Penguin Australia Archives

Book reviews: Irish intrigue with Andrea Mara

August 14, 20263 min read

I recently received a little gift box, including two books… promising some Irish intrigue from Andrea Mara. Mara is new to me as an author and I’m always happy to find a new author with a good backlist. I’m interested to know more about them though as both books here are similarly themed around children going missing… as is All Her Fault, a miniseries I recently watched, based on Mara’s book of the same name. I think the whole not having kids myself and not relating to parenting stuff means I’m less into books about that as it’s not a fear I’ve had to deal with IRL…

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Book review: Antihero by Gregg Hurwitz

March 14, 20263 min read

Antihero by Gregg Hurwitz is the 11th in the series featuring Orphan X aka Nowhere Man aka Evan Smoak, and this is one of my favourite series. Here Hurwitz flexes all of his usual high-tech armoury bells and whistles but in the background Evan is continuing to morph from the cold assassin preferring his own company, to someone who can no longer hide that he’s come to care for those in his life. In this outing Evan is called-upon by a quite-mad and eccentric tech wiz (we first met in book #8 The Last Orphan) to locate a girl he’s never met but believes to have been kidnapped.

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Book review: Burning Mountain by Darcy Tindale

May 3, 20252 min read

One of the things I really liked about her debut novel, The Fall Between was that it reminded me that most crimes are committed by those who are desperate or stupid rather than psychotic or plain evil. Burning Mountain by Darcy Tindale, the second in her series featuring Detective Rebecca Giles, is very much the same. It’s centred around an eighteen year old mystery—the disappearance of a teenage boy—but features those involved in the past and present and reminds us that mistakes or idiotic actions can have unexpected, and dire, repercussions.

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Book review: 2 Sisters Murder Investigations by James Patterson and Candice Fox

March 17, 20253 min read

2 Sisters Murder Investigations by James Patterson and Candice Fox is the second in the series featuring lawyer turned investigator Rhonda Bird and her (now) sixteen year old half-sister Barbara (Baby). It’s been over three years between books and though I did enjoy the first, I liked this more. I was very drawn to Baby’s character in the first book but here Rhonda plays a more pivotal role. I should also mention that there are fewer (barely any) references to Rhonda’s weight… which bothered me (and other readers) in the first book.

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Book review: Famous Last Words by Gillian McAllister

February 28, 20253 min read

Famous Last Words by Gillian McAllister is a twisty tale that allows readers (and indeed its characters) to believe one thing, when the truth is really quite another. But it makes this an intriguing novel, with readers unsure what to believe and asking the question… can someone be a good person but do something bad? An Occam’s razor-type conundrum. Or perhaps its opposite?

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Book review: Nemesis by Gregg Hurwitz

February 9, 20253 min read

It’s rare that I get to read books in a series in close succession, but I’d missed out on review copies of a couple of books in the Orphan X series by Gregg Hurwitz, so only recently got my fat little hands on them. In fact I only read the last in this series – Lone Wolf – just over a month ago, so it was fresh in my mind, making the arrival of book ten, Nemesis, VERY exciting indeed. Unless an author is prolific like JD Robb and putting out a couple of books each year, it’s usually a year or so in between outings and my memory is so crappy I sometimes struggle with specifics.

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Book review: Death in the Arctic by Tom Hindle

January 16, 20253 min read

Death in the Arctic by Tom Hindle is brings us a golden age detective story combined with a locked room mystery. It’s set on an airship – the first of its kind and supposedly the size of a football field. I’m not a visual person so couldn’t picture it at all but I gather that’s massive and it mustn’t fly too high as it’s powered by propellers and afloat thanks to helium. As a complete aside I was extremely traumatised by the movie The Hindenburg when I was a child and still recall my horror that people knew they were about to be burned to death (or fall to it!), so there was a bit of a sense of the macabre for me here.

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Book review: Blood Pact by Fiona McIntosh

January 7, 20252 min read

Blood Pact by Fiona McIntosh is the sixth in the series featuring DCI Jack Hawksworth. I’ve mentioned in the past that Aussie author McIntosh sets this in the UK with Jack working for New Scotland Yard but there’s always an Australian connection or two. This is another outstanding addition to the series and McIntosh is doing a great job, mixing up the cases on offer and balancing regular players (like Jack, his boss Carol and work partner Kate) with newcomers, often bringing new skills into the mix.

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