Category Archives: Book Reviews

Mid-year reading report: The Thief, St Kilda Blues, Hanging Devils, In the Morning I’ll Be Gone

Posted on June 30, 2014 by Andrew Nette| 4 Comments

Hanging-Devils-Jacket1My reading has been dominated of late by the need to get through a lot of pulp books and material I need to be across for several upcoming literary festival appearances (all of which I’ll also be discussing here in the coming weeks). Between all this, however, I have managed to get through a few books purely for pleasures and I thought it was about time I shared my thoughts on these.

First up is He Jiahong’s Hanging Devils: Hong Jun Investigates. I lamented on this site some time ago about the seeming absence of genuine contemporary crime fiction set in China, written by someone living there. Well, Hanging Devils is just that. According to the back cover blurb, the author is one of China’s foremost authorities on criminal justice, a professor of law at People’s University of Beijing and the author of several best selling crime novels including four featuring the character of Hong Ju.

Hanging Devils (also the slang term given to overhanging tree branches that can fall without warning, potential killing anyone unfortunate to be underneath them) is set in the mid-nineties.… Read more

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Posted in Adrian McKinty, Australian crime fiction, Book Reviews, Crime fiction, Crime fiction and film from China, Crime fiction and film from Japan

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Book review: Galveston

Posted on April 7, 2014 by Andrew Nette| 3 Comments

GalvestonNic Pizzolatto’s first novel, Galveston, was published in 2010. Prior to that he wrote a book of short stories that appeared in 2006. It’s fair to say most people didn’t hear about Galveston until the screening in January this year of Pizzolatto’s groundbreaking television show, True Detective.

Since then I have not been able to move on social media for the number of people talking about how good Galveston is (which begs the question, is True Detective the longest book trailer ever made?).

Given my obsession with True Detective (which I reviewed for the Overland Journal site here), I was keen to read Galveston as soon as possible.

The short version of this review is that if you like True Detective, you’ll love this book. It’s as simple as that. The book and the show have a number of things in common, including the same rural southern US setting, a number of similar plot devices and the writing style.

Roy Cady is a bagman and thug for a New Orleans’ mobster called Stan Ptitko. The same day a doctor tells Cady he has terminal cancer, Ptitko orders him and another man to visit the president of the local dockworkers local, now the target of a federal criminal investigation.… Read more

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Posted in Book Reviews, Crime fiction, Noir fiction

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Book review: Long Way Home

Posted on January 20, 2014 by Andrew Nette| 5 Comments

Long Way HomeI’ve never been to Peterborough. In fact, I’d never even heard of the place until I’d read Eva Dolan’s gripping debut crime novel, Long Way Home.

Peterborough is the setting of Long Way Home, a suburban satellite town the Internet says is in the heart of rural East England. I won’t lie, Dolan’s novel didn’t exactly rocket the place to the top of my must see list of holiday destinations. But what is the Peterborough Tourism Board’s loss is a gain for lovers of great crime fiction.

Long Way Home opens with the discovery of a corpse of an adult male in the burnt out remains of a backyard shed. John Doe was a migrant farm labourer of Eastern European decent, part of the army of semi-illegal workers who have flooded into the area, with all the resulting problems and social tensions. That makes it a job for the Hate Crimes Unit of the local Peterborough plod, and introduces the two main characters, themselves immigrants, DI Zigic, a third generation Serb living in the town, and his offsider, Ferrier, a young policewoman of Portuguese decent.

The victim had been dosed in lighter fluid, the shed locked from the outside and set on fire, so it was no accident. That’s the only clear-cut part of the case, that and the fact there’s no shortage of possible suspects.… Read more

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Posted in Book Reviews, Crime fiction

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My year in books

Posted on December 21, 2013 by Andrew Nette| 6 Comments

InfamyWill I ever come to the end of a year without the feeling I haven’t read nearly as much as I should have?

Unlike other years I’ve at least got a clear list in terms of my top five reads for 2013.

Here they are.

Infamy, Lenny Bartulin

Infamy is set in 1830s Tasmania. British mercenary William Burr is hired by the colonial government of Van Diemen’s Land to track down an escaped convict, Brown George Coyne. While Burr may be the hero of the novel, if one exists, Coyne and his Indigenous ‘wife’, Black Betty, steal the story. Coyne is a terrifying creation, a former convict, psychopath and cannibal, also a revolutionary working to unite a motley crew of escaped convicts with what’s left of the island’s Indigenous population, to overthrow the colonial government and rule as a self styled king of Van Diemen’s Land. 

Infamy is a superbly rendered piece of historical fiction, a dark, almost noir crime story, and a unique and unashamedly Australian take on the western. Possibly my best read of 2013.

Generation Loss, Elizabeth Hand

Cass Neary made her name in the seventies as a photographer of what was then the burgeoning New York punk movement. Thirty years later she’s a washed up, semi-alcoholic mess, when out of the blue, an old acquaintance gives her an assignment to track down a famous and reclusive photographer living on a remote island of the coast of Maine.… Read more

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Posted in Book Reviews, Crime fiction, David Whish-Wilson, James Crumley, Noir fiction, Pulp fiction, Pulp paperback cover art

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Book review: The Cambodian Book of the Dead

Posted on November 3, 2013 by Andrew Nette| 4 Comments

TheCambodianBookOfTheDead-144dpiI’ve been meaning to read Tom Vator’s debut novel, The Cambodian Book of the Dead for a while now. I’m glad I finally got around to doing the task, because it’s one hell of a ride. Amusing, horrifying, at times frustrating, always perceptive.

The Cambodian Book of the Dead is not for everyone. I was probably predisposed to the book before I’d read the first page, because of my fondness for crime fiction set in Asia generally and Cambodia in particular, a country I’ve spent a lot of time in and the setting of my own debut crime novel, Ghost Money.

As far as I could tell, The Cambodian Book of the Dead takes place in the early part of last decade. The Khmer Rouge insurgency is over. Pol Pot is dead, murdered by his own lieutenants in one last bout of bloodletting. Cambodia hovers between the civil war wracked basket case it was in the nineties and the must-see tourist destination it is now. Investment is starting to flow in, but things are slow. The ruling elite is still in the early stages of organising the wholesale plunder of the country they are carrying out today.

Maier is the Asia specialist for a top flight German private investigations firm, before that an international correspondent.… Read more

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Posted in Asian noir, Book Reviews, Crime fiction and film from Cambodia, Noir fiction

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