Review: ANTIDOTE TO MURDER, Felicity Young

• first published by Harper Collins 2013
  
• ISBN 978-0-7322-9369-7
• 325 pages
• #2 in the Dody McLeland series
• source: my local library

Synopsis (publisher)

Set in Edwardian London, this fantastic mystery series features Britain's first female autopsy surgeon.

When an act of compassion misfires, autopsy surgeon Dr Dody McCleland must fight not only for her career, but also for her life. The body of a scullery maid is discovered in her room. When it emerges that she had recently begged Dody to terminate an unwanted pregnancy, the coroner recommends Dody be tried for criminal abortion causing death. Meanwhile, the one man who might be able to help her, Chief Inspector Matthew Pike, is nowhere to be found.

After another woman's body is discovered bearing all the hallmarks of the same crime, Dody suspects that a rogue doctor is on the loose. Amid the turbulence of Edwardian London with its mix of strikes, suffragettes, German spies, exotic dancers and an illicit drug trade, Dody must unmask the killer before more girls are butchered and her own life ends on the gallows. 

My take

Australian crime fiction author Felicity Young does a good job with a historical setting, giving her novel a feeling of authenticity, at the same time presenting the problems which women faced in the medical profession in the early 20th century.

Set in London in 1911, when conducting an abortion is a criminal offence, and encouraging women to practice birth control is also illegal, Dody assists the famous Sir Bernard Spilsbury in autopsies. But even with the great man's patronage, she treads a very thin line as she advises women towards better contol of their child bearing.

Dody faces not only public opposition to women like her breaking into the professions, but also opposition among males already working there. And treachery comes from an unexpected place, almost resulting in her death.

My rating: 4.5

I've also reviewed
A CERTAIN MALICE
HARUM SCARUM
TAKE OUT
4.7, A DISSECTION OF MURDER -#1 in the Dody McLeland series

Review: CAN YOU KEEP A SECRET?, Caroline Overington

• format: Kindle (Amazon)
  
• File Size: 463 KB
• Print Length: 288 pages
• Publisher: Random House Australia (August 27, 2014)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B00JP1AOZ6
• Source: NetGalley

Synopsis (NetGalley)

How well do you really know the one you love?

With her customary page-turning style and potent themes, this is Caroline Overington at her thought-provoking best.

'Why do some people decide to get married when everyone around them would seem to agree that marriage, at least for the two people in question, is a terrifically bad idea?'
The year is 1999, and Lachlan Colbert - Colby - has the world at his feet. He's got a big job on Wall Street and a sleek bachelor pad in the heart of Manhattan. With money no object, he and his friends take a trip to Australia to see in the new millennium.

And it's there, on a hired yacht sailing the Whitsundays, that he meets Caitlin. Caitlin Hourigan has got wild hair and torn shorts - and has barely ever left the small patch of Queensland where she grew up. But Colby is smitten and for Caitlin, a girl from the wrong side of the tracks, a blissful future awaits - marriage, a big house, a beautiful little boy. But nothing is ever as perfect as it seems. And for Lachlan and Caitlin the nightmare is only just beginning.

My Take

I thought this started off a little slowly and tentatively, but it gathers pace to become a story of surprising twists and depths.

It is one of those novels that is hard to review because I don't want to reveal too much of the story simply because the synopsis doesn't, and I don't want to spoil it for you.

On one level it is the story of Caitlin's life after she sees the building next to Colby's apartment block in Manhattan, the World Trade Centre, crumble when a plane flies into it on 9/11. Like many others, Caitlin finds herself unable to board a plane, and so she doesn't return to Australia, and marries Colby instead. But that is only the beginning of the impact on Caitlin's psyche.

So I'm sorry, you are going to have to read it for yourself, to learn the story.

I'm fascinated by the way Caroline Overington takes one simple idea or event and merges it so seamlessly with other ideas.

My rating: 4.5

I've also reviewed
4.4, SISTERS OF MERCY
4.5, NO PLACE LIKE HOME
4.7, I CAME TO SAY GOODBYE

Review: ALREADY DEAD, Jaye Ford

• format: Kindle (Amazon)
  
• source: Net Galley
• publisher: Random House Australia
• published September 2014

Synopsis (Net Galley)

Already Dead is another heart-stopping ride of sheer suspense from the author of the bestselling BEYOND FEAR.

Miranda shrank away from him, arm pressed to the driver's door. 'What's your name?''
'I'm already dead. That's my name now. That's what they called me. I'm Already Dead.'

Journalist Miranda Jack is finally attempting to move on from the death of her husband by relocating up the coast with her young daughter, Zoe. Then a single event changes everything.
On a Monday afternoon as she waits at traffic lights, a stranger jumps into her car and points a gun at her chest. Forced to drive at high speed up the motorway, Miranda listens to the frantic, paranoid rants of Brendan Walsh, a man who claims he's being chased and that they're both now running for their lives.

Two hours later her ordeal is over in the most shocking fashion. Miranda is safe but she can't simply walk away - not without knowing the truth about that terrifying drive. As a journalist Miranda has always asked questions. But this time the questions are dangerous - and the answers might get her killed . . . 

My Take

Miranda Jack and her friends have at times discussed what they would do if someone carjacked them. But Jax does none of those things.

Once again Jaye Ford has written a gripping tale, based on something that conceivably could happen to anyone of us. But we probably wouldn't be carrying the baggage that Miranda Jack is. But we probably wouldn't have her personal skills and determination either.

An excellent read, by an Aussie author you should watch.

My rating: 4.7

I've also reviewed
4.4, BEYOND FEAR
4.5, SCARED YET?
4.5, BLOOD SECRET

Review: FATAL LIAISON, Vicki Tyley - audio book

• audible book available from Audible.com
• review copy courtesy the author
  
• Narrated by: Larissa Gallagher
• Length: 8 hrs and 33 mins 
• Format: Unabridged 
• Release date May 2014, from Crossroad Press 

Synopsis (Publisher)

The lives of two strangers, Greg Jenkins and Megan Brighton, become inextricably entangled when they each sign up for a dinner dating agency. Greg's reason for joining has nothing to do with looking for love. His recently divorced sister, Sam, has disappeared and Greg is convinced that Dinner for Twelve, or at least one of its clients, may be responsible.

Neither is Megan looking for love. Although single, she only joined at her best friend Brenda De Luca's insistence. When a client of the dating agency is murdered, suspicion falls on several of the members. Then Megan's friend Brenda disappears without trace, and Megan and Greg join forces. Will they find Sam and Brenda? Or are they about to step into the same inescapable snare?

My Take

The dating agency Dinner for Twelve looks innocuous enough, but it certainly attracts its share of oddball characters. Its clients though don't expect murder to be on the menu, but one of the guests at the first dinner that Brenda, Megan, and Greg attends disappears and is then found dead.

Greg Jenkins employs a rather comic private investigator to assist him in the search for his missing sister. And when her friend Brenda disappears he and Megan become a sleuthing "item".  Greg is pretty sure he knows which of the other Dinner for Twelve clients is guilty, and is exultant when the police detain this person to assist in their enquiries, but bewildered when he is released.

This is a story with many twists and turns, with one that I didn't expect right at the end.

My rating: 4.4

***** I have one copy of the audio version of the book to give away through Audible.com. If you'd like it, let me know through a comment and give me an email address to contact you on. The first person to say they want the audio copy will be the one who gets it. *****

I've also reviewed 4.3, THIN BLOOD - an Amazon 2010 Customer Favorite

About the author
From her website

Mid 2002, I quit my high-pressure management job and moved with my husband to a farm about ninety minutes north-east of Melbourne to write fulltime. Since then, I’ve written five (six if you count my first one, now banished to the bottom drawer never to see the light again) standalone contemporary murder mysteries.

Outside of writing and reading, my main interests are design and photography. I like to laugh, drink coffee, spend time alone, spend time in company, and get close to nature. I dislike crowds, hospitals and offal.

I write fast-paced mystery and suspense novels in contemporary Australian settings. All my books are quick, easy reads with no gratuitous sex or violence – the type of books I enjoy as a reader. However, my characters occasionally swear.

Review: THE LOST GIRLS, Wendy James

• format: Kindle (Amazon)
  
• File Size: 956 KB
• Print Length: 268 pages
• Publisher: e-penguin (February 26, 2014)
• Sold by: Penguin Group (USA) LLC
• Language: English
• ASIN: B00H8ARVG6

Synopsis (Amazon)

From the bestselling author of The Mistake comes a hauntingly powerful story about families and secrets and the dark shadows cast by the past.

Curl Curl, Sydney, January 1978.

Angie's a looker. Or she's going to be. She's only fourteen, but already, heads turn wherever she goes. Male heads, mainly . . .

Jane worships her older cousin Angie. She spends her summer vying for Angie's attention. Then Angie is murdered. Jane and her family are shattered. They withdraw into themselves, casting a veil of silence over Angie's death.

Thirty years later, a journalist arrives with questions about the tragic event. Jane is relieved to finally talk about her adored cousin. And so is her family. But whose version of Angie's story – whose version of Angie herself – is the real one? And can past wrongs ever be made right?

The shocking truth of Angie's last days will force Jane to question everything she once believed. Because nothing – not the past or even the present – is as she once imagined.

My Take

A cleverly written book, told mainly from the point of view of Jane, who was just twelve when Angie died. Jane's story is told partly in first person, particularly from an observer's point of view, and partly through the interviewing of Jane and other family members by Erin, a journalist wanting to make a radio documentary. Of course, at twelve, there are aspects of real life that Jane really doesn't understand, but now, thirty years on she can bring a more adult perspective to her teenage memories.

The focus of the story is who killed Angie and why, and also the impact of her death on the immediate members of Jane's family. What Jane did not understand at the time of Angie's death is that there were big secrets.

I managed to get part of the "real" story worked out easily enough but the final piece slotted in only a few pages from the end.

My rating: 4.7


I've also reviewed

4.8, WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?
4.8, THE MISTAKE

Review: ELEMENTAL, Amanda Curtin

• first published in 2013 by UWA Publishing
  
• ISBN 978-1-74258-506-2
• 436 pages
• source: library book

Synopsis  (Publisher)

It has taken a lifetime for me to see that the more afraid people are of the darkness, the further into it they will flee.

Nearing the end of her life, Meggie Tulloch takes up her pen to write a story for her granddaughter. It begins in the first years of the twentieth century, in a place where howling winds spin salt and sleet sucked up from icefloes.
A place where lives are ruled by men, and men by the witchy sea. A place where the only thing lower than a girl in the order of things is a clever girl with accursed red hair. A place schooled in keeping secrets.
Moving from the north-east of Scotland to the Shetland Isles to Fremantle, Australia, Elemental is a novel about the life you make from the life you are given.

Book Club Notes are available for this title.
Click here to read an extract from Elemental.

My Take 

First of all I need to tell you that this is not crime-fiction. It is part of my challenge to myself to occasionally read outside my comfort zone. I am grateful to Bernadette at Reactions to Reading for recommending it to me.

Fish Meggie sets out to give a 21st birthday present to her grand daughter Laura - the story of her life, so that Laura will know her origins. She describes people and places that Laura has never heard of and a life so tough that it would be beyond Laura's wildest imaginings. It is a life that brings Meggie Tulloch from Scotland's northern islands to Fremantle in Western Australia.

Laura doesn't get to read her Grunnie's journals, written in exercise books in a variety of coloured pens, until she is facing a crisis herself, and at last she understands things about Meggie, and her own mother Kathryn, that have always been a puzzle. Her grandfather, known only to her through photographs, comes to life.

This story is a reminder of what those who lived through the 20th century went through, and how much life has been changed by technology, migration, and wars.

My rating : 4.6


About the author

Amanda Curtin is a writer and book editor, who lives in Perth, Western Australia with her husband and cat in a house that used to be a general store selling milk and bread, newspapers and petrol, and phone calls for ‘tuppence’.

Her first novel, The Sinkings, was published in 2008 to critical acclaim and her award-winning short stories have been widely published in literary journals and anthologies, before being collected in Inherited to further acclaim in 2011. Amanda’s new novel, Elemental, was released to critical acclaim in 2013.

Amanda has been granted writing residencies in Australia, Scotland, Ireland and the United States. She also lectures in writing and editing at Edith Cowan University, and presents workshops for writers.

Review: PRESENT DARKNESS, Malla Nunn

• US publication date June 3, 2014
• Publisher Atria/Emily Bestler Books
• ISBN 9781451616965
• review copy made available through publisher via Net Galley
• #4 in the Detective Emmanuel Cooper series

Synopsis (publisher)

Five days before Christmas (1953), Detective Sergeant Emmanuel Cooper sits at his desk at the Johannesburg major crimes squad, ready for his holiday in Mozambique. A call comes in: a respectable white couple has been assaulted and left for dead in their bedroom. The couple’s teenage daughter identifies the attacker as Aaron Shabalala— the youngest son of Zulu Detective Constable Samuel Shabalala—Cooper’s best friend and a man to whom he owes his life.

The Detective Branch isn’t interested in evidence that might contradict their star witness’s story, especially so close to the holidays. Determined to ensure justice for Aaron, Cooper, Shabalala, and their trusted friend Dr. Daniel Zweigman hunt for the truth. Their investigation uncovers a violent world of Sophiatown gangs, thieves, and corrupt government officials who will do anything to keep their dark world intact.
 
 My take


Australian author Malla Nunn continues to write very credible stories in the Emmanuel Cooper series, full of atmosphere. A white school principal and his wife who invite coloured students to their home for meals are attacked one night after dinner. Their shocked daughter identifies the two students who were at dinner that night as the culprits. One has an unshakeable alibi but the other one, the son of Cooper's best friend, refuses to say where he was.

Parallel with this investigation is Cooper's uncomfortable relationship with the sergeant at the Johannesburg Detective Branch. Running in the background, chapter by chapter, is also the story of a prostitute who has been taken prisoner and is being held on a remote farm.

Cooper's own relationship with Davida, the mixed race mother of his baby daughter Rebekah, reflects the knife edge that is South African apartheid. Exposure would mean the loss of his job and probably imprisonment. 

An excellent read.  My rating: 4.8.

I've already reviewed

5.0, A BEAUTIFUL PLACE TO DIE
4.5, LET THE DEAD LIE
4.9, SILENT VALLEY 

Review: BLOOD SECRET, Jaye Ford

• published by Bantam (Random House Australia) 2013
• ISBN 978-1-74275-677-6
• 441 pages
• source: review copy from publisher

Synopsis (publisher)

Nothing ever happens in Haven Bay, which is why Rennie Carter – a woman who has been on the run for most of her life – stayed there longer than she should.

However, that illusion of security is broken one night when Max Tully, the man she loves and the reason she stayed, vanishes without trace.

Rennie, though, is the only person who believes Max is in danger. The police are looking in the wrong places, and Max's friends and his business partner keep hinting at another, darker side to him.

But Rennie Carter understands about double lives – after all, that's not even her real name …

And she has a secret too – a big, relentless and violent one that she's terrified has found her again … and the man she loves.

My Take

This is the third novel written by Jaye Ford that I've read and I have enjoyed them all. Each has taken a realistic scenario, if a little embroidered to hype up the tension, and put them in an Australian setting that I can relate to.

The structure remains interesting as Rennie puts together the circumstances of Max's disappearance and then fits them into various scenarios, discarding them one by one. The ultimate solution is the one she really doesn't want to believe. The story is layered. The further we read the more layers are peeled back and we learn of both Rennie's and Max's back stories.

Throw in too Max's fourteen year old son who has run away from his mother who has gone for a holiday to Cairns. Hayden decides not to go with her and turns up just after his father has disappeared. He and Rennie have to work hard to get on.

So, a very readable book. My rating: 4.5

My other reviews
4.4, BEYOND FEAR
4.5, SCARED YET? 

Review: DEATH BY BEAUTY, Gabrielle Lord

• Hachette Australia
  
• ISBN 9780733627309
• $32.99
• Paperback - C Format
• September 2012
• 400 pages

Synopsis (Publisher)

Australia's queen of crime fiction, Gabrielle Lord, is back with a chilling new novel. A 'vampire' is stalking the streets, attacking beautiful young women; some are murdered days later, others aren't touched again. Gemma Lincoln, PI, begins to see a pattern - but can she convince the authorities to take action before another life is lost?

How far would you go to look young and beautiful?
A young woman is attacked, she claims, by a vampire . Two more are found dead and hideously disfigured. A journalist goes missing after visiting Sapphire Springs Spa. And it's up to Gemma Lincoln, PI, to find out what is going on.

In her first week back on the job after maternity leave, finding a balance between investigating brutal crimes, caring for baby Rafi and making time for herself and Mike is all too much. Something has to give, but not while a third woman s life is in danger.

As she moves closer to tying the crimes together, Rafi disappears. Facing a mother's worst nightmare, Gemma discovers what she is prepared to do to save her son.

My Take

Other Australian female authors in the past, Kerry Greenwood and Jennifer Rowe to name a couple, have set their murder mysteries around a beauty farm. So what Gabrielle Lord is doing in a sense is giving it a modern take - treatments implementing DNA and modern surgery techniques.

Add too a couple of extra elements - beautiful girls being drugged by a vampire - their memories ensuring no-one will believe them, thinking they are drug-induced; and a young woman returning to work with a young child to care for.

Gemma Lincoln has this idea that she will be able to slowly re-immerse herself in her investigative work, but the nature of her job, and Gemma's own character, ensure that a slow resumption is just not an option. Young mothers reading DEATH BY BEAUTY will find themselves wishing that they had all the backup resources that Gemma has. Add to that the fact that Gemma is living with a man who is not the baby's father, and things become complicated.

Gabrielle Lord has been occupying her time with writing YA thrillers and this is the first Gemma Lincoln novel for 5 years. It shows that Lord has not lost the touch and kept up with the times. I didn't like Gemma Lincoln any the more for it - but that is probably just the way she strikes me.

The story is a chilling one about how much money there is in the industry of helping women retain their beauty and even making them look 10 years younger.

My rating: 4.4

I've reviewed
BABY DID A BAD BAD THING
DEATH DELIGHTS (Jack McCain)
DIRTY WEEKEND (Jack McCain)

Gemma Lincoln series (Fantastic Fiction)
1. Feeding the Demons (1999)
2. Baby Did a Bad Thing (2002)
3. Spiking the Girl (2004)
4. Shattered (2007)
5. Death By Beauty (2012)

Review: I CAME TO SAY GOODBYE, Caroline Overington

• Format: Kindle
  
• File Size: 381 KB
• Print Length: 336 pages
• Publisher: Cornerstone Digital (September 26, 2013)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B00D48BT1E

Synopsis (Amazon)

It was a crime that shocked the world.

The CCTV footage shows a young woman pushing through the hospital doors.

She walks into the nursery, picks up a baby and places her carefully in a shopping bag.

She walks out to the car park, towards an old Ford Corolla. For a moment, she holds the child gently against her breast and, with her eyes closed, she smells her.

Then she clips the baby into the car, gets in and drives off. This is where the footage ends.

What happens next will leave a mother devastated, and a little boy adrift in a world he will never understand.

My Take

This is another novel by Caroline Overington that sits on the perimeter of crime fiction. Certainly a crime is committed, probably more the one, but the primary focus of the novel is social issues: parents who fail their children, community services that fail their users, bureaucracy that gets in the way of understanding, systems that leave families and their members in limbo.

Two primary narrators, Med and his daughter Kat, tell the reader about the tragedies that have overtaken their family through letters to a Family Court judge who is to give a ruling about the custody of a child. We learn of Med's struggle to raise his family on his own after his wife walks out when his youngest child is just two. Med does a pretty good job, but, in his own judgement, just not good enough.

The setting is a small coastal town in rural New South Wales. Med's two older children leave, leaving him to raise the younger daughter on his own. 

Underpinning the story, and giving it a biting edge, is criticism of Australian services that should be providing support for families. Clearly bureaucracy gets in the way of empathy, and cost cutting means that services are reduced. And above all, this novel is well constructed, and a really good read.

There are plenty of things to discuss with this novel, and the author provides some further discussion questions after the text.

My rating: 4.7

Review: THE DYING BEACH, Angela Savage

• MFormat: Kindle (Amazon)
  
• File Size: 417 KB
• Print Length: 236 pages
• Publisher: Text Publishing (June 26, 2013)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B00CGKQR3G

Synopsis (Amazon)

A new case for expat private investigator Jayne Keeney.

As Jayne and Rajiv holiday in Krabi, Jayne can't stop her mind straying to thoughts of the future: a successful business, perhaps even a honeymoon. Who would have thought she could be so content?
But then their tour guide's body is found floating in the shallows and no one can explain the marks around her neck.

Jayne and Rajiv are pulled into a case that the police have already decided isn't one: a case that will pull at the seams of their fledgling relationships and lead Jayne into grave danger.

Angela Savage is a Melbourne-based crime writer, who has lived and travelled extensively in Asia. Her first novel, Behind the Night Bazaar, won the 2004 Victorian Premier's Literary Award for an unpublished manuscript. She is a winner of the Scarlett Stiletto Award and has twice been shortlisted for Ned Kelly awards.

My Take

Jayne and Rajiv's newly formed partnership of Keeney and Patel, private investigators, is severely tested when they agree to investigate the suspicious death of their tour guide. Jayne is really too used to making decisions without reference to others. Rajiv on the other hand believes Jayne is far too impulsive and doesn't take into account the costs of the time she spends investigating. Jayne is only too willing to admit that she has made almost no profit as a private investigator so far.

The novel is set against economic and social issues besetting modern Thailand, particularly foreign and Thai businessmen trying to make quick profits without due consideration of the environmental impacts of their schemes. Villagers too are losing traditional rights when incomers seize on land that appears to belong to no-one. Others are worried by Thai locals becoming so heavily reliant on tourist income, and by the almost automatic degradation of the local way of life.

I was impressed in this novel by the author's empathetic depiction of village life and of Thai customs, of the responsibility felt by village elders, as well as the detailed explanation of the social and economic issues surrounding the murders. Angela Savage takes us a little away from the beaten track, out of Bangkok, to areas that have tourist potential, but where change/modernisation will come at a price.

I've included this novel in my list for the 2014 Global Reading Challenge in Asia (Thailand).

My rating: 4.5

I also reviewed  4.5, THE HALF-CHILD

Review: ARMS FOR ADONIS, Charlotte Jay

• first published 1961
  
• this edition published by Wakefield Press 1994
• 189 pages

Synopsis (Wakefield Crime Classics)

The blood of Adonis, thought Sarah, remembering the church that was built like a pagan temple. Coquelicot rouge - the symbol of a dying man whose blood stained the hillside in the spring.

Sarah Lane, abandoning her French lover for the brilliant Lebanese sunshine, believes that the day will belong to her alone. But when a street bomb hurls her into the arms of a dangerously handsome Syrian colonel, she finds herself trapped once again. Is this a kidnapping? A seduction? Or merely the chaos of the Middle-East?

The Wakefield Crime Classics series revives forgotten or neglected gems of crime and mystery fiction by Australian authors. Many of the writers have established international reputations but are little known in Australia.

My Take

Charlotte Jay, an Australian author, wrote this book during the months leading up to the Suez Crisis in 1956 when she was living in Beirut during a one year tour of duty by her husband John, a senior official for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency in the Middle East. This gives the setting of the novel a touch of authenticity and also gives it a relevance to today's readers.

This novel reminded me of those I read in the 60s, by authors like Susan Howatch and Victoria Holt. It is a thriller/romance almost gothic in style. The description of the setting is wonderful and sent me off Googling the tourist sites of Lebanon.

I don't think I was ever in any real doubt about how the plot would turn out but there were a few twists and turns that caused the occasional doubt. I think the plot is much better drawn than the novella HANK OF HAIR by the same author that I read recently.

Embedded in the main story are Jay's reflections on the political revolution taking place in the Middle East in the 1950s and in particular how it affected ordinary people. There is also reflection on how Britain is being affected by a flood of refugees who despite being Moslem can claim British citizenship. They aren't always going to be an asset to their new country.

This was a satisfying read, and you'll notice it is part of my reading for the Vintage Reading Challenge. I think I will also include it in my 7th continent reading (history) for the Global Reading Challenge. It carries with it a feeling of authenticity, and I've come away feeling that I've learnt quite a bit.

My rating: 4.5

I've also reviewed 4.5, BEAT NOT THE BONES

 And A HANK OF HAIR (see recent reviews)

Other titles in Wakefield Crime Classics

A Hank of Hair

Arms for Adonis

Beat Not the Bones

Common People

Ligny's Lake

Sinners Never Die

The Secret of the Garden

The Souvenir

The Whispering Wall

Vanishing Point

Review: HANK OF HAIR, Charlotte Jay

• first published 1964
  
• this edition published by Wakefield Crime Classics 1993
• 120 pages

Synopsis (Wakefield Crime Classics)

For I prefer beauty always a little soured. When it comes to me as a spoonful of syrup, I spit it out.

Gilbert Hand hasn't been the same since his wife died. He's moved to a dull but respectable hotel where silence seems to brood in the hall and stairway. In a secret drawer he discovers a long, thick hank of human hair, and his world narrows down to two people - himself and the murderer.

The Wakefield Crime Classics series revives forgotten or neglected gems of crime and mystery fiction by Australian authors. Many of the writers have established international reputations but are little known in Australia.

My Take

This plot didn't quite turn out the way I expected it to. It is a relatively short novel, but I can't see how the author could have made it much longer. In this Wakefield crime classics reprint there is an interesting epilogue in which the author discusses with the editors Gilbert Hand's hair fetish. The author raises points that I didn't see in my reading of the novel, so perhaps I really missed the point.

My rating: 3.9

I've also reviewed 4.5, BEAT NOT THE BONES

Other titles in Wakefield Crime Classics

A Hank of Hair

Arms for Adonis

Beat Not the Bones

Common People

Ligny's Lake

Sinners Never Die

The Secret of the Garden

The Souvenir

The Whispering Wall

Vanishing Point

Read Australian authors - join a challenge or two

It will probably come as no surprise to blog followers that over 25% of the titles that I have read this year have been by Australian authors.
Many of the titles listed below are set in Australia too.
And most of them are crime fiction.

I actually joined two challenges:

2013 Aussie Author Challenge

Australian Women Writers Challenge

2014 Aussie Author Challenge at Booklover Book  Reviews

In reading nearly 40 Australian titles this year I really had no trouble in meeting the challenges.
I'll certainly be continuing both challenges in 2014.

Here is my list for 2013 - although I think I may even read a couple more by the end of the year.

• 4.9, BLACKWATERCREEK, Geoffrey McGeachin
• 4,7, COLD GRAVE, Kathryn Fox 
• 4.7, DEGREES OF CONNECTION, Jon Cleary 
• 4.8, THE MISTAKE, Wendy James 
• 4.4, DARK CITY BLUE, Luke Preston 
• 4.5, GHOST MONEY, Andrew Nette 
• 3.9, THE PRICE OF FAME, R.C. Daniells 
• 4.7, THE BETRAYAL, Y.A.Erskine
• 4.3, TAMAM SHUD, Kerry Greenwood - non fiction
• 3.9, COORPAROO BLUES & THE IRISH FANDANGO, G.S. Manson  
• 3.6, MURDER ON DISPLAY, Reece Pocock
• 3.8, JENNIFER SHOT - THE FIRST SHOT, Patricia Kristensen 
• 5.0, THE ROBBERS, Paul Anderson 
• 4.0, MURDER WITH THE LOT, Sue Williams 
• 4.2, THE AFFAIR, Bunty Avieson 
• 4.1, MANLY MURDERS: A MOTHER WITHOUT A CHILD, Gunilla Haglundh 
• 4.4, THE RICHMOND CONSPIRACY, Andrew Grimes 
• 4.7, IN HER BLOOD, Annie Hauxwell 
• 4.3, BAY OF FIRES, Poppy Gee 
• 4.8, THE MARMALADE FILES, Steve Lewis & Chris Uhlmann
• 4.8, SUFFICIENT GRACE, Amy Espeseth 
• 4.3, PROMISE, Tony Cavanaugh  
• 4.8, ROTTEN GODS, Greg Barron
• 4.5, MIDNIGHT PROMISE, Zane Lovitt 
• 4.3, THE EASY SIN, Jon Cleary
• 5.0, WATCHING YOU, Michael Robotham 
• 4.8, I HEAR THE SIRENS IN THE STREET, Adrian McKinty
• 4.8, IF I TELL YOU... I'LL HAVE TO KILL YOU, Michael Robotham (edit) 
• 4.8, PEOPLE OF THE BOOK, Geraldine Brooks 
• 4.5, BURIAL RITES, Hannah Kent 
• 4.6, GOOD NEWS, BAD NEWS, Maggie Groff
• 4.8, UNNATURAL HABITS, Kerry Greenwood 
• 5.0, CLOUDSTREET, Tim Winton 
• 4.9, SILENT VALLEY, Malla Nunn
• 4.7, THE CRY, Helen Fitzgerald 
• 4.3, MURDER AND MENDELSSOHN, Kerry Greenwood  
• 5.0, BITTER WASH ROAD, Garry Disher
• 4.2, THE RIDERS, Tim Winton 
• 4.7, THE MIDNIGHT DRESS, Karen Foxlee