Book Reviews

Coming up with the Best Books of the Year is always a challenging task. The idea of ranking and rating books never really sits right with me, as so much comes down to individual taste and even the mood that you are in when you read the book. There is… Read more: THE YEAR’S BEST: MY FAVOURITE CRIME NOVELS AND THRILLERS OF 2025

Every year there are piles of books released with a fanfare of manufactured publicity by publishers, and certain reviewers, while other equally good books quietly find their way onto bookseller shelves and, increasingly, Kindle and Audible lists. This has particularly been the case in Australia in recent years, where the… Read more: UNDER THE RADAR: SEVEN GOOD BOOKS YOU MAY HAVE MISSED IN 2025

Fans of the thrillers by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child are in for a real treat in 2026! Coming in January is an origin story for their popular series about the extraordinary FBI agent Aloysius Pendergast, while in April we have the sequel to Preston’s Extinction. Pendergast: The Beginning, (Grand… Read more: LOOKING FORWARD TO 2026: PENDERGAST by DOUGLAS PRESTON & LINCOLN CHILD and PARADOX by DOUGLAS PRESTON & ALETHEIA PRESTON

Victor Canning (1911-86) has largely slipped from modern view, but in his prime was a very popular British thriller writer who produced some terrific books in the 1950s to 80s, including some very dark spy novels towards the end of his career. His early novels were notable for their exotic… Read more: FORGOTTEN THRILLERS: THE SCORPIO LETTERS By VICTOR CANNING

Tartan Noir certainly gets off to a good start in 2026 with books by two of the quietly performing champions of the genre. Eva Macrae is better known as the author of the DI Shona Oliver novels under her real name of Lynne McEwan. Now as Eva Macrae is heading… Read more: TARTAN NOIR 2026: NEW BOOKS BY MARION TODD and EVA MACRAE

The end of the year is rapidly approaching and I have been trying to catch up on some books that I missed earlier in the year, plus a seasonal short story by the talented Lisa Unger. Matthew Blake wrote three very good spy novels under the name of Matthew Richardson,… Read more: NOVEMBER 2025 CRIME ROUND-UP: NEW BOOKS BY MATTHEW BLAKE, CHRISTOPHER REICH, CHARLIE DONLEA and LISA UNGER

Paperback publishers, especially Horwitz in Australia, underpinned their usual output of crime, romance and westerns with less savoury books that sought to exploit serious issues with lurid covers and the promise of perverted sex. The Second World War provided ample sources of such material for publishers, who responded with a… Read more: TRASHY TUESDAY: 1960s EXPLOITATION PAPERBACKS – NAZIS, POWS, PERVERSION AND WHITE COOLIES

This week in the Canberra Weekly I reviewed three very different new thrillers about new and old crimes. First up is Silent Bones, (Little, Brown, 23 October 2025), by the master of the cold case crime story, Val McDermid. This is the eighth book in Val’s highly entertaining series about Scottish… Read more: CANBERRA WEEKLY 6 NOVEMBER 2025: NEW CRIME BY VAL McDERMID, ALAN CARTER and MATTHEW REILLY

It is getting down to the business end of the year with the final lot of 2025 books being released just in time for Christmas. It is also the time when reviewers around the world begin to reflect and sift through their favourite reads for the annual ‘Best Crime Novels’… Read more: DOWNUNDER CRIME UPDATE, NOVEMBER 2025: REVIEWS, NEWS AND PREVIEWS

Christmas is just around the corner and the big crime and thriller blockbusters are hitting the stores over the next week or two. I have done some short reviews of the four main ones. Leading out the major releases is the high profile collaboration between Harlan Coben and Reese Witherspoon, Gone… Read more: BLOCKBUSTERS FOR CHRISTMAS: NEW BOOKS BY LEE & ANDREW CHILD, HARLAN COBEN & REESE WITHERSPOON, PETER JAMES and MATTHEW REILLY