Category Archives: Reviews & Interviews

Review: The Skeleton Road

Posted on 17/11/2014 by Angela Savage

The Skeleton Road, the latest standalone novel from Scottish crime writer Val McDermid, combines compelling characters and a cracking pace with an intriguing story that both entertains and enlightens. The story opens with a skeleton being found in the top … Continue reading →

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Review: Let Her Go

Posted on 15/09/2014 by Angela Savage

Dawn Barker’s novel Let Her Go is a psychological thriller about surrogacy and its consequences, set in contemporary Western Australia. Surrogacy is a hot topic, given the recent case of the WA couple who paid a Thai surrogate to have … Continue reading →

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Review: Broken Monsters

Posted on 08/09/2014 by Angela Savage

Lauren Beukes’s novel Broken Monsters opens with a disturbing monologue, followed by police finding the body of a boy from the waist up, attached to the lower half of a deer. With a limited tolerance for horror and graphic violence, I … Continue reading →

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Review: Life or Death

Posted on 29/07/2014 by Angela Savage

Michael Robotham’s new novel, Life or Death, opens with a letter addressed to the reader, introducing the book as ‘a story that I’ve nurtured and turned over in my mind for more than twenty years — ever since I read a … Continue reading →

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Awesome Authors: Timothy Hallinan

Posted on 08/07/2014 by Angela Savage

Today I welcome to the blog Philip Coggan, himself a writer with a passion for Southeast Asia, and Tim Hallinan, whose “Poke” Rafferty series of crime novels is set in Thailand. I’ve just read his stunning novel Queen of Patpong and I can’t … Continue reading →

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Review: A Morbid Habit

Posted on 21/06/2014 by Angela Savage

A Morbid Habit is the third novel in Annie Hauxwell’s Catherine Berlin series and to my mind, it’s her best yet. Set mostly in Russia, A Morbid Habit is as bleak and dark as a Moscow winter. The plot is satisfyingly complex, the suspense … Continue reading →

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Review: Through the Cracks

Posted on 10/05/2014 by Angela Savage

I make no secret of being a big fan of Australian writer Honey Brown’s work and her new novel, Through the Cracks, may well be her best. The novel’s opening jolts the reader like a slap in the face, occurring at the moment … Continue reading →

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Review: Dog Will Have His Day

Posted on 29/04/2014 by Angela Savage

In Dog Will Have His Day, set in France in 1995, Fred Vargas has produced a deliciously off-beat novel that delivers on suspense while also being a pleasure to read. Much about Dog Will Have His Day is slightly off-centre, including our first glimpse of the central character, Louis/Ludwig Kehlweiler, through the … Continue reading →

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Review: Beams Falling

Posted on 26/03/2014 by Angela Savage

Beams Falling by PM Newton is a powerful book that explores trauma and its legacy in the guise of a police procedural. The central character is Detective Nhu ‘Ned’ Kelly, the child of an Anglo-Australian veteran and his Vietnamese wife who were killed in front … Continue reading →

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Review: Holiday in Cambodia

Posted on 02/03/2014 by Angela Savage

I started this year with a plan for this blog. Each month, I was going to post, in sequence: an update on my writing, an article inspired by my reading, a review of someone else’s book, and a post about … Continue reading →

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