Review: THE LEDGE, Christian White

• 
  this edition published in 2024 by Affirm Press
• ISBN 9-781923-0226829
  
• 325 pages 

Synopsis (publisher)

When human remains are discovered in a forest, police are baffled, the locals are shocked and one group of old friends starts to panic. Their long-held secret is about to be uncovered.

It all began in 1999 when sixteen-year-old Aaron ran away from home, drawing his friends into an unforeseeable chain of events that no one escaped from unscathed.

In The Ledge, past and present run breathlessly parallel, leading to a climax that will change everything you thought you knew. This is a mind-bending new novel from the master of the unexpected. 

My Take

The blurb is right - this novel is mind-bending. Just as you thought you had it all worked out, there  is another solution. As you protest but... but .... but, you concede it is all there in plain sight.  

This is his best novel yet.

At the end, think about the discussion questions provided after the novel finishes.

My rating: 5.0

I've also read

• 4.4, THE NOWHERE CHILD
• 4.5, THE WIFE AND THE WIDOW 
• 4.6, WILD PLACE
• 4.9, THE WIFE AND THE WIDOW 

Review: THE VALLEY, Chris Hammer

• 
  published by Allen & Unwin 2024
  
• ISBN 978-1-76417-088-2
• 446 pages
• Nell Buchanan and Ivan Lucic #4
  
• aka BROKEN RIVER

Synopsis (publisher)

A body has been discovered on the riverbanks of The Valley, a remote community in the hills of New South Wales. The gold mine at the heart of The Valley was once the lifeblood of this region, but it has been flooded for decades. Over the years, many have tried and failed to bring it back to life. Now, most believe the mine is barren.

The victim is Wolfgang Burnside, deputy mayor – a champion of change or local schemer, depending on who you ask. He had been working on plans to take the Valley off-grid with hydro-power using the lake surrounding the abandoned mine. Until he was poisoned, his body dumped in the river for all to see.

Detectives Nell Buchanan and Ivan Lucic are dispatched to investigate. The warning is clear – there are secrets lurking in the depths of this Valley, secrets worth more than their weight in gold. What price will this town have to pay to ensure that they never see the light of day? 

My Take

A very dense novel with a complex plot rooted in a least two time periods. The author has the reader working overtime to reconcile facts and theories, to keep track of a huge range of characters and events, and to remember all the salient bits and pieces. You certainly get your money's worth. For me there were still questions at the end where I only thought I had the answers.

Quite a lot more than a murder mystery.

My rating: 4.6

I've also read

• 4.7, SCRUBLANDS - Martin Scarsden #1
  
• 4.4, SILVER - - Martin Scarsden #2
• 4.6, TREASURE & DIRT - aka OPAL COUNTRY - Detective Nell Buchanan #1
  4.7, TREASURE & DIRT - re-read
  
• 4.8, THE TILT - aka DEAD MAN'S CREEK - Detective Nell Buchanan #2
• 4.8, SCRUBLANDS - re-read
• 4.8, THE SEVEN - aka COVER THE BONES - Detective Nell Buchanan #3

Review: STORM CHILD, Michael Robotham

• 
  This edition available from Amazon on Kindle
  
• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0C7RPW5K1
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Scribner (July 2, 2024)
• Print length ‏ : ‎ 333 pages
• Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 1668030993
• #4 in the Cyrus Haven series

Synopsis (Amazon)

The mystery of Evie Cormac’s background has followed her into adulthood. As a child, she was discovered hiding in a secret room where a man had been tortured to death. Many of her captors and abusers escaped justice, unseen but not forgotten. Now, on a hot summer’s day, the past drags Evie back as she watches the bodies of seventeen migrants wash up on a Lincolnshire beach.

There is only one survivor, a teenage boy, who tells police their small boat was deliberately rammed and sunk. Psychologist Cyrus Haven is recruited by the police to investigate the murders—but recognizes immediately that Evie has some link to the tragedy. By solving this crime, he could finally unlock the secrets of her past. But what dark forces will he set loose? And who will pay the price? 

My Take

In his "acknowledgements" at the end of the novel, Michael reminds us that he has now been publishing for 20 years and in that time has published 18 novels. Most of them are listed at the bottom of this review. And I have been reading his offerings with great delight for all that time.

This latest one has delighted me as well.

Evie's past, which she rarely talks about, comes back to her as she watches bodies wash up on a Lincolnshire beach. Evie is now 22. She came to England with people smugglers when she was 9. She was the sole survivor of that circumstance and for a number of years has been sharing a house with Cyrus Haven, a forensic psychologist, a former pupil of Joe O'Loughlin, who featured in earlier Robotham novels. Cyrus becomes involved in investigating this latest case of people smuggling through its single survivor, and through Evie's glimpses of her past.

This one deserves your attention, but is probably best read in sequence with the earlier Cyrus Haven novels so you get the full story, and appreciate the character development and serious thought Robotham has put into it.

Highly recommended.

My rating: 5.0

I've also read

• BOMBPROOF
• SHATTER #3
• SHATTER (audio)
• BLEED FOR ME #4
• 5.0, THE WRECKAGE #5
• 4.8, SAY YOU'RE SORRY #6
• 5.0, WATCHING YOU #7
• 4.8, IF I TELL YOU... I'LL HAVE TO KILL YOU (edit)
• 5.0, LIFE OR DEATH Shortlisted for the 2015 CWA Gold Dagger
• 4.8, CLOSE YOUR EYES
• 5.0, THE SECRETS SHE KEEPS
• 5.0, THE SUSPECT #1 (audio)
• 4.8, LOST #2 (audio)
• 5.0, THE OTHER WIFE
• 4.8, GOOD GIRL, BAD GIRL -Cyrus Haven #1
• 4.8, WHEN SHE WAS GOOD -Cyrus Haven #2
• 5.0, WHEN YOU ARE MINE 
• 5.0, LYING BESIDE YOU - Cyrus Haven #3
• 5.0, THE SECRETS SHE KEEPS

Review: MOLE CREEK, James Dunbar

• 
  This edition available from Amazon on Kindle
  
• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0C8T3DB2Q
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Echo (August 1, 2023)
• Print length ‏ : ‎ 332 pages

Synopsis (Amazon)

A hellish war. A deadly secret. Fifty years on, in a small Tasmanian town, the truth unfolds and the killing begins again …       

Betrayal cannot be buried forever.

In the tiny Tasmanian town of Mole Creek, retired Australian cop and Vietnam veteran Pete McAuslan has retreated to his fishing cabin to write his memoirs. In Sydney, his grandson, journalist and trashy true crime author Xander, learns that Pete has taken his own life, begging forgiveness in a suicide note.

Arriving in Mole Creek in the aftermath of Pete's death, Xander discovers that his grandfather's laptop is missing. He begins to suspect that something is wrong, refusing to accept the facts as presented. With the local police not interested in investigating an apparently open-and-shut suicide, Xander sets about uncovering the truth of what happened to his grandfather.

In the process, he discovers long-buried secrets from Pete's time serving in the Vietnam war: secrets that Pete has withheld from him and everyone else for fifty years; secrets that powerful people would prefer to stay buried. Ensnared in a web of betrayals that began a generation before, Xander finds himself on the hitlist of a clinically violent assassin. Now he must race to identify the connection between the seemingly unremarkable death of an old Australian soldier and the imminent reactivation of the most powerful and potentially destructive 'sleeper' in the history of espionage - before the truth catches up with him. 

My Take

When Xander McAuslan refuses to believe that his grandfather Pete, a retired policeman and ex-Vietnam veteran has committed suicide, he unleashes a can of worms.

Pete has never told Xander very much about what he did in the Vietnam war. Xander know he was in the military police, and was sent home wounded, but little apart from that. Xander knows that his grandfather was supposedly writing his memoirs but hadn't kept in touch very well. However things about his grandfather's death don't sit well, and there are a number of puzzles: like, where is his laptop? Once Xander begins to investigate, things begin to happen.

This story was written mainly in two times frames, 50 years apart, producing a many stranded plot, which was for the main part fairly easy to follow. In the long run though, at the end, I think the author had a problem in pulling it all together, and it felt a bit rushed.

My rating: 4.2

About the Author

James Dunbar is a journalist, television scriptwriter, travel writer, university lecturer and website editor. Mole Creek is his first venture into the serious crime thriller and espionage genre. Published under Jimmy Thomson, he is also the author of two crime ‘caper’ novels and two true-crime memoirs, as well as several books about Australian army engineers (sappers) during the Vietnam War.

Review: LOWBRIDGE, Lucy Campbell

• This edition from Ultimo Press
  
• ISBN 9781761152061
  
• Pub Date July 2023
• Extent 384pp
   

Synopsis (Publisher)

Where everybody knows everyone, how can somebody just disappear?
A missing girl. Decades of silence. A secret too big to bury.

1987: It’s late summer and a time of change when 17-year-old Tess Dawes leaves the local shopping centre in the sleepy town of Lowbridge and is never seen again.
 
Tess’s unsolved disappearance is never far from the town’s memory. There’s those who grew up with Tess, and never left. And those who know more than they’re saying …
 
It just takes an outsider to ask the right questions.
 
2018: Katherine Ashworth, shattered by the death of her daughter, moves to her husband’s hometown. Searching for a way to pick up the pieces of her life, she joins the local historical society and becomes obsessed with the three-decades-old mystery.
 
As Katherine digs into that summer of 1987, she stumbles upon the trail of a second girl who vanished when no one cared enough to see what was happening in plain sight.
 
Her trail could lead right to Katherine’s door.
 
In a town simmering with divisions and a cast of unforgettable characters, Lowbridge is a heart-wrenching mystery about the girls who are lost, the ones who are mourned and those who are forgotten. 

My Take

Katherine Ashworth and her husband Jamie have moved back to the town where he grew up in rural New South Wales following the shattering death of their daughter. While Katherine finds it difficult to move on Jamie just seems to be able to put everything behind him, and they grow further and further apart. Katherine drinks and does little else until Jamie challenges her to find something to do.

But when Katherine joins the historical society and finds out about the disappearance of a school friend of Jamie's,Tess Dawes, 30 years earlier, he becomes reticent to talk about it, and she fears the worst.

A well constructed mystery which flits between the past and the present. The central characters are well drawn. The eventual resolution is a shock.

My rating: 4.5

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lucy Campbell has worked as a writer and sub-editor across magazines, newspapers and non-fiction books. Lowbridge is her first novel. She lives in Canberra with her husband and three children.

Review: THE SILENT INHERITANCE, Joy Dettman

• 
  this edition from my local library
  
• published 2016 by Pan Macmillan Australia
• ISBN 978-1=74354-014-5
• 405 pages

Synopsis (publisher) 

Sarah Carter, mother of twelve-year-old Marni, is raising her daughter alone in a small granny flat in suburban Melbourne. A serial killer, dubbed 'The Freeway Killer', is headline news and when Marni's classmate is abducted from the mall where Sarah and Marni shop, their city no longer feels safe.

Detective Ross Hunter's investigation into the abduction leads him to dead ends - until an unrelated incident sends him to the door of Freddy Adam-Jones, an unscrupulous barrister, who is guarding a secret that could ruin his life.

When an unexpected windfall changes the lives of Sarah and Marni, their sudden wealth opens doors long closed, and threatens to cast light on history better left buried.

What might Sarah's past reveal? What is her connection to Freddy? And can Detective Ross Hunter discover the link in time to save a young girl's life?

My Take

This novel had all the makings of a good 'un but I came away with strong feelings of dissatisfaction. On reflection I've ended up thinking that the author tried to do too much, tried to create too much mystery. It seemed that there were too many plot strands and that they never finally got wound together. At the end I had strong feelings that I had missed something. The story seemed to finish but I had a number of confusions and unanswered questions.

My rating: 3.2

About the author

Joy Dettman was born in country Victoria and spent her early years in towns on either side of the Murray River. She is an award-winning writer of short stories, the complete collection of which, Diamonds in the Mud, was published in 2007, as well as the highly acclaimed novels Mallawindy, Jacaranda Blue, Goose Girl, Yesterday's Dust, The Seventh Day, Henry's Daughter, One Sunday and the bestselling Woody Creek series.