Karen

The first in a new series from NZ author Rosy Fenwicke, THE SECRET OF THE ANGEL WHO DIED AT MIDNIGHT is a police procedural novel introducing DSS Kate Sutton.

Set in a wine-growing region of New Zealand, the sense of place in this one is pretty strong, drawing on a small town, with tensions between the old residents and newcomers staying very close to home. The victim in this novel is the local GP, Dr Geoffrey Scott, a man who has taken over his father's practice, a well known figure in the small community in which he's lived his life, his wife being the incomer. Younger, an artist, and right from the start seemingly somebody very different from her quiet, garden loving husband. Turns out that the relationship between these two is complicated, as it the truth behind Dr Geoffrey Scott's own position.

Full review at my website.

CUTLER, the novel, features Paul Cutler, the former undercover operative, now working "off the books" in the dangerous and unpredictable world of investigator for hire. In this story he's tasked with finding the truth about the disappearance of an Australian marine scientist, whilst on a Taiwanese distant water fishing vessel, working in the incredibly murky and dodgy world of deep sea trawling and fisheries. With the complication being Bevan's father has his own fleet of distance trawlers, and may not quite be the legal cleanskin he seems to be. Once Cutler starts to scratch the surface of Bevan's disappearance, a slew of dark, horrendous crimes against people, ocean's, environment and just about everything else in their paths, comes to light.

Whish-Wilson has a number of strengths when it comes to his fiction writing. For a start he's a serious, dedicated researcher who is motivated by wrongs in the world. Read the author's note and acknowledgements at the back of this novel and you can get a very clear sense of what triggers his thinking, and how he goes about his work. He's also blessed with the ability to write lean, mean, pointed and unflinching prose in a way that, confronts, but never repulses to the point where readers are forced to look away (remembering always that the subject matter in this one is pretty bloody awful all the way down).

More of this review on my website.

There have been a number of Australian crime fiction books recently that are tackling the effects of poverty / deprivation / loss and family breakdown in small towns, on small boys in particular. A TOWN CALLED TREACHERY is following, successfully, in the footsteps of authors like Mark Brandi and Stephen Orr, all three of whom have delved deeply, and sympathetically into damage, and resilience.

Life is very hard for eleven-year-old Matty Finnerty. Mother dead, father's absent even when he's around, and his grandfather is slipping further and further into dementia, he's not got a lot to be proud of, or to seemingly look forward to.

Which makes his chosen role-model an obvious, yet disconcerting choice. Stuart Dryden is a rundown, drunken journo, more attached to the pub (where he lives) than his job, his interest finally twigged by a grisly local murder. Or is it Matty, with his disposable Kodak camera and a way of sneaking in under people's guard that is intriguing him?

More of this review on my website.