Book Reviews

With a quarter of 2025 almost over, the new crime and thriller releases are beginning to flow through at an overwhelming rate. It is hard to keep up with them all, but it does mean that there is a good selection from across the crime fiction spectrum for readers to… Read more: APRIL ACTION: NEW CRIME AND THRILLER TITLES THAT I AM LOOKING FORWARD TO READING IN APRIL 2025

Adrian McKinty’s Sean Duffy novels set in Northern Ireland during the 1980s, and now into the 1990s, are a terrific set of books, and up there with the best police novels currently being written. His last novel, The Detective Up Late, was promoted as being ‘Duffy’s Last Case’, but the… Read more: NEW 2025 SEAN DUFFY BOOK BY ADRIAN McKINTY: HANG ON ST. CHRISTOPHER

March 2025 is shaping up as being a very good month for international crime fiction and thrillers, with two of the best coming towards the end of the month in the form of new releases by bestselling maestros Harlan Coben and Tess Gerritsen. A new Harlan Coben novel is always… Read more: 2025 BLOCKBUSTERS: NOBODY’S FOOL By HARLAN COBEN and THE SUMMER GUESTS By TESS GERRITSEN

I am going to try and do early preview reviews every second Friday of books I have been lucky enough to get copies of, which are still several weeks away from publication. I am going to focus on books which I think are very good. Hopefully this will give early… Read more: LOOKING FORWARD FRIDAY: THE SECRET ROOM by JANE CASEY

My March 2025 reading got off to a strong start with three very different crime novels set in Spain, rural Australia and a remote island off the coast of Scotland. Juan Gómez-Jurado’s Red Queen trilogy about Spanish detective extraordinaire Antonia Scott, who mixes great mental skills with several bad flaws, has been… Read more: MARCH MAYHEM 2025: NEW BOOKS by JOANNA JENKINS, JUAN GOMEZ-JURADO and LAURA McCLUSKEY

It has been a busy couple of weeks and my reviewing has suffered a bit. The good news is that things are now back to normal and I have plenty of posts planned for the next few weeks. While I have been busy the books have been piling in, including… Read more: RESUMPTION OF SERVICE AND BOOK HAUL!

My recent trawling through bookstores and bookfairs has uncovered an interesting array of pulpy Australian paperbacks and digests. From medical romance to westerns to war stories to faux American PI tales, my recent haul illustrates the range of Australian paperback publishing in the 1950s and 1960s Horwitz was arguably the… Read more: TRASHY TUESDAY: AUSSIE PULP PAPERBACK BOOK HAUL

Reunions are dangerous events in crime fiction, as these two new books by Bronwyn Rivers and Kate Alice Marshall clearly show. Old friends, dark secrets, a remote location and a past and present timeline, Bronwyn Rivers’ debut suspense novel, The Reunion (Constable, 11 February 2025), makes good use of some… Read more: NEW 2025 SUSPENSE FICTION: THE REUNION by BRONWYN RIVERS and A KILLING COLD by KATE ALICE MARSHALL

George Easter has just sent out the latest issue of his Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine (No. 106) and it is bumper issue featuring the best reads of 2024 and the most anticipated crime novels of 2025, as well as the usual reviews and interesting articles. The magazine is now up to 106… Read more: DEADLY PLEASURES MYSTERY MAGAZINE – NEW ISSUE FEBRUARY 2025!

The criminal reading year is well underway, with some very good 2025 books by Ronni Salt, Cara Hunter, Geoff Parkes and Ashley Kalagian Blunt already out and being enjoyed. March is always a big release month, and this year is no different with some outstanding crime and thriller titles coming… Read more: MARCH MAYHEM: EXCITING NEW RELEASES FOR MARCH 2025