Category: Crime - Wabonga Press

The Shadow Writer

21/6/2019

Eliza Maxwell: Amazon $23.99

WITHIN a split second Gracie Thacker’s entire family ceased to exist, obliterated by a vicious teenaged murderer. Now, even Grace herself – “America’s sad little sweetheart” – has disappeared, leaving in her place an unrecognisable adult alter ego: creative writing graduate Graye Templeton.
As a nine-year-old eyewitness called on to testify in a high-profile trial, Grace was forced into hiding to escape a morbid public fascination with her tragic loss.
More than a decade later she has emerged as an anonymous, unremarkable young woman with no discernible past. Friendless and working as a teaching assistant in New York City, Graye is delighted to strike up an unlikely chance acquaintanceship with Laura West, a stylish, poised literary blogger whose husband David is a bestselling novelist.
When the Wests move to an island in Texas it seems the budding relationship between the two women will wither, but months later fate intervenes when Graye learns that a famous author in the same locality is recruiting. Seeking a professional reference from David she visits the couple and is quickly talked into working for Laura instead.
It’s Graye’s dream appointment: learning the publishing ropes from someone with influence, respect and a sharp eye for the ‘next big thing’ in books.
Sorting through the piles of unsolicited manuscripts delivered to Laura she decides to take the bold step of slipping a story of her own into the mix – and then waiting to hear her employer’s opinion of it. For Graye the pressure is almost unbearable. After all, her career prospects hinge solely on Laura’s reaction to the words on those pages, crafted on an old-fashioned manual typewriter and polished over and over through multiple drafts.
At the same time Graye is reacting to news of the killer’s release from jail. What will this mean for the future she has planned?

Devil's Fjord

31/5/2019

Davie Hewson: Severn House £20.99

WHEN a novel opens with the words “He was on the roof of their little cottage mowing the thick and umber turf” it’s safe to assume the story’s not set in London, New York or Tokyo.
Lawn-clad houses are commonplace in the Faroe Islands, however, adding a special dash of other-worldliness to the work of a crime writer seeking an exotic backdrop for an equally unpredictable plot.
In fictitious Djevulsfjord on the real-life island of Vágar, the community’s tightly intertwined fishing families subsist on ever-dwindling ocean harvests. Summer is almost at an end by the time Djevulsfjord makes its first substantial catch of the season: a pod of “blackfish”, or pilot whales.
As locals band together to divide up the result of the traditional grind, Benjamin and Jónas Mikkelsen skulk on the periphery, Benji towed along in the wake of his trouble-making younger brother.
District sheriff Tristan Haraldsen and his wife Elsebeth are foreigners on the west coast of Vágar, newly arrived as sea-changers from the relative metropolis of the Faroese capital, Tórshavn. Tristan’s job is to ensure the grind adheres to government regulations – a role that marks him as an outsider employed to observe while the rest of the village participates.
When the inevitable altercation occurs it’s 10-year-old Jónas who in a split-second of fury attacks, slashing Tristan with a whaling knife before fleeing with Benji onto the nearby mountain, Árnafjall.
Almost immediately the treeless moors, razor-edged crags and jagged cliffs seem to devour the pair, leaving no trace to be found by searchers.
The boys’ mother, Alba, waits in anguish. The previous year her own sibling, Kaspar, was killed by a fall from Árnafjall, and two other men either died or disappeared in unexplained circumstances at about the same time.
For such an insignificant hamlet Djevulsfjord is fast amassing an unnervingly long list of casualties.

The Island

3/5/2019

Ragnar Jónasson: Michael Joseph $32.99

ON AN isolated volcanic plateau in Iceland’s Westman Islands, surrounded by open ocean and populated ordinarily by only seabirds and sheep, four childhood friends reunite.
It’s a bittersweet time for the group, gathered now to honour a fifth member of their teenage-years posse, Katla, killed at the age of 20 exactly a decade earlier while spending a quiet weekend at her family’s wilderness cabin.
Katla’s younger brother Dagur is finally taking steps to overcome the horrendous event and the cascade of misery it triggered. The siblings’ father, accused of having murdered Katla, committed suicide while in custody and their mother, distraught, slipped further and further into malaise until Dagur had no choice but to admit her to a care home, where she continues to languish.
Now living alone, Dagur welcomes the chance to spend a few days away with Benedikt, Klara and Alexandra – three people with whom he grew up in a small satellite town on the fringe of Reykjavík.
It’s been 10 years since Inspector Hulda Hermannsdóttir lost her own daughter, Dimma, and eight years since her husband, Jón, died. Hulda’s career has stalled, leaving her trapped in a too-small flat barely paid for by a meagre mid-level police salary, and her prospects of gaining a much-needed promotion are all but non-existent.
Tragedy for the reminiscing foursome brings an unexpected change of fortune for Hulda, however, when a body is found below an intimidatingly sheer cliff near their holiday cottage.
As the senior officer on duty when the incident is logged she has first call on the case. Could this be an opportunity for Hulda to demonstrate her true ability at last?
This is the second book in Ragnar Jónasson’s Hidden Iceland trilogy: a prequel set a quarter of a century before The Darkness. The final instalment is scheduled for release next year.

Tomb for an Eagle

1/2/2019

Lexie Conyngham: The Kellas Cat Press $18.61 (paperback) or $1.41 (ebook)

NEARLY a thousand years after his death, Thorfinn Sigurdarson – aka Thorfinn the Mighty, Earl of Orkney – and his wife Ingiborg have been resurrected from their Viking graves.
One of the greatest power-couples of the 11th century is at the centre of historical novelist Lexie Conyngham’s new work of heavily fact-based fiction.
Thorfinn rules over Orkney from his base at Birsay on the north-western tip of the archipelago’s biggest island. It’s a turbulent time for Thorfinn, among the earliest Norse Christians and a man who has completed a personal pilgrimage to Rome; a rival earl, his nephew Rognvald, has been ambushed and slaughtered on Thorfinn’s orders and Rognvald’s surviving loyalists are percolating trouble. The settlement at Birsay – the de facto Orcadian capital – is on alert.
When widowed woolworker Sigrid finds the corpse of a stranger hidden under rocks in a nearby gully a quest to unearth the victim’s identity begins. Where had he come from, and when and why was he killed?
Ketil Gunnarson, formerly of Heithabyr in Denmark and more recently of Norway, has just landed in Orkney claiming to be a trader of carved wooden drinking cups – a rare and precious commodity in a region without trees.
It soon emerges, however, that Ketil – a childhood acquaintance of Sigrid’s – is not a merchant at all but one of Thorfinn’s most trusted assassins, hired for the attack on Rognvald and now back in Orkney many months later on a mission of his own.
Tomb for an Eagle fleshes out accounts of actual people and events recorded in Orkneyinga Saga, a section of the world-famous Icelandic chronicle written on parchment in the late 1300s, Flateyjarbók.
This is the first title in Conyngham’s planned Orkneyinga Murder series. The second book, A Wolf at the Gate, is scheduled for release later in the year.

Liv

18/1/2019

Mikaela Bley: Scribe $32.99

FOR Swedish TV journalist Ellen Tamm, a few days at her family’s estate on a relatively isolated island about an hour’s drive outside Stockholm is supposed to form part of an emotional rehabilitation plan.
Crime reporter Tamm is still reeling from the after-effects of her entanglement in the disappearance and death of a young girl, Lycke (the subject and title of author Mikaela Bley’s debut novel), in the city earlier in the year and that case’s reawakening of memories of her own twin sister’s drowning when they were children.
For the past several months has been unable to work. In fact, she is barely holding her life together, leaving the rent on her apartment unpaid, eating poorly if at all and closing herself off from her friends and colleagues.
On her way to the island, however, Tamm drives straight into a tiny satellite community in upheaval. A woman’s body has been found in a vehicle that morning and police have an area of the roadway cordoned off.
Should Tamm continue on as scheduled to spend the allocated time being fussed over by her controlling mother, or should she instead give in to her professional instinct and start digging for information on this new victim? She is, after all, the first member of the media to have arrived on the scene, even if her presence there is due to sheer chance.
As details of motorist Liv’s identity are unravelled Tamm discovers a world of anti-social behaviour, unconventional relationships, public deception and personal betrayal that pushes her ever-deeper into the darkness of self-doubt, mistrust and fear. Has she made an error of judgement from which she will never be able to recover this time?
A psychological thriller with deeply disturbing themes at its heart, Liv inhabits the unseemly underbelly of the outwardly picture-perfect existence of middle-class Swedes.

Northern Light

21/12/2018

Christoffer Petersen: Aarluuk Press $24.99

CONSTABLE Hákan Sigurdsson is faced with an unpalatable choice: volunteer to join the world’s least-established multinational law enforcement task force, Polarpol, based at sea in the Arctic, or be dismissed from his position with the Icelandic police by none other than his own sister, Reykjavik’s commissioner.
To be fair, it’s not an ideal situation for Jenny Sigurdsdóttir, either. Since his marriage disintegrated her brother has been out of control – angry, disengaged, bitter and, increasingly often, at least half drunk.
For his daughter’s sake, if nothing else, Sigurdsson must refocus. Perhaps this unexpected posting will become his salvation.
At the same time, English IT genius Adrian Seabrook has a secret he’s desperate to spill. Seabrook has decided that a high-profile cybersecurity conference in Reykjavik will provide just the global audience he’s been seeking.
Not everyone is as eager as Seabrook to have the information shared, however.
As the date of his planned public revelation nears, the would-be whistleblower finds himself under attack. Assassination attempts are made; two of his closest aides are killed.
Among those with Seabrook in their sights are Byrne Cantrell and Edie Teal, a couple whose passion for each other is exceeded only by their passion for creating human carnage. Together they are one of the deadliest combinations for hire anywhere on the planet, determined to complete one last assignment before packing away their concealed weapons and settling down to a life of baby-raising bliss. The hit on Seabrook will be their spectacular finale.
Polarpol has barely been commissioned when suddenly Sigurdsson and his new colleagues – one representative each from Canada, Alaska and Russia – are called into action.
Now, Seabrook’s chances of leaving Iceland alive hinge solely on the efficacy of Polarpol’s untested team.
Northern Light is the first book in a series derived from Christoffer Petersen’s Greenland thrillers featuring Sergeant Petra ‘Piitalaat’ Jensen.

The Year of the Farmer

7/12/2018

Rosalie Ham: Picador Australia $32.99

NORMALLY there’s nothing even vaguely amusing about irrigation cutbacks, drought-crippled farms, disintegrating communities, dog-mauled livestock and neighbours fighting not only each other but in some cases even themselves.
Rosalie Ham can add a wickedly satirical twist to any storyline, however, generating wry smiles and sly sniggers with her caricatures of stereotypically flawed individuals who under any other circumstance would be irretrievably irksome.
Take, for instance, Ham’s cross-section of residents in a fictitious Riverina town whose once-robust river is now barely flowing.
Mitch and his wife Mandy are at odds, hurried into marriage by an imagined pregnancy after Mitch’s high-school sweetheart, Neralie, decided to broaden her horizons – and love-life – by moving to Sydney.
Lana and Jasey, on the other hand, share the same boyfriend: Kevin. It’s an unconventional arrangement that gives the gossips plenty of inspiration, but as far as these best friends are concerned, having half of Kevin is preferable to having all of any one of the area’s supposedly eligible men. They have a point.
So dire is the outlook that when a new water authority representative sweeps onto the scene in his cycling lycra, legs shaved and receding hairline combed over, it’s not only the young singles who suddenly develop a taste for break-of-dawn power-exercising.
But Stacey’s mission is more about retrieving water – and in so doing padding his commission-based takehome pay – than winning female hearts. His partners in the plan, Glenys and Cyril, are the scourge of the district, shunned for controlling the river’s flow either too tightly or not nearly tightly enough, depending on where individual priorities lie.
At the heart of it all is an overarching mystery: who now owns local pub? It’s been sold, they all know, and renovations are in progress, but what will this mean for their one remaining reliable watering hole?

The Lost Man

9/11/2018

Jane Harper: Macmillan Australia, $32.99

LIFE is tough in the isolation of Queensland’s Channel Country – particularly for a single farmer trying to make a go of it almost entirely on his own.
As a social outcast Nathan Bright knows the predicament all too well. Nathan has spent the past decade ostracised by his neighbours and former friends for a split-second error of judgement he will never manage to undo, banished from the local pub, the general store and every form of community gathering.
Few people are surprised, then, when they hear one of Liz Bright’s boys has been found dead in a remote, arid paddock, having left the security and supplies of his vehicle to wander out into the sun-baked savannah seemingly by choice.
It does shock listeners, however, that the dehydrated corpse is that not of Nathan but his brother Cameron: two years younger and happily married with two healthy daughters, in charge of the family’s station and seemingly beloved by everyone within a thousand-kilometre radius of tiny Balamara.
Distraught, Cameron’s widow cannot accept that her husband would have willingly done such a reckless thing. He had grown up on the property; he understood perfectly the danger of exposing a human body to the Outback’s searing mid-summer heat.
Now it’s up to Nathan and his teenaged son – visiting for a few days from Brisbane, where Xander lives with his mother after his parents’ agonising divorce – to unravel for the benefit of the survivors the hows and whys of Cameron’s gruesome death.
While this is not an Aaron Falk police thriller, fans of Jane Harper’s writing with a memory for detail (or those who reread The Dry before picking up this third novel) might recognise an unexpected link in this story of regret and atonement to Falk’s Kiewarra, a tiny Wimmera town crippled by a toxic blend of distrust and drought.

Wild Fire

28/9/2018

Ann Cleeves: Macmillan, $29.99

IN THE lead-up to her new novel’s release, Ann Cleeves had long teased readers that one of the world’s most beloved homicide detectives, Jimmy Perez, may not survive his upcoming Shetland murder case.
A playful Cleeves resurrected that threat to her character’s wellbeing when speaking at the Bendigo Writers Festival last month.
Wild Fire is the story of that fateful investigation.
The final instalment in the second of two quartets of Shetland crime books, it draws to a close a set of four with “elements” as their theme.
The mystery begins in May, three months after Detective Inspector Perez and his on-off lover and police superior Willow Reeves last worked together in Cold Earth.
It takes place largely in fictitious Deltaness, a hamlet in the north-western corner of Shetland’s main island, where the body of young nanny Emma Shearer has been found hanging in an English-incomer family’s shed.
Gossip suggests that Shearer – who cared for the four children of a local doctor and a part-time-publicist – and the newly arrived father, architect Daniel Fleming, were more than merely friends.
In a departure from tradition for Cleeves, part of the action this time extends beyond Shetland’s shores to neighbouring Orkney as Perez researches the Orcadian victim’s teenage years.
As the team begins to track the killer, Fleming finds himself struggling to hold together his relationship with his celebrity knitwear-designer wife Helena – who by coincidence was acquainted many years earlier with Perez’s now-deceased fiancée, Fran.
Unscrambling the evidence trail is complicated in itself but being forced to work side by side with Reeves again adds an entirely new level of difficulty to the situation for Perez, a man once described as “emotionally incontinent” by his former wife.
Will this in fact be the last hurrah for the moody policeman with the tragic past?

I’ll Keep You Safe

2/3/2018

Peter May: Riverrun $32.99

AN ACCUSATION of infidelity will forever more haunt Niamh Macfarlane as the last thing shouted at her late husband Ruairidh (‘Rory’) before he was killed in a car bombing in central Paris. With him in the vehicle at the time was his alleged lover, Russian clothing designer Irina Vetrov.
Niamh had first learned of the affair only a couple of days before Rory’s death, shattering the faith she had always had in the strength of their supposedly rock-solid combined personal and business partnership.
Now she is a widow, returning with his remains from France to the Isle of Lewis and Harris in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides.
It is there, in a tiny hamlet facing the wind-churned, brutal North Sea, that the Macfarlanes had established their own traditional cloth-weaving operation, Ranish Tweed. With their product keenly sought-after in the world of high fashion, Niamh and Rory had crafted for themselves a seemingly idyllic lifestyle based in a stunningly beautiful home on an isolated headland outside the tiny capital, Stornoway.
The one downside for the seemingly happy young couple had always been the barely contained antagonism keeping their two families apart. With Rory gone, Niamh is torn more than ever between her openly warring relatives and in-laws.
Against this backdrop of uncertainty, French detective Sylvie Braque arrives in Lewis and Harris to investigate the explosion for which Irina’s now-missing husband Georgy is being held provisionally responsible.
But is Georgy Vetrov really the only credible suspect? Could tensions either within the closely bonded island community or stemming from a commercial deal turned sour be behind Rory’s death instead?
In partnership with local police officer George Gunn, the Frenchwoman sets to work scrutinising every aspect of the Macfarlanes’ movements leading up to the killing – but despite its modest dimensions, Lewis and Harris is surprisingly adept at maintaining secrets.

Clear to the Horizon

9/2/2018

Dave Warner: Fremantle Press $29.99

FOR more than a year the attention of Perth law enforcers and residents alike has been focused on a single strip of bitumen running north–south through the heart of suburban Claremont: Bay View Terrace. From the vicinity of a nightclub there, Autostrada, three women have gone missing on separate occasions – vanished without a trace after reportedly beginning the late-night journey home alone.
As an ex-homicide detective turned private investigator from the north side of the city, former footballer Richard ‘Snowy’ Lane is called on by a mutual acquaintance to assist one of the families in its distress. The official search for their daughter and sister, Caitlin, appears to have stalled; might Lane perhaps discover something useful – no matter how seemingly minor – that the police have missed?
Inserting himself ever deeper into the case, Lane becomes a man obsessed with giving the O’Gradys the closure they crave. The chances of Caitlin being found alive are dimming yet still they cling onto the hope that eventually whatever remains of her might be returned to them.
Fast-forward 20 years and another Perth family is similarly anguished: a young mining heiress has not been heard from since she and her boyfriend refuelled their four-wheel-drive in Port Hedland before supposedly heading further north towards Broome.
When Lane is engaged by the Feisters to look into Ingrid’s whereabouts, a tenuous, almost-inexplicable link with the Claremont case begins to take shape.
Could it possibly be that the real killer of the Autostrada trio is resuming his murderous rampage after two decades of apparent hibernation? Lane has always suspected that the police were too hasty in their wrapping up of the disappearances.
Now back on the trail in the majestic Kimberley, Lane seizes the opportunity to search for the final piece of the Autostrada puzzle and in so doing soothe the O’Gradys’ pain.

Manhattan Beach

26/1/2018

Jennifer Egan: Hachette $19.99

ANNA Kerrigan is intimately acquainted with the unconventional side of life.
Not only has Anna grown up in an all-female household in a rough-and-tumble area of Brooklyn with no man as its protector but her mother is a former Broadway chorus-line dancer, her younger sister is chronically disabled, her aunt is an aging alcoholic seductress whose looks are sagging and her now-absent father forged his way in the Great Depression by “running errands’ for one of New York City’s most notorious crime lords.
It’s hardly surprising that when Anna enters a workforce depleted by the demands of war she is not content to accept one of the menial conveyor-belt roles traditionally allotted to women.
Instead, Anna quickly sets her sights on becoming a Brooklyn Navy Yard maintenance diver – a position so elusive that far more men fail the rigorous training process than complete the life-threateningly dangerous and emotionally draining course.
Surviving in Brooklyn is a challenge for any young woman, let alone one employed on the waterfront. With her instructor manoeuvring openly against her and her classmates offering virtually no co-operation, let alone support, she appears to have little chance of succeeding.
Anna is single-minded in her determination to join the program, however, and equally set on investigating a wispy recollection from childhood that appears to link her late father, Eddie, with a handsome and charismatic New York club licensee and gang leader, Dexter Styles.
Her disregard for the social mores that reign in the 1940s pits Anna against not only conservative individuals within her own community but the broader New York hierarchy at large – a hierarchy that invariably favours men with influence or wealth over even the most resourceful and committed teenage girl.
Part family saga, part underworld thriller, Manhattan Beach delivers a masterfully imagined storyline fleshed out with intricate, factual historic detail.

Whiteout

21/12/2017

Ragnar Jónasson: Orenda Books $19.99

ICELAND publishes more books per capita than any other country on Earth.
In December the population of 330,000 Icelandic-speakers observes a tradition known as the ‘Christmas book flood’: a full year’s worth of new titles is launched in a roughly week-long deluge, just in time to be wrapped (accompanied by a block of the finest-quality chocolate each) and gifted on Christmas Eve. Icelanders typically then spend the rest of that night snuggled up reading and snacking.
It’s little wonder Iceland’s literature is among some of the sharpest, most beautifully crafted anywhere in the world, influenced by an awe-inspiring, hauntingly bleak landscape, a small-town national psyche and a pervasive, disorienting mid-winter gloom.
Set in the immediate lead-up to Christmas, Whiteout is complete with its own reference to the customary Yuletide exchange of printed matter.
The fifth title in Jónasson’s Dark Iceland series, it continues the story of regional detective Ari Thór Arason and his police-force superior Tómas , now based in the capital, Reykjavík.
Ari Thór’s plans to spend the holiday season at home in Siglufjörður are disrupted by the discovery of a young woman’s body at the base of a cliff at Kálfshamarsvík on Iceland’s remote northwest coastline.
It seems she has jumped – or has she?
In fact, Ásta’s is the third apparent suicide to have occurred in almost-identically inexplicable circumstances – first her mother’s, then her younger sister’s in the girls’ childhood more than 20 years earlier, and now her own during an uncharacteristic, impulsive visit to the lighthouse her father once managed.
Suspicion sweeps across the elderly caretakers of the estate, housekeeper Thóra and her brother Óskar, and its businessman-owner Reynir and his neighbour and part-time farm worker Arnór.
Given the setting’s extreme isolation, this latest death must have involved at least one of these four people – but which one, and why?

Fatal Crossing

15/12/2017

Lone Theils: Echo $29.99

STILL deeply shell-shocked in the wake of interviewing a genocidal Rwandan teacher, journalist Nora Sand decides to distract herself from reality with a couple of minutes of retail therapy. In the sleepy surroundings of a small seaside village it’s impossible to know the ramifications her impulsive decision to buy a battered old leather suitcase will have.
As Danish news magazine Globalt’s UK correspondent, Sand is on assignment with a photographer-friend on the south coast of England when she makes her purchase.
Much later, back home in her inner-city apartment in London, she discovers a bundle of Polaroid photographs secreted behind its frayed lining.
One in particular catches her attention. Its subjects are two teenagers standing in front of a sign that reads ‘Car Deck 2’ – but the language isn’t English; it’s Danish.
When Sand recognises the taller girl as one of two orphans who vanished in the mid 1980s from a cross-channel ferry from Denmark while on an outing with their carers, her professional curiosity and investigative instincts are piqued.
Attempting to piece together the background to Lisbeth and Lulu’s still-unsolved disappearance leads Sand into the law-enforcement world of her highschool classmate Andreas Jansson, a fellow Dane now based temporarily in London while studying anti-terrorism with the British police at New Scotland Yard. Complicating the situation, Sand and Jansson have never resolved an awkward conversation that scarred their once-rock-solid bond years earlier.
When the name of infamous UK serial killer William ‘Bill Hix’ Hickley surfaces in Sand’s research, the importance of retracing the Danish girls’ last known movements takes on renewed urgency.
Could this maniac – a man who kept the tongues of his female victims as trophies – have somehow crossed paths with Lisbeth and Lulu during their travels abroad, or might they instead have fallen victim to an unknown accomplice of Hickley’s, or perhaps a copycat?

The Ice Star / In the Shadow of the Mountain

1/12/2017

Christoffer Petersen: Aarluuk Press $1.30 / $3.99 Kindle e-books

COMPLETING a pair of novels in a single calendar year is a rare achievement for any writer; having a third title in the series launched within the same 12-month period is an almost-unheard-of feat.
Yet this is precisely what Danish author Christoffer Petersen will achieve when the final instalment in his Konstabel Fenna Brongaard trilogy is published in its English translation on Christmas Eve.
Petersen’s first Greenlandic thriller, The Ice Star, opens with the torture of young Danish military special forces operative Brongaard by two foreign mercenaries in a hut in an isolated settlement far above the Arctic Circle in northeastern Greenland.
Brongaard has been on assignment with the government’s sled-dog patrol, an elite unit established to defend the sovereignty of Denmark’s biggest and most remote territory. Now, she is in the hands of a pair of unrelenting inquisitors who have executed her partner and seem determined to frame her for the sickening murder.
Brongaard’s sole chance of escaping rests with David Maratse, a local policeman in the village in which she is being held.
Set against the severity of Greenland’s harsh, icebound, arid terrain, Brongaard’s desperate scramble for survival leads from tiny Scoresbysund across thickly packed sea-ice onto a luxurious coastal expedition ship, where the passengers turn out to be every bit as formidable as the pursuers she has so far evaded on land, and to the high-rise offices of cut-throat corporate Canada.
The suspense continues in In the Shadow of the Mountain, in which the life-or-death action is set in three immensely contrasting locations: cosmopolitan Copenhagen, the Arizona desert in the US and an exploratory mine site outside Greenland’s capital, Nuuk.
The third episode in this Bourne-like Nordic adventure, the soon-to-be-released The Shaman’s House, will feature an Australian connection, linking the world’s two major islands on diametrically opposite sides of the globe.

I Am Watching You

24/11/2017

Teresa Driscoll: Thomas & Mercer £4.99

ON PUBLIC transport, it’s generally expected that passengers will keep to themselves: that they will behave discreetly, mind their own business and not interfere in the conversations of those around them.
Sometimes, however, the worst thing a fellow traveller can do is to do nothing at all.
When florist Ella Longfield encounters an unexpected and decidedly discomforting situation on an inter-regional train bound for London, her first instinct is to intervene. Sitting nearby, Ella overhears an approach being made to Cornish schoolgirls Anna and Sarah by two young men, Antony and Karl, who soon reveal that they have just been released from prison and are determined to make the most of their first night of freedom.
As the mother of a teenager of her own, Ella is immediately alarmed. Should she speak directly to the girls, she wonders, or instead bide her time until the train reaches its destination, then try to telephone one of the families back home in Cornwall? Surely these friends from far southwestern Britain cannot be allowed to head off into the city alone with these men?
Having observed them further, however, Ella eventually thinks better of interfering and decides to keep her concerns to herself, simply heading directly to her hotel after the long trip and quickly falling asleep.
When she wakes the following day she is sickened to hear that Anna, the more attractive, seemingly more reserved of the pair, has disappeared.
Is Ella somehow responsible for this? Did her inactivity allow two men with criminal records free reign to prey on these unsuspecting country girls?
Teresa Driscoll’s chilling tale of regret, consequence and deception is told through the eyes of four people with direct involvement in the case: the witness, the missing girl’s father, a private investigator and the remaining friend.

Force of Nature

3/11/2017

Jane Harper: Macmillan Australia $32.99

CORPORATE retreat. It’s a term almost guaranteed to set off a shiver of fear in all but the most upwardly mobile, single-mindedly ambitious go-getting employee.
For accounting clerk Beth McKenzie few things could be less inviting than the prospect of spending four days ‘team building’ in the remote upper reaches of Gippsland with colleagues from BaileyTennants – among them, her twin sister Bree.
Also taking part in the five-woman, five-man orienteering survival exercise is one of Beth’s least favourite managers, Alice Russell, who at the age of 45 rules through intimidation.
Despite her apparently unwavering commitment to the firm, Alice has no desire to be there, either; her attention is several hundred kilometres away, split between a domestic crisis in the suburbs and an ultimatum delivered by the Australian Federal Police.
With tensions already simmering, the two groups set off in mid-winter into the Giralang Ranges, three hours’ drive east of Melbourne – but when the women emerge four days later, cold, hungry, wet and limping, Alice is no longer with them.
Hasn’t she made her own way back to the agreed pickup point, her fellow walkers ask the men. She’s not actually lost or, worse, injured, alone in the bush with dusk descending, is she? Unpopular though Alice is, nobody at BaileyTennants really wishes her ill – surely not.
As Federal Agent Aaron Falk arrives on the scene he’s barely recovered from a life-threatening event of his own on the opposite side of the state. Accompanied by investigative partner Carmen Cooper, Falk is as desperate as anyone to find the missing accountant – but his motivation is not purely concern for her personal safety.
This second instalment in Melbourne journalist-author Jane Harper’s ‘Aaron Falk’ series is a fitting sequel to her debut novel, The Dry, adroitly juggling two parallel timelines as the disappearance and its aftermath unfold side by side.

The Templars' Last Secret

27/10/2017

Martin Walker: Hachette Australia $32.99

TUCKED away in the southwestern corner of France is one of the world’s most impressive collections of prehistoric art. The départment of Dordogne is known in international circles for a trio of drawcards: more than 1500 castles, abundant black truffles and the 600-plus irreplaceable Paleolithic paintings that line the Cave of Lascaux.
Within the Dordogne, Périgord is a normally sleepy, peaceful region, but in 21st-century France, extremist violence can flare without warning. Now, it seems, the Vézère Valley is being targeted – in a fictitious sense, at least.
The 10th release in Martin Walker’s ‘Bruno’ series opens with soldier-turned-village-police-chief Bruno Courrèges preparing to host the wedding in St Denis of two archaeologists.
The drafting of his speech must fit around his official duties, but in small-town rural France, policing is more often a matter of gently guiding delinquent teenagers back into the classroom than of investigating life-or-death cross-border crime.
For Bruno, the working week preceding his friends’ nuptials turns out to be an exception, however.
When the body of an unfamiliar woman is found sprawled at the foot of the once-grand Château de Commarque, with its Templar connections, it is apparent that her death was no accident. Unsuccessful attempts to identify the victim at first frustrate Bruno and his fellow law enforcers, then drive them to explore far beyond their usual boundaries – all the way to Israel and North Africa.
The trail of evidence they assemble spans thousands of years of Vézère history, beginning with the creation of the valley’s priceless artworks and extending through the Middle Ages, when knights returning from the Crusades were rumoured to have secreted their legendary treasure somewhere within the chateau.
Accompanied by his trusty basset hound Balzac, Bruno knows that for this tiny community, time to solve the mysterious killing – and in so doing stave off an infinitely bigger attack – is running out.

Lycke

6/10/2017

Mikaela Bley: Scribe $32.99

WHEN eight-year-old Lycke Höök vanishes from a neighbourhood tennis complex in Stockholm, Sweden, it’s not only members of the little girl’s immediate family who are traumatised.
For TV news crime reporter Ellen Tamm, Lycke’s unexplained disappearance unleashes still-ragged recollections of a terrifyingly similar upheaval in her own childhood two decades earlier.
Delivered to her regular Friday afternoon coaching session by her father’s new wife, Chloé, unaware that the lesson has been cancelled, Lycke is left standing alone outside the courts.
It’s a cold, wet late-May evening.
By the time mother Helena arrives two hours later to collect her daughter, Lycke is gone.
Initially, Stockholm’s police are reluctant to accept the situation as anything more than a disgruntled child having run away from an unhappy existence juggled between two combative households. Time that could be spent searching is frittered away, with few officers assigned to the case and even fewer approaching it seriously.
Reliving the agony of her parallel experience, Ellen steps in, channelling her professional research skills and intuition into the most important investigative story of her high-profile career.
Suspicion ricochets back and forth between Lycke’s estranged parents, emotionally distant stepmother and cocky tennis coach, Petter, a young man whose sexually threatening behaviour unnerves Ellen when he agrees to be interviewed.
As Ellen scrambles in desperation to analyse the dysfunctional Höök dynamic, searching for the slightest clue to Lycke’s whereabouts, her probing reveals a lonely, socially awkward introvert taunted by her schoolmates, neglected by Helena and Harald and resented by Chloé.
Her one friend and confidant is her nanny, Mona, a woman whose entire working life has been devoted to raising other people’s children but who is now within days of retiring from service. With time running out, will Mona’s final week as Lycke’s caregiver end in happiness or grief?

The Woman in Cabin 10

22/9/2017

Ruth Ware: Vintage $19.99

IT HAS the makings of an extraordinary, all-expenses-paid, first-class indulgence: a five-day northern lights cruise to the Arctic tip of Norway aboard a lavishly appointed vessel so exclusive it carries no more than a dozen handpicked passengers.
Not surprisingly, British travel writer Lauren ‘Lo’ Blacklock is acutely conscious of her privileged status alongside fellow journalists, photographers and potential investors invited to join the maiden voyage.
At the same time, her enthusiasm is overshadowed by the echoes of a violent burglary at her flat in London only days before her scheduled departure that has left Lo with bruises on her face and a case of crippling insomnia. Her preparation is dampened even further by an ill-timed argument with her boyfriend and the temptation to self-medicate with alcohol.
It’s an unfortunate lead-up to what Lo has been hoping will become her big career break: the chance to finally show off her professional capabilities.
Surely such luxurious surrounds will be the healing balm that’s needed to help Lo conquer her nightmares and refocus – or so she thinks.
Within hours of boarding the tiny ship, however, Lo finds herself fearing for her safety all over again.
Jolted out of her boozy, sleepless, post-midnight daze by a human scream, she staggers to the railing of her cabin balcony to glimpse a female body slipping beneath the surface of the near-freezing ocean.
When her attempt to alert the ship’s security chief is brushed off, Lo begins to suspect that something truly sinister is occurring.
Is there a murderer lurking somewhere on board – one of the VIPs with whom she has already shared a dinner table, perhaps, or a member of the beautifully mannered but timid crew? Or did the mysterious ‘dead’ woman never exist at all, as an increasing number of people around Lo now insist?

Cold Earth

8/9/2017

Ann Cleeves: Macmillan $29.99

BARELY have the remains of Shetland native Magnus Tait been lowered into their grave when the soil beneath the party of mourners begins to shudder. Heavy winter rain has destabilised the hillside, prompting a sizeable slab of earth to slither across open sheep-grazing pasture and into the slate-grey North Sea, sweeping with it several headstones and a significant swathe of the island’s main highway.
Elderly loner Magnus’s body is not the only one caught up in the landslide, however; as the clean-up begins, in a supposedly vacant farm cottage facing onto the remote cemetery, a second person is found. It soon becomes clear that the victim did not die in the subsidence.
Responsibility for driving the investigation into the unidentified woman’s death falls to homegrown Shetland detective Jimmy Perez.
Perez is himself still grieving the all-too-recent loss of his fiancée, Fran, an artist whose young daughter Cassie is now in his care.
Juggling the needs of a primary-school-aged child with the demands of small-town policing is challenging, not least when leads in a stranger’s apparent murder are frustratingly sparse.
Seeking an unbiased outside perspective, Perez calls in Willow Reeves, a fellow law-enforcer from Scotland’s Western Isles. Chief Inspector Reeves is familiar with the archipelago’s windswept coastline, tight-knit community-centric culture and deep-rooted Scandinavian heritage, having collaborated with Perez on a previous case.
The family living closest to the site, Kevin and Jane Hay and their two teenaged sons, claim not to have known the next-door house was occupied.
Enquiries further afield – including in the capital, Lerwick, awash with oilfield proceeds – also yield disappointingly few clues, despite the suspicion that high-profile solicitor and aging playboy Tom Rogerson is somehow involved.
As Perez and Reeves probe ever-deeper into Shetland’s shadowy underbelly, will their questioning lead to the killer’s quick and safe apprehension or drive an already-desperate assailant to commit further crimes?

The Killing Bay

1/9/2017

Chris Ould: Titan Books £7.99

IT’S not every day that a novel set in one of the world’s least-known archipelagos, the Faroe Islands, appears in print. Even rarer is a book that delivers both a spine-tingling plot and at the same time an insightful, informative and entertaining glimpse into the psyche of the Faroese population.
Faroes-born, British-raised policeman Jan Reyna is back in the islands for the funeral of his biological father, a man with whom Reyna has had no contact since his mother died, leaving her five-year-old son to be raised by her sister in England.
At the same time the Faroese are celebrating the start of the traditional whaling season – a time when pods are driven onto beaches to be butchered and then shared by the community. This centuries-old but gory act of self-sufficiency has caught the attention of an international animal rights group that is determined to disrupt the practice in any way it can.
When the anti-whaling protesters’ photographer, Erla Sivertsen, is found murdered, the culprit is soon identified as a local fishing-boat captain and the victim’s former boyfriend, now a married man who rekindled his relationship with Sivertsen when she returned to document the hunt and for the past few weeks has been involved with her in a clandestine affair.
It’s an open-and-shut case, according to the local law enforcement branch’s second-in-command, based in Tórshavn, the Faroes’ capital and only town of any real size.
Police detective Hjalti Hentze isn’t quite so certain, however, despite being the adulterous fisherman’s father-in-law, and enlists Reyna’s help to explore other possibilities. Inadvertently the pair opens a door on subterfuge, espionage and covert intelligence that stretches far beyond the Faroes’ own watery border.
Ould describes the landscape, culture and lifestyle of the Faroe Islands to perfection, delivering a portrait of an impressively independent society that takes care of itself when threatened.

Camino Island

18/8/2017

John Grisham: Hodder & Stoughton $32.99

AMID the chaos of a reported late-night mass shooting, with fire alarms squealing and campus security personnel preoccupied, Princeton University loses one of its most valuable assets: the original handwritten manuscripts of four of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s most famous stories, spirited away from the Firestone Library’s supposedly impenetrable vault.
Although able to make their initial escape with the bounty intact, the perpetrators – a loose gang of five smooth but relatively inexperienced conmen aiming well beyond their competence level – quickly lose control of the situation.
As the group breaks apart, the manuscripts are sold, then sold again. Both the FBI and Princeton’s insurer are in pursuit, yet the trail falls cold.
Meanwhile, on Camino Island, a coastal holiday enclave in northern Florida, life crawls along comfortably for bookseller Bruce Cable, a middle-aged bohemian playboy whose penchant for female authors is legendary. Could Cable – a man with a passion for antique first editions – know more than he’s admitting about the priceless loot?
Elaine Shelby certainly thinks so. Insurance investigator Shelby is adamant Cable is harbouring the manuscripts and in an attempt to entrap the book trader devises a plan to send in an undercover operative.
Her choice is attractive young writer Mercer Mann, a novelist with one acclaimed title already to her credit. Mann’s teaching position has just evaporated, leaving her unexpectedly unemployed and deeply in debt. When Shelby promises a hefty six-figure payment for six months’ work, she is won over.
Mann has the perfect cover: as a child she spent summers on the island with her grandmother, a prominent community member, so her reappearance on Camino is unlikely to spook a guilty Cable into disposing of any illicit items before the authorities can strike.
Yet, there remains no hard evidence of the Fitzgerald papers’ whereabouts. Are Shelby and Mann pursuing a dead end?

Pachyderm

11/8/2017

Hugh McGinlay: Threekookaburras $29.95

FINDING an intelligent, attractive, available man in Melbourne isn’t easy, as crime-scene-investigator-turned-milliner Catherine Kint well knows. Finding an intelligent, attractive, available man who won’t, the morning after their first night together, allow himself to be mauled by a pack of African wild dogs is even harder.
Just when hatmaker extraordinaire and now-unofficial sleuth Catherine’s luck seems to have taken a turn for the better, brand-new love interest Beau Hacska is dragged barely alive from an enclosure at Melbourne Zoo, where he works as a keeper.
It’s not the first time Beau has had an unfortunate up-close encounter with wildlife of the open-plains variety; his primary claim to international infamy is as the man whose head was once buried inside an elephant.
Before having his run-in with the dogs Beau had enlisted Catherine to look into a sudden death at the zoo in a bid to clear himself of alleged culpability. With Beau now immobilised in hospital she turns to her best friend and favourite gin-pouring barman, Boris Shakhovsky, for backup.
The pair have already had considerable crime-solving success together, having woven their way through the alleyways of Brunswick in the interests of apprehending a murderer in local author Hugh McGinlay’s first novel, Jinx.
The plot of Pachyderm, McGinlay’s follow-up, is equally intriguing in characteristically off-beat, irreverent style. Believably flawed characters, cosily familiar inner-city locations and sassy, tongue-in-cheek, boisterous wit keep the chapters humming along to a satisfying and unexpected conclusion.
Catherine, Boris and Beau share centre stage with an eclectic cast: a slightly doddery visiting British documentary-maker and naturalist, a detestable bully with a prominent role in state politics, a bothersome millinery client who senses trouble before it strikes, a female laundromat customer with a penchant for pink-dyed men’s clothing, a flirty stranger who whistles openly on a train, and meerkats, lions and reptiles aplenty.

The Hidden Hours

21/7/2017

Sara Foster: Simon & Schuster $29.99

A POST-WORKDAY river cruise. A drug-spiked cocktail. A gossip-fuelling altercation between two of the host company’s top executives.
Eleanor Brennan’s first taste of a Parker & Lane corporate Christmas party is one nobody at the book publishing house will ever forget.
Eleanor has been in London for less than a month when what should have been the beginning of a fresh start overseas suddenly sours.
First comes waking up in her uncle and aunt’s house, where she is living temporarily, with a crippling hangover and a gap of several hours in her memory. Then follows the discovery of the Parker & Lane marketing and publicity manager’s distinctive engagement ring loose in her handbag. And finally Eleanor – along with the rest of the roughly 100-strong office team – is informed that the jewellery’s owner, Arabella Lane, has been found submerged in the Thames’ near-freezing, murky shallows – dead, presumed drowned.
Eleanor, like several dozen of her workmates, witnessed Arabella slap her husband, the company’s managing director Nathan, with full force across the face, without explanation, during the previous evening’s festivities.
Nathan, as a consequence, is immediately declared the number one suspect in his glamorous and temperamental wife’s apparent murder.
But the Lane marriage is not the only one to have revealed the most serious of fractures in recent days.
Eleanor’s uncle Ian and his wife Susan, Parker & Lane’s CEO and resident ice queen, are also at loggerheads.
The stress is evident in the behaviour of the couple’s young daughters, Naeve and Savannah, who – like their barely-adult cousin – spend their hours at home evading the snapping, snarling pair.
As the tension snowballs, ghosts from Eleanor’s deeply troubled childhood in rural Australia resurface, triggering an avalanche of anxiety and self-doubt that threatens to immobilise her right when she most needs to be thinking clearly if she is to survive the aftermath of Arabella’s death.

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