Karen

This review is by Adam Donnison for AustCrimeFiction

Alan Turing develops a machine he calls Nautilus that can send messages back in time. He uses it to fix a disastrous D-Day that threatens to lengthen the war and see Hitler triumph. Seeing the power and potential, he decides that it can only be entrusted to family. For Alan this means his friend and one time fiancee, Joan Clarke and their son from a fling on VE day.

There is a lot of potential in the idea, sadly unrealised in the text, instead opting for a superficial treatment that is, at least, entertaining if you ignore the obvious flaws.

The unrealistic dialogue also hinders the development, as does the “ministerial briefing” format of the segues between catastrophes. But for me the central point was the complete avoidance of the obvious paradoxes being created. Worse, Nick even mentions that the limits on the machine (cannot send back further than 8 weeks and cannot be used more than once in 6 months) are to avoid paradoxes. Yet changing history by sending messages in the past, after living through that history, doesn’t raise an eyebrow or even a mention of what happens to those in the original timeline.

There are other obvious clangers. For example, when the son is given the secret he upgrades security on the device, and even updates its output from telegram to SMS, yet doesn’t change the input from a morse code key, telling his daughter when it is her time to learn the secret that she must learn morse code. So he is able to create a DNA lock but not add a keyboard?

Just a few pages in the dire dialogue almost stopped me from reading on, however the central idea of the novel was compelling enough for me to continue. Unfortunately by the end I was reading more to find out when, or, as it turned out, if, the paradoxes were ever addressed. Coming from a Science Fiction background and having an interest in quantum physics, this left me completely unsatisfied. Perhaps those expecting a thriller and uninterested in the fascinating possibilities around investigating the time travel paradox would have found it more enjoyable.

A beautiful young law student is dead. Falling from her third-storey window onto concrete below in chilly Dunedin, the house is a shared with other university students. The question is did she fall (suicide), was she pushed (murder), coerced (equally murder) or is this staged (suicide with complications). And is her being the beautiful one, with straight A's, a long term devoted boyfriend, and a future all mapped out something to do with all of this or a distraction.

Building on a what feels like a convenient set up of the rich beautiful pain in the neck girl, with a poor but seemingly devoted boyfriend Xander, who is tight with her family, and grateful for the largesse that comes his way, add in the quiet, nowhere near as dazzling or life of the party flatmate Ronnie, and create a love triangle for the ages, and this could all feel a bit contrived. And it does at points, also a bit on the circular side as Ronnie and Xander sneak about and Ashleigh behaves like a spoilt brat, and the rest of the household get to actively dislike her, and suddenly you realise you're not short of suspects, although there's always something a bit brittle, stagey or showy about Ashleigh and the reader can't help but wonder would she throw herself out of a window in the ultimate of "grand gestures".

More of this review on my website.

TRIGGER WARNING: Addresses foster and orphaned children and child abuse, as well as animal abuse - see expansion below.

The second DI Nyree Bradshaw novel from Catherine Lea, this is a police procedural styled series that is strong on character and sense of place, and no slouch when it comes to plotting and personal complications for its characters.

BETTER LEFT DEAD is an interesting tale based around the death of an eccentric hoarder Lizzy Bean. Lizzy seems to an bit of an unknown in her local area, although there are a lot of people who have a problem with the build up of rubbish and junk around her house. A house which is located in a pristine, sought after area, with views overlooking Northland Bay. Needless to say how she ended up in this house, in this place, is something that Bradshaw's team have to dig to discover, and along the way, they find an intricate series of connections to the past, a dangerous crime syndicate and a kidnapped woman, and, particularly sadly, a group of ex-foster children haunted by their pasts.

More of this review on my website.

THE WATER'S DEAD is the first novel featuring DI Nyree Bradshaw (BETTER LEFT DEAD is out in September), set in the upper north island region of New Zealand, with idyllic scenery, pockets of poverty, a strong, tight knit Māori community, and a lot of fractious relationships.

None more so than the relationships of Huia Coburn, a young woman whose body is found dumped in a rock pool at the bottom of a waterfall by a couple of tourists with a messy story of their own. The complications of Huia's murder are compounded when it's realised that she was looking after a young, diabetic child at the time of her death. Lily Holmes is now missing, and time is running out to find her, as well as a killer who would batter a young, pregnant woman to death.

Full Review on my website.

THE DEEPER THE DEAD is the third book in the New Zealand based police procedural series feature DI Nyree Bradshaw at the centre of a personal and professional storm. This is definitely one of those sets of books that would be worth reading in order, Bradshaw has a backstory which will allow readers to see the full picture behind the storm that is going on in her personal life, although you can definitely see the impact.

In the last book in the series Bradshaw found herself sort of guilted / sort of keen to accept custody of her very young granddaughter, whose mother had recently died. Her father, Bradshaw's son, is in jail but even before that she had a fractured relationship with him, and would be the first to admit that motherhood wasn't her thing, but police work, and solving crimes most definitely is. So taking on a young girl's care and welfare right now is quite the thing, especially as she's still flat out with cases, and the social workers are hovering. Not a great combination for Bradshaw's often tetchy temperament, especially as the current case is a double homicide on a private island in the Far North. An island that can only be reached by boat, which is wet going. And the weather's generally wet, and somebody's taking liberties with her crime scenes, and paying very fast and loose with the truth.

More of this review on my website.

The second psychological thriller from Lyn Yeowart, THE HOLLOW GIRL, is set in the West of Victoria around Ballarat, Ararat and Horsham, employing the dual timelines of the 1960's when a home for 'girls in crisis' near Horsham known as Harrowford Hall, takes in young, unmarried, pregnant girls, and the 1970's when Ballarat based newly qualified (and controversially as far as her awful boss is concerned) female DS Eleanor Smith is assigned to investigate the murder of a nurse at the now closing Hall.

Starting in the 1970's, Eleanor Smith is a wonderful character, brought to life by a unique voice, determination, and grit in the face of the childish and frankly pathetic behaviour of her boss - who is one of those quintessential 1970s piggish men who should have been obliterated from the face of the earth, and even more pathetically seem to linger on. She's palmed off on this low-profile murder case (the victim is female after all), and assigned a "helper" of a very new constable who is part of a fast-track programme getting newly graduated cops to shadow detectives - so less help / more work experience student, although he does turn out to be handy at taking notes, and tracking down the local fish and chip shops and Chinese takeaways.

Full Review on my website.

A group of short stories, this a both gripping, and incredibly clever crime fiction, set within a scenario that will be familiar to some Australian readers.

The central premise of this collection is the reverberations of a serial killer's crime in the lives of ordinary people. The connections are both unexpected and more obvious, but the impacts less predictable, and sometimes disconcertingly random. Each story provides a glimpse into the way that one person's actions create an outward ripple effect, how complicated connections can be, and more importantly, how chance plays such a big part in so many lives.

Full review on my website

The author of this series of now 2 novels, is a bestselling historical fiction writer, and you can tell just how impeccable her research is, even without reading the author's notes at the end of both novels, expanding on the thinking, and investigations that went into the construction of these stories.

Featuring the now twenty-five-year old, and widowed, Tatty (Tatiana) Crowe, the first female undertaker in Sydney, her life now, post the death of her awful husband, is going well. The business, originally her husband's families, is doing well under her guidance, they are providing a sensitive service to paying customers, and plenty of free services where required. The household is functioning smoothly and there is much that you'd think Tatty would be well within her rights to rest on the laurels of. But there's something happening to women and babies in Sydney, with an increasing number of dead babies being found, and an increasing number of women dying from botched abortions.

Full review on my website.

The fourth book in the Cormac Reilly series from Irish / Australian author Dervla McTiernan, has a series of strange deaths in bogs near Galway as the central focus, with a sideline in Reilly trying to find an Irishman missing in Paris, and some potential career changes for him and his closest team member as secondary threads.

New readers to this series might find that THE UNQUIET GRAVE will work fine for them, the backstory to all the main characters is filled in nicely, but if it's possible to have read the series in order, then you're going to have a much better grip on the ups and downs of the professional and personal of this group of cops, their friends and families.

Full review on my website.

I have no idea what made me pluck this one out of the library's lists, but I am so very glad I did. The blurb gives some hints about the set up of INNOCENT GUILT, but it didn't say anything that made me think this would be as compelling, and as engaging as it was until I noticed Christopher Brookmyre's quote: 'A pedal-to-the-metal trip into the scariest places in the human mind'. I mean if HE thinks that it gets into the scariest places in the human mind, then I'm in.

It all kicks of when an uninjured woman, covered in blood, clutching a blood covered baseball bat walks, on her own, into DI Leah Hutch's police station in London. She's silent, perhaps in deep shock, unable, or is it unwilling, to explain what has happened, to who, and more importantly where. So everything starts off with Hutch and Randle's team not sure if they are looking for a victim, or a badly injured survivor. Until a man is found battered to death in a nearby park, with journalist Odie Reid in the vicinity after a tip off. Reid is badly in need of a journalistic scoop to recover her flagging reputation and career, so she sets out initially determined to link the death to the woman in custody, only it turns out that the evidence shows this is not as straight-forward as it seems.

Full review on my website.

Why I have really enjoyed the audio versions of the first two books of this series (The Kamogawa Food Detectives is the first, this is the second) could, on the face of it, look like an even bigger mystery then the central premise of these books, which is a man and daughter who bring to life the food memories of their customers with a few clues and maybe some geographical locations as a starting point. What's less of a mystery is just how thoroughly enjoyable they are, if not slightly annoying because frankly the food descriptions makes me hungry every single time.

Perhaps it's the final part of the blurb that explains this the best "a tender and healing novel that celebrates the power of community and delicious food". There's also something quintessentially "Japanese" about these stories, with their polite restraint, their rejoicing in food, and their acknowledgement and awareness of the subtle differences in flavour, culture and tradition. It's perhaps that which appeals the most to this amateur foodie who takes coeliac disease and vegetarianism as a challenge, rather than a limitation. It's the idea of the challenge, the tracking down, the testing, tasting and finageling of memories into recipes, of connection to past and good and difficult memories, that makes sense in any culture, but feels just like the sort of thing that fits right into Japanese sensibility.

The audio version, narrated by Hanako Footman, is a pleasure to listen to, and highly recommended as a lesson in, if nothing else, menu Japanese (who knew I'd been pronouncing Wasabi so incorrectly for so very long).