Sisters in Crime Australia is dedicated to promoting women who write crime. Here are reviews of crime books (fiction and true crime) written by women.
If you wish to submit a book for review or be a reviewer, see the Contacts page for information.
Author: Gail Jones Publisher/Year: Text Publishing/2018 Publisher overview The art historian Noah Glass, having just returned from a trip to Sicily, is discovered floating face down in the swimming pool at his Sydney apartment block. His adult children, Martin and Evie, must come to terms with the shock of their father’s death. But a sculpture …
Author: Dr Catie Gilchrist Publisher/Year: Harper Collins/2019 Publisher overview Murder, manslaughter, suicide, mishap – the very public business of determining death in colonial Sydney. Murder in colonial Sydney was a surprisingly rare occurrence, so when it did happen it caused a great sensation. People flocked to the scene of the crime, to the coroner’s court …
Author: Justine Ford Publisher/Year: Pan Macmillan Australia/2019 Publisher Description Can you catch a killer or find a missing person? Australia is ‘the lucky country’. But not for everyone. Unsolved Australia: Lost Boys, Gone Girls tells thirteen stories of people whose luck ran out in the most mysterious of circumstances. It’s a journalistic deep-dive into Australia’s dark heart by one …
Author: Sonia Orchard Publisher/Year: Affirm/2019 Publisher Description A year after her best friend died in a house fire, Lara can’t come to terms with the loss. Logic says there was no more she could have done to save the mercurial and unhappy Alice, but Lara can’t escape the feeling that she is somehow to blame …
Author: Samantha Battams Publisher: Self-published/2019 Reviewer: Narrelle Harris When I first moved to Melbourne in the late 1990s, I lived in Richmond. At some point during my five years there, before I moved to the city, I learned about Martha Needle, the woman who lived on Bridge Road in the 1890s and poisoned her husband, …
Author: Carmel Reilly Publisher/Year: Allen and Unwin/2019 Publisher Description She knew she should talk to him. But what could she say? Once there had been blame to apportion, rage to hurl. Now she no longer had a sense of that. Who knew what the facts of them being here together like this meant. What was …
Author: Emily Rodda Publisher/Year: HarperCollins/2018 Publisher Description Once upon a time, in a dark city far away, there lived a boy called Walter, who had nothing but his name to call his own … The handwritten book, with its strangely vivid illustrations, has been hidden in the old house for a long, long time. Tonight, …
Author: Val McDermid Publisher/Year: Little Brown/ 2019 Publisher Description We are all creatures of habit. Even murderers . . .’ When human remains are discovered in the grounds of an old convent, it quickly becomes clear that someone has been using the site as their personal burial ground. But with the convent abandoned long ago …
The Finder Author: Kate Hendrick Publisher/Year: Text Publishing/2018 Publisher Description When Lindsay meets Elias the signs aren’t promising. She’s a grungy introvert who doesn’t want to talk to anyone. He’s a teen fashionista who can’t shut the hell up. But since Lindsay tracked down a runaway kid, word’s got around that she knows how to …
Author: Janice Simpson Publisher/Year: Hybrid Publishers/2018 Publisher Description What happens when the keynote speaker at an important arts festival is found dead? Welcome to modern Melbourne, UNESCO City of Literature, home to arts festivals galore as well as the internationally famous Melbourne Cup horse race. But the Imagine Festival, held in late August, has more surprises …