, check out the First Law series (first trilogy starts with a title called The Blade Itself) by Joe Abercrombie.
I found it refreshingly different from the typical fantasy in terms of writing/language style. Very much character focused with perspective chapters like GOT and Brandon Sanderson Stormlight Archive (which is also a great series and will actually get finished).
Have read the first book and now powering through the second.