Tag: book review

Book review: Red Queen by Juan Gómez-Jurado

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The English translation of Spanish crime thriller Red Queen by Juan Gómes-Jurado is a fast paced gripping read with an unconventional lead. Antonia Scott is a personally challenged reclusive genius – think Sherlock Holmes/Lisbeth Salander.

Scott was the lead advisor in the shadow crime fighting ‘Red Queen’ unit due to her talents at reconstructing crimes and solving difficult murders. She left when an incident left her husband in a coma, for which she blamed herself.

A sign from the universe outside, meaning whatever Antonia wishes it to mean. Which is why the universe sends them to us, so that we can do what we want with them.

Disgraced detective Jon Gutierrez is given an opportunity for a reprieve – if he can convince Scott to return to work on a bizarre murder case involving the son of a wealthy family.

Jon is still suspended without pay, but the charges against him have been dropped for the moment. And the video showing him planting the junk in the pimp’s car has disappeared as if by magic from the TV and newspapers

The Red Queen is a race against time slightly gruesome thriller with a couple of eccentric lead characters.

Book review: Iris by Fiona Kelly McGregor

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Historical fiction novel Iris by Fiona Kelly McGregor is a fascinating tale about Iris Webber, a young woman from Glen Innes in NSW who grew up hunting rabbits out bush, then lived in Sydney in the 1930’s during the Great Depression. Iris became known as ‘the most violent woman in Sydney’ having been charged with murder twice.

I was born in Bathurst in the Salvation Army Women’s Home. My mother Marge had been doing a stretch for larceny in Cooma Gaol. She was a servant for a publican, she would’ve known his family ’cause she was born in Adaminaby. They said she stole two rings and five pounds, Ma said they fitted her ’cause the publican’s wife was jealous. My mother was beautiful then she always said, with dark wavy hair that took one hundred strokes to brush, it was that thick and long. She would’ve got knocked up with me just before going inside. They let her out early for the birth.
She went up to Glen Innes after having me ’cause she wanted a fresh start

On arrival at Central Station, Iris is saved from the unwanted attentions of a man by a woman who masquerades as her aunt and offers her a place to stay. This becomes her introduction to a marginalised life of sex worker under the tutelage of Tilly Devine, petty crime, bar work, drug running and busking.

This is how life has always ensued, as a series of events determined by others that rides over her like a tram. All she can do is lie there.

Some of the language is challenging – words and phrases that are not in use now – rozzers, bungers, going Yarra, boree log, bidgee angie, just to name a few.

Detective Mallon started at Iris. She stares back. Powerful reek of pipe on the man, wrinkled suit, shiny face. One of those men who sweat all the time. Get them as a customer there isn’t much you can do, the sweat’s pouring out rank and sticky as soon as they’ve washed.

The story jumps back and forth between Iris’s time in prison for murder and the years leading up to that time. The violent tale and its language evoke Sydney’s underbelly and inhabitants in technicolour, never shying away from the hard life and discrimination dished out on some members of society.

Iris is a great read about a little known Australian character.

Book review: Lucy by the Sea by Elizabeth Strout

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Have you ever naively read a book at random and come away thinking it was non-fiction, then to be told a friend it was fiction? I confess this is what happened to me when I red Lucy by the Sea by Elizabeth Strout. I think it is probably a sign of a very well crafted novel.

It is a gift in this life that we do not know what awaits us.

Lucy by the Sea is a sequel to a book called Oh William, that I have neither read, nor was aware of. Perhaps I was just in a general state of vagueness when I picked up Lucy by the Sea! Needless to say it holds up perfectly well as a stand alone novel.

We all live with people — and places — and things — that we have given great weight to. But we are weightless, in the end.

When the pandemic strikes, Lucy’s ex-husband, a scientist, sees what’s coming and takes charge. He rents a house on the coast of Maine and insists that Lucy goes there with him to wait it out for a few weeks. Lucy is grieving the death of her second husband and goes along with Williams demands in a state of detachment bewilderment. William also begs their daughters Becky and Chrissy to leave New York with their husbands – one does, and one doesn’t.

Who knows why people are different? We are born with a certain nature, I think. And then the world takes its swings at us.

Lucy is a midlife writer and what follows is her account of the day to day and minute of what we all experienced through the pandemic. Working from home, cancelled events, people dying on ventilators, no funerals, face masks, surgical gloves and hoarding supplies. Lucy and Williams fill their days with walks along the cliffs, trying to work, and to manage familial relations from a distance. Lucy becomes frustrated with their circumstances, she hates Maine and at times cannot stand William. He is endlessly patient and as time passes, they become closer.

What is it like to be you? I need to say: This is the question that has made me a writer; always that deep desire to know what it feels like to be a different person.

Lucy by the Seas is a moving, meandering account of the pandemic that exquisitely captures the frustration, boredom and fears experienced across the globe during the pandemic before vaccines became available. It is an extraordinary story about the ordinary in extraordinary circumstances.

Book review: Seven Sisters by Katherine Kovacic

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Beware the vengeful sisters! Katherine Kovacic’s novel Seven Sisters is a crime thriller about women who take the law into their own hands, doing what some fantasise about, but few act on.

Naomi is referred to a support group by her therapist to help her with her grief after the murder of her sister. She joins six other women at the Pleiades, and despite thinking they couldn’t possibly have anything in common, she bonds with them over their shared trauma and rage.

In Seven Sisters misogyny becomes misandry when the women of the therapeutic support group on Sydney’s northern beaches make a plan with their therapist to take the law into their own hands and dish out some karma.

These men don’t change. The police try – well some of them do – but again and again the system lets the women down. Someone has to take care of the problem. Why not us?’

Meanwhile, Detective Fiona Ulbrick, a seasoned on-the-ball cop with an interest in domestic violence cases gets suspicious when perps she has cases on start turning up dead.

It is a conflicting tale to read about a group of delusional women traumatised by domestic abuse and the failure of the justice system to apply appropriate punishment. If you like fast paced revenge thrillers, this vigilante story is for you. The ending will leave you wondering.

Book review: Cat Lady by Dawn O’Porter

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Everyone has heard of the archetype of the crazy cat lady…the sometimes humorous, sometimes affectionate, label for a cat hoarding spinster. Dawn O’Porter has taken the concept and blown it up large in her rom-com novel Cat Lady.

People who hate cats are like atheists, they cannot get through a conversation without telling you their views. There is such a righteousness that comes with it. You tell someone you have a cat, and they tell you, to your face, that they hate the thing you love. There are so few instances in life where this is acceptable.

Mia is a successful businesswoman in her forties working for a boutique jewellery designer. She is married to Tristan and step mother to his son from a previous marriage and goes out of her way to make sure their life runs like clockwork. Tristan and Mia retain separate bedrooms due to Mia’s devotion to her cat Pigeon and Tristan’s aversion to said cat. Tristan’s ex-wife, with whom he still attends regular counselling is a constant in their lives.

There is no such thing as ‘just’ a pet. They are family, our heart and soul. It’s not fair that their lives are so short, and even worse when their lives are cut shorter than they should be. I wrote this book because pet grief is real, and it deserves to be written about. Be there for your friends when this happens, they really need you.

Mia is complex in ways that unfold with the story. She joins a pet bereavement group, despite Pigeon being very much alive. The bereavement group becomes critical to Mia’s wellbeing as her life starts to fall apart after she catches her husband having sex with his ex-wife in their kitchen and she loses her job. Mia is forced to make decisions about how she really wants to live and we, the reader, get to go along for the hilarious, tragic ride.

If you can’t scratch your itchy bush in a doctor’s waiting room, then where can you scratch it?

I’m more of a dog person myself, but I found Cat Lady to be both amusing, tragically sad, and cringe worthily politically incorrect.

Book review: The Maid by Nita Prose

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The hotel maid is invisible. They enter your room while you are out and when you return the room is spotless and the bed is made. You never think about how it happened. The Maid, part cozy crime, part dark comedic thriller is Canadian Nita Prose’s debut, due for film release this year starring Florence Pugh.

There’s nothing quite like a perfectly stocked maid’s trolley…The crisp little packages of delicately wrapped soaps that smell of orange blossom, the tiny Crabtree and Evelyn shampoo bottles, the squat tissue boxes…And last but not least, the cleaning kit, which includes a feather duster, lemon furniture polish, lightly scented antiseptic garbage bags, as well as an impressive array of spray bottles of solvents and disinfectants, all lined up and ready to combat any stain, be it coffee rings, vomit — or even blood.

Molly doesn’t have much in the world, but she is proud of her job at the Regency Grand Hotel and gets great pleasure from returning occupied hotel rooms to ‘a state of perfection’. Molly also has some limitations. She struggles with understanding social cues and navigating human relationships, which make her vulnerable to exploitation. Her grandmother who she was closest to and who helped her to navigate the world died recently, and she is treated as an outcast by her coworkers.

The longer you live, the more you learn. People are a mystery that can never be solved.

One afternoon she goes to clean the penthouse suite and finds its wealthy guest, Mr Black dead in his bed. Black has been murdered and Molly soon finds herself a key suspect.

One thing I’ve learned in my business is that you can hide dirt for a while, but at some point, it all comes to the surface.

The Maid has had a mixed reception, I suspect because some readers found they could not identify/sympathise with the main character. I found Molly to be endearing and delightful, and the story was a charming, quirky, fun light read, about a socially awkward working class young woman finding resilience in adversity. Molly has been crafted as a unique character and the story has many layers and twists.

Book review: The Bullet that Missed by Richard Osman

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Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club series are great for cozy crime aficionados who enjoy a good laugh. And I do love stories about seniors who not only don’t let age get in the way of a good time, but use it to their advantage to get the upper hand. The Bullet That Missed is book 3, following The Thursday Murder Club and The Man Who Died Twice.

If murder were easy, none of us would survive Christmas.

Pensioners and amauteur detectives, Joyce, Elizabeth, Ron and Ibrahim take an interest in the case of television reporter Bethany Waites who’s car went over a cliff into the sea ten years earlier while she was investigating a tax fraud operation. Her body was never found, presumed consumed by creatures of the deep. The gang from Coopers Chase Retirement Village start to ingratiate themselves with people surrounding Bethany’s disappearance. Then their main suspect has a fatal incident with a pair of knitting needles.

Very few things are so important you would risk your life for them, but all sorts of things are important enough to risk somebody else’s life.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth has been receiving mysterious and threatening text messages that lead to her being kidnapped by a man who calls himself Viking. Viking threatens to kill Joyce unless Elizabeth kills a former KGB chief called Viktor. He gives her two weeks.

Very few things are so important you would risk your life for them, but all sorts of things are important enough to risk somebody else’s life.

Will Elizabeth commit a murder, and can the Thursday Murder Club solve two murder cases?

People drift in and out of your life, and, when you are younger, you know you will see them again. But now every old friend is a miracle.

The Bullet that Missed is a witty whodunit full of twists and red herrings and delightful characters interspersed with some of the very real challenges of ageing such as how Elizabeth battles with her husbands advancing dementia, the importance of friendship, and love in later life.

It’s the people, in the end, isn’t it?” says Viktor. “It’s always the people. You can move halfway around the world to find your perfect life, move to Australia if you like, but it always comes down to the people you meet.

Book review: Silver by Chris Hammer

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When a book has a sequel, you can’t really just read one in the series…

Silver follows on from Chris Hammer’s Scrublands with protagonist Martin Scarsden. In Silver we pick up a few months later. Martin is in a relationship with Mandalay, the beautiful single mum who ran the bookshop in Riversend. Mandalay inherited a fortune, including a house in the town that Martin grew up in – Port Silver. Martin hasn’t returned to Port Silver since he left to become a journalist, and to escape his traumatic childhood.

For a moment Martin sees the two towns superimposed: the tough working-class community of his youth and the gentrified retirement village it is becoming. Some fairy godmother has visited in his absence, sprinkling the silver pixie dust of family trusts, self-managed superfunds and negative gearing, but sprinkling it unevenly.

Mandalay moves to Port Silver with her son while Martin is in Sydney finishing writing a book about his experience in Riversend. The day Martin arrives at Mandalay’s rental in Port Silver, he finds a man murdered on the entryway floor. The dead guy is an old friend of his from school, and he and Mandalay become suspects. Martin needs to solve the case to save Mandalay from suspicion.

Love ’em, look after ’em, support ’em. Set ’em straight when they need it. But don’t think you can change them. They’re who they always were. Simple as that.

As with the Hammer’s first novel, Silver has many interwoven and complex plots and themes (cults, real estate speculation, greed, corruption, drugs, class divides) and a caste of interesting three dimensional characters to keep the reader engaged. In Silver, the main character Martin also has some unresolved history to deal with, so there is plenty of high stakes emotion and drama.

Book review: Thorn In My Side by C.J. Skuse

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I did that thing I wouldn’t normally do…I dove right into the middle of a series. I have never ready C.J. Skuse before, but found their darkly humorous thriller, Thorn In My Side, uncomfortably hilarious and enthralling. And best of all, it didn’t matter that I have not read the first three books.

Rhiannon Lewis is a serial killer trying to live a quiet life. She had to change her identity (now known as Ophelia) and move to San Diego to escape the law in England. She left her daughter behind in England and has one clandestine phone call per month with her sister for updates on her daughters wellbeing.

The old Penny D has been a boon for a serial killer in hiding. Stay-at-home orders. Forced distancing. No meaningless conversations on dog walks. Face masks. Little did I know when I had facial reconstruction surgery that I’d pen the next year and a half behind a fucking mask but there you go.

Ophelia lives with her South American fiancee Raf who has a talent for taming her fiery temper, and she hasn’t killed anyone for more than 800 days (yes, she’s counting). Everyday she still thinks about killing and writes a list of the type of people she would target.

Her restraint eventually fails when her soon-to-be sister in-law calls her for help with her abusive ex. Before long she finds herself with more bodies on her hands, but after all, like Dexter, she only kills bad people. Meanwhile, Rhiannon struggles with the fact that her man, who she adores, and his family do not truly know her (not even her real name) and she want’s to be seen. But how do you tell your sweetheart that you are a serial killer?

One old fart’s petunias won’t grow, he digs a bit too deep to check for tree roots and hits a femur. And suddenly my name is everywhere again. There are debates about me on morning TV. Sales of Rhiannon T-shirts spike again. Overly woke TikTokkers with no discernible qualifications perform monologues telling ‘the kids’ not to obsess about murderers and to always choose kindness.

The story ends on a cliffhanger…

I enjoyed reading a thriller told from the point of view of a villain who manages to make the reader sympathetic to such incredibly anti-social behaviour, to the point where you can see the value in the service she is providing…bwahaha!

Book review: The Angry Women’s Choir by Meg Bignell

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If you’re a middle aged feminist (or you love a middle aged feminist) who relates to the concept of being invisible and you are looking for a light summer read, The Angry Women’s Choir by Meg Bignell could be for you. It’s a cracker of a yarn, and perfect for curling up on the sofa with on a wet summer afternoon.

Be a good listener. Don’t join a conversation merely to wait for your turn to speak or to offer advice. Joint to listen (from La Lista).

Freycinet Barnes is a woman with an unusual past who has eked out an idyllic, ordered middle class life in Tasmania with her successful husband and three children. One day after dropping her popular, award winning dancer daughter at the Derwent Dance Academy, she goes for a walk and distractedly steps off a curb into the path of a Fiat 500 occupied by Kyrie and Rosanna, two members of the Moonah Women’s Choir.

Frey gets up and puts the kettle on, washes a few dishes, then says, ‘I got hit by a car at low speed last week.’
‘How’d you go with that?’ Roger briefly scans his daughter for signs of injury.
‘Not bad. I jumped. It was a Fiat 500.’

Little does Freycinet realise that soon after she catches her husband in the embrace of another woman, these women will change her life forever. The Moonah Women’s choir are a motley band who love to sing. Each is drawn with wonderful characterisation that develops to its full potential over the course of the novel as they come fully into themselves.

Home is one thing, but only when you step out of it and see other places and other worlds will you know that home is everything (from La Lista).

There is Italian Rosanna, mother and wife who has a terminal illness and writes a list for those she is leaving behind (items from La Lista are scattered through the novel); Bizzy, the choir director and lifetime advocate and protester for just causes; Eleanor who is learning to feel emotions; Avni, who came to Australia as a refugee and writes beautiful music; Irene who sees and speaks to her dead husband; Quin, reformed criminal pregnant with triplets; and more. The main character, Freycinet, is of course full of surprises, but you’ll have to read the novel to find out about her secrets.

There are two things you need to know about women and you’ll be all set,’ says Roger. They wait as he pauses for effect. ‘She can eat your chips, but you can’t eat hers. Also, mark in your diary when her hormones are on the rise and set down eggshells for yourself. Hormones are a great, powerful mystery and you’d do well to do the washing up for them.’

The Angry Women’s Choir is a story about friendship, about not letting middle age put you into a box, about finding your inner voice and holding your own space. The novel is funny and heartfelt and quintessentially Tasmanian.

Before you give your heart away to anyone, make sure they are kind to animals and think first are funny (from La Lista).