Google searches for Australian crime fiction author Jane Goodall confuse her with the "other" Jane Goodall, the one who works with chimpanzees. The crime fiction author is not only younger than the other, but, born in England, she lives and works in Australia. She is Research Director of the College of Arts, Education and Social Sciences at the University of Western Sydney, and is sometimes to be found at writers' festivals.
Jane tried to carve out a name for herself by calling herself Jane R. Goodall, and her second novel showed that on the cover, but by the third the R had gone again.
Jane Goodall has produced 3 very successful novels for you to look for.
* THE WALKER 2004
* THE VISITOR 2005
* THE CALLING 2007
I don't have a record for THE WALKER in my database but I remember being impressed.
Jane did a speaking/reading tour of Australia after THE WALKER was a featured book for the Australian Big Book Club and I heard her speak at a local library.
From the blurb on the cover of THE WALKER:
Plymouth 1967: Schoolgirl Nell Adams, all the newspapers reported, finds murder victim on train. And her photo covers the front pages. So he knew her name and her face. His face, or lack of it, filled her nightmares until she woke screaming...
London 1971: Nell is a university student in London, trying to put the past behind her. But as a series of murders reveals a killer obsessed with Jack the Ripper, she realises her nightmares might be coming true.
Detective Briony Williams, also just starting out on her life on London, is part of the team tracking down The Walker. The killer is a practised anatomist with a theatrical streak, arranging his victims' bodies in twisted parodies of Hogarth's engravings. He sends a perfectly extracted eye to the police in a Tupperware container, with a defiant message. He's planning a reunion with the schoolgirl who found his first victim.
Two young women, so full of hope and possibility, soon discover that new times mask age-old evil in this dark psychological thriller.
2005 THE VISITOR
Twin boys run away from their au pair on a trip to the Oxford countryside. They race into some woods where they see a man chopping. At first they think he is chopping wood, but what he is holding in his hand is not an axe, and the shape on the ground is not a tree. Their au pair, Sylvie, sets off to look for them... Briony Williams has moved to Oxford. The story begins as she speeds across the city to the murder site, where Sylvie Bec has been found dead—killed by a single blow that crushed her skull. The forensic pathologist says he has never seen anything like it.
With a fascination for all things terrifying, Jane Goodall takes readers into the dark, drug-filled world of 1970s Oxford, where we witness serial killings and a murderer with a fascination for ancient artefacts. Not even Detective Briony Williams is safe.
My rating: 4.7
2007 THE CALLING
Set in London 1976. Briony Williams has been promoted to Detective Inspector and relocated from Oxford to Chelsea. Her mentor Alexander Macready has been promoted to Commander. A leg, disconnected from the male body that it belongs to has turned up in the mud of the Chelsea Embankment. Briony's new patch is in the heartland of the newly emerging Punk movement, attracting all sorts of characters and bands, like Sudden Deff and the Sex Pistols. On Friday nights after dark Kings Road hosts "concerts" which are a strange mix of music, vaudeville and pyrotechnics. The squats around Kings Road are attracting teenagers particularly girls who have left home for a new life. And then a fanzine turns up featuring three portrait photographs: Briony, Macready and another policeman; with the caption DEFF ROW. Suddenly it seems they are all in deep water. In this, her third novel featuring Briony Williams, Australian author Jane Goodall shows a deft touch in building suspense. My recommendation: read the earlier novels, THE WALKER and THE VISITOR first if you can.
My rating: 4.8
I'm looking forward to the next in the series.
Jane Goodall is one of a number of successful Australian authors who have chosen to set their crime fiction novels overseas: Michael Robotham, Barry Maitland, PD Martin, Sydney Bauer, Marshall Browne, Brian Kavanagh, and Lauren Crow.
Showing posts with label Jane Goodall. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jane Goodall. Show all posts
14 April 2008
1 February 2008
Skulls
I thought I'd find more references to skulls in my reading record summaries, but I found only 3, one of which I listed when I talked about bones.
But you can see from my ratings that I enjoyed them all.
Once again a couple of highly recommendable authors in Stephen Booth and Jane Goodall. Jane is an Australian author, so do try to get her books- and read them in order (THE WALKER, THE VISITOR, THE CALLING)
THE DEAD PLACE by Stephen Booth
Soon there will be a killing. Close your eyes and breathe the aroma. I can smell it right now, can't you? So powerful, so sweet. So irresistible. It's the scent of death… The anonymous caller who taunts the Derbyshire Police with talk of an imminent killing seems to be just another hoaxer. But Detective Sergeant Diane Fry begins to take him seriously when a woman is snatched from a multi-storey car park. This was no opportunist attack but a carefully planned abduction - and it's possible the chilling voice is telling the truth when it hints at earlier murders and bodies waiting to be found in 'the Dead Place'. Detective Constable Ben Cooper, meanwhile, has succeeded in finding a body - or rather, a collection of bones. This comes as a shock to the deceased's family, for Audrey Steele should have left no bones. Eighteen months ago, after dying from natural causes, Audrey was cremated and her ashes scattered in Edendale's memorial gardens. Their investigations lead DS Fry and DC Cooper into the world of those whose lives revolve around death. And finally, in a boarded-up ancestral home that has long been the stuff of legend in the White Park, a crypt full of skulls yields it dark secrets.
My rating: 4.6
THE VISITOR by Jane R. Goodall
Following the phenomenal success of Jane R Goodall’s 2004 debut novel THE WALKER comes the second Briony Williams thriller. Twin boys run away from their au pair on a trip to the Oxford countryside. They race into some woods where they see a man chopping. At first they think he is chopping wood, but what he is holding in his hand is not an axe, and the shape on the ground is not a tree. Their au pair, Sylvie, sets off to look for them... Briony Williams has moved to Oxford. The story begins as she speeds across the city to the murder site, where Sylvie Bec has been found dead—killed by a single blow that crushed her skull. The forensic pathologist says he has never seen anything like it.
With a fascination for all things terrifying, Jane Goodall takes readers into the dark, drug-filled world of 1970s Oxford, where we witness serial killings and a murderer with a fascination for ancient artefacts. Not even Detective Williams is safe.
My rating: 4.7
THE BONE GARDEN by Tess Gerritsen
Maura Isles, Boston medical examiner, tells Julia Hamill that the skeleton she has dug up in her back garden is old, much older than the house that she has recently purchased. The skeleton is that of a female under 35 years, buried perhaps more than 150 ago, and murdered. Julia is recently divorced and had been labouring to convert the barren back yard into a garden when her shovel struck a skull. Now her backyard is an excavation site for the medical examiner’s office.
For most of the book, which jumps, sometimes a little jarringly, backwards and forwards between the 1830s and the present day, we are following an ancestor of the last owner of the house, the person's whose estate Julia bought the house from. We do this both through reading about events as they happen, and through papers and letters hoarded by the previous occupant Hilda Chamblet
My rating: 4.6
But you can see from my ratings that I enjoyed them all.
Once again a couple of highly recommendable authors in Stephen Booth and Jane Goodall. Jane is an Australian author, so do try to get her books- and read them in order (THE WALKER, THE VISITOR, THE CALLING)
THE DEAD PLACE by Stephen Booth
Soon there will be a killing. Close your eyes and breathe the aroma. I can smell it right now, can't you? So powerful, so sweet. So irresistible. It's the scent of death… The anonymous caller who taunts the Derbyshire Police with talk of an imminent killing seems to be just another hoaxer. But Detective Sergeant Diane Fry begins to take him seriously when a woman is snatched from a multi-storey car park. This was no opportunist attack but a carefully planned abduction - and it's possible the chilling voice is telling the truth when it hints at earlier murders and bodies waiting to be found in 'the Dead Place'. Detective Constable Ben Cooper, meanwhile, has succeeded in finding a body - or rather, a collection of bones. This comes as a shock to the deceased's family, for Audrey Steele should have left no bones. Eighteen months ago, after dying from natural causes, Audrey was cremated and her ashes scattered in Edendale's memorial gardens. Their investigations lead DS Fry and DC Cooper into the world of those whose lives revolve around death. And finally, in a boarded-up ancestral home that has long been the stuff of legend in the White Park, a crypt full of skulls yields it dark secrets.
My rating: 4.6
THE VISITOR by Jane R. Goodall
Following the phenomenal success of Jane R Goodall’s 2004 debut novel THE WALKER comes the second Briony Williams thriller. Twin boys run away from their au pair on a trip to the Oxford countryside. They race into some woods where they see a man chopping. At first they think he is chopping wood, but what he is holding in his hand is not an axe, and the shape on the ground is not a tree. Their au pair, Sylvie, sets off to look for them... Briony Williams has moved to Oxford. The story begins as she speeds across the city to the murder site, where Sylvie Bec has been found dead—killed by a single blow that crushed her skull. The forensic pathologist says he has never seen anything like it.
With a fascination for all things terrifying, Jane Goodall takes readers into the dark, drug-filled world of 1970s Oxford, where we witness serial killings and a murderer with a fascination for ancient artefacts. Not even Detective Williams is safe.
My rating: 4.7
THE BONE GARDEN by Tess Gerritsen
Maura Isles, Boston medical examiner, tells Julia Hamill that the skeleton she has dug up in her back garden is old, much older than the house that she has recently purchased. The skeleton is that of a female under 35 years, buried perhaps more than 150 ago, and murdered. Julia is recently divorced and had been labouring to convert the barren back yard into a garden when her shovel struck a skull. Now her backyard is an excavation site for the medical examiner’s office.
For most of the book, which jumps, sometimes a little jarringly, backwards and forwards between the 1830s and the present day, we are following an ancestor of the last owner of the house, the person's whose estate Julia bought the house from. We do this both through reading about events as they happen, and through papers and letters hoarded by the previous occupant Hilda Chamblet
My rating: 4.6
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