FORECAST FRIDAY: WHERE THE TRUTH LIES by Karina Kilmore (Simon & Schuster, 1 March 2020)

2020 is quickly approaching and publishers are beginning to promote the ‘hot’ titles for the new year. In the crime and thriller realm there are plenty of promising looking books, including a long awaited sequel to Michael Connelly’s The Scarecrow, Fair Warning; and a third Detective Cormac Reilly novel by Dervla McTiernan, The Good Turn. Although it does not have the profile of the Connelly and McTiernan books, another title to look out for is Australian author Karina Kilmore’s debut crime novel, Where The Truth Lies.

Set on the Melbourne docks, Where The Truth Lies is a tough gritty crime thriller that takes a sharp look at corruption, in business and the unions, and the declining power of newspapers. The story about mysterious accidents and deaths on the waterfront engages from the opening pages and maintains a good pace for most of its length. The central character, journalist Chrissie O’Brian, is a nice mixture of determination and fragility, and like most modern crime narrators, she has dark secret in her past and taste for guilt relieving vices.

It is a good story and Kilmore, who was a long term journalist under her Karina Barrymore byline, brings a good deal of insider knowledge, and not too much bias, to her story. The book, as an Unpublished Manuscript, was shortlisted for the 2017 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards and I suspect that the finished product will also prove popular in the award stakes in 2020.

I will be doing a longer review closer to the release date in March 2020, but it is certainly one to look for. In any event it is hard not to like a crime novel written by someone called Karina Kilmore!

Where The Truth Lies is due to be published on 1 March 2020 by Simon & Schuster. Thanks to the Canberra Weekly and Simon & Schuster for an advanced copy of the book.