"Fun read with nods to Christie, grief, and memento mori" - review of FIVE FOUND DEAD

FIVE FOUND DEAD by Sulari Gentill (Poisoned Pen Press, August 2025)

Reviewed by Craig Sisterson

On a train, there are only so many places to hide… Crime fiction author Joe Penvale has won the most brutal battle of his life. Now that he has finished his intense medical treatment, he and his twin sister, Meredith, are boarding the glorious Orient Express in Paris, hoping for some much-needed rest and rejuvenation. Meredith also hopes that the literary ghosts on the train will nudge Joe's muse awake, and he'll be inspired to write again. And he is; after their first evening spent getting to know some of their fellow travelers, Joe pulls out his laptop and opens a new document. Seems like this trip is just what the doctor ordered…

And then some. The next morning, Joe and Meredith are shocked to witness that the cabin next door has become a crime scene, bathed in blood but with no body in sight. The pair soon find themselves caught up in an Agatha Christie-esque murder investigation. Without any help from the authorities, and with the victim still not found, Joe and Meredith are asked to join a group of fellow passengers with law enforcement backgrounds to look into the mysterious disappearance of the man in Cabin16G. But when the steward guarding the crime scene is murdered, it marks the beginning of a killing spree which leaves five found dead―and one still missing. Now Joe and Meredith must fight once again to preserve their newfound future and to catch a cunning killer before they reach the end of the line.

The Orient Express. An iconic multi-day train journey between Paris and Istanbul that for more than a century has symbolised both luxury travel, and murder, thanks to Agatha Christie’s iconic 1934 novel. The mere words can’t help but conjure images of a moustachioed Belgian sleuth, in whichever of his various forms, from Albert Finney to Kenneth Branagh, Alfred Molina to David Suchet.

While there is no Poirot in sight, there are plenty of sleuths on board in Five Found Dead, Sri Lankan-Australian crime writer Sulari Gentill’s modern homage to the Christie Classic. Narrator Meredith is a lawyer accompanying her twin Joe on a once-in-a-lifetime trip, celebrating Joe surviving a life-threatening illness, and to hopefully rekindle his crime writing mojo. Their fellow passengers include former spies, police officers, private eyes, and a pair of sisters on the trail of a swindler. Suspicious? Or merely to be expected given the iconic train’s drawcard mix of literary history and luxury?

Joe’s muse is stirred by the setting and company; on the first evening he begins to write again. But the next morning the murder mysteries become all-too-real, as the cabin next door is bathed in blood. But where’s the body? Cut off from the outside due to various factors, including a COVID strain tearing through parts of the train, Joe and Meredith are requested to join a group looking to find answers. But what if one of them is the killer? Especially as other bodies begin to show up.

Gentill, who earlier this year won the Mary Higgins Clark Award for her novel The Mystery Writer at the 2025 Edgar Allan Poe Awards, clearly has lots of love for Golden Age-style mysteries given her own terrific series set in 1930s Australia starring artist-sleuth Rowly Sinclair. She appears to be thoroughly enjoying herself with Five Found Dead, a clever and engrossing mystery that like her prior novel plays with the mystery genre, and has plenty of winks and nods to Christie, Hitchcock, and others. There’s even an appearance by real-life Australian books podcasters Flex & Herds (who host "Death of the Reader", which deep-dives into classic and foreign mystery fiction), who enthusiastically (and dangerously?) insert themselves into the investigation.

It’s a fun read, and more, that like Christie herself at times, rides the implausibility curve to its limits. But there’s depth here too, Gentill threads in nods to memento mori and meditations on the fragility of life – perhaps inspired by her own cancer scare - as Joe and others confront their mortality..

[This review was first published in Deadly Pleasures magazine in the United States]

Craig Sisterson is a lawyer turned writer, editor, podcast host, awards judge, and event chair. He's the founder of the Ngaio Marsh Awards, co-founder of Rotorua Noir, author of Macavity and HRF Keating Award-shortlisted non-fiction work SOUTHERN CROSS CRIME, editor of the DARK DEEDS DOWN UNDER anthology series, and writes about books for magazines and newspapers in several countries.

Festival crocodiles, capital city kangaroos, and medieval derring-do gone wrong: an interview with Chris Hammer

Kia ora and haere mai, welcome to the 240th instalment of author interview series, 9mm, which is being resurrected this month back into a semi-regular column, after largely going into hibernation and only sporadically emerging from its cave in 2021-2024, for a variety of personal reasons.

Thanks for reading and sharing the 9mm series, and Crime Watch in general (and my work elsewhere) over many years. I've had a lot of fun talking to some amazing crime writers and bringing their thoughts and stories to you in this column, along with magazine and newspaper features, event panels, podcasts, and more. 

Last weekend I had the pleasure of attending the fantastic Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate, one of the best book festivals of any kind in the world. It was really great to catch up with an array of bookloving pals from around the world, and meet some cool new people too. Inspired by being surrounded by the 'crime writing tribe', I recorded several interviews with some cool crime writers, in among dozens/hundreds of general conversations across the four days. 

Back to 9mm. You can check out the full list of of past 9mm interviewees here. All 239 of them, and counting. What a line-up! With lots more fun to come. Kia ora rawa atu (thanks heaps), everyone. 

Last weekend, live from Harrogate, I shared an interview with brilliant and brave Turkish political journalist and acclaimed crime writer Elçin Poyrazlar. 

This week it's another Harrogate interviewee. A leading antipodean author who I've met and hung out with several times before, interviewed for magazines and reviewed several of their books over the years for print and online, but at Harrogate I realised he'd never done the 9mm interview. So we rectified that, with a fun chat amidst the bustle of the beer tent. 

Today I'm very pleased to welcome to 9mm one of the stars of the recent global boom in Australian crime writing, the marvellous Chris Hammer. Author of the Martin Scarsden novels, beginning with his brilliant fiction debut Scrublands, then Silver (both recently adapted into hit BBC dramas), along with a terrific series starring Aussie coppers Ivan Lucic & Nell Buchanan (eg Opal Country, Dead Man's Creek, etc), Chris is a huge rising star of global crime fiction. 

A former political journalist and foreign correspondent, Chris first appeared at Harrogate in 2019 as part of modern Queen of Crime Val McDermid's famed New Blood Panel, discussing Scrublands. Two years ago he was a featured author, in conversation with SA Cosby before a packed crowd. This year he returned for a panel moderated by Val on the ongoing success of some past New Blood panels, alongside Fiona Cummins, Abir Mukherjee (who won this year's Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award for Hunted), and Stuart Neville. When people talk about Australian crime writing nowadays, his is always one of the very first names that crops up. Deservedly so. 

But for now, Chris Hammer becomes the latest author to stare down the barrel of 9mm. 

Chris with Val McDermid, who helped 
launch his UK popularity in 2019

9MM: AN INTERVIEW WITH CHRIS HAMMER

Who is your favourite recurring crime fiction character?

Probably Jackson Lamb. He's multi-layered, and I like the humour side of it. He's bloody unique, right?

What was the very first book you remember reading and really loving, and why?

I reckon it was probably King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. It started off as being very Knights of olde yore and derring-do, you know, going on quests, but then it goes pear-shaped, right? The King is cuckolded by his best mate. All his knights abandon him to go and search for the Holy Grail. Then he's kind of usurped by his past, battles his treacherous son, and is killed. For me, it was a revelation. Up until then. I thought, all stories have a happy ending, yeah? And it showed me how powerful books could be. This is when I'm like, eight or nine, learning the power of a different sort of story. 

Before your debut crime novel, what else had you written (if anything) - unpublished manuscripts, short stories, articles?

Yeah, I was a journalist for 30 years, so there was all of that. And I wrote two non-fiction books. They're like narrative non-fiction. So telling the story like travel writing, traveling through Australia, but at the time of a very severe drought. I think that was a stepping stone between journalism and writing fiction, and a lot of the places I went to on those travels, writing those books, then become the settings for some of my crime books, like Scrublands and Dead Man's Creek, and indeed, the next book, Legacy.

Outside of writing and writing-related activities (book events, publicity), what do you really like to do, leisure and activity-wise?

I like travel. I like skiing. I like swimming. I do like reading. There's a lot ... you do a lot of reading that's work related, yeah. So it's really nice when you just break out, like read outside the genre. I read some more literary or contemporary fiction or whatever.

What is one thing that visitors to your hometown should do, that isn't in the tourist brochures, or perhaps they wouldn’t initially consider?

I would say to just go walking in the bush at sunrise or sunset when the animals are out. Yeah, it's quite a unique experience in Canberra, in that it's Australia's capital city but it is very bushy. I live in what's considered the inner city and there's kangaroos 100 meters away, yeah? And beautiful birds.

If your life was a movie, which actor could you see playing you?

Gee, I've no idea ... [after a wee pause] ... maybe Richard Roxburgh? He's got similar colouring.

Of your writings, which is a bit special to you for some particular reason, and why?

So the first one, Scrublands, because it changed my life. But then of the subsequent books, probably the book The Tilt, which is called Dead Man's Creek in the UK. Because it's just structurally much more ambitious, with three points of view, three different timelines, you know. Also writing from the perspective of a teenage girl in the 1970s and an 11 year old boy during the Second World War, and a female detective in present day. So a lot more ambitious, like a big leap, and I was very happy that kind of worked, yeah. 

What was your initial reaction, and how did you celebrate, when you were first accepted for publication? Or when you first saw your debut crime novel in book form on a bookseller’s shelf?

The thing I remember with Scrublands, I'd had the two non fiction books published, won awards, sold nothing. Then with Scrublands, I had an agent, and she put it out for auction. The day she rang me up and told me the results of the auction. And there were different bids from different publishers, and as it sort of crept up and got into like six figures, I thought, Oh, wow, maybe I'll only have to work like two days a week. 

And then there was a final bid that was just life changing. So I was in this empty office dancing around, laughing and crying because I realized just in that moment that my my life would change, and I could quit my job and be a full-time writer. So that's a very strong memory. I'm sure that the next time I saw my agent, who lives in a different city, we probably had a fair bit to drink.

What is the strangest or most unusual experience you have had at a book signing, author event, or literary festival?

So I went to this festival in the Kimberley, which is, like the far northwest corner of Australia, up in the tropics. And they had no set programme. They just kind of made it up, like oh let's do a session on this. Let's do a question on that. Let's go for a river cruise, and you can do some readings. You want to even swim back? So I start swimming back. Then I found out the river had crocodiles. So that was a pretty wild festival, yeah. 

Kia ora, Chris, we appreciate you having a chat with Crime Watch. 

Chris Hammer as the centrepiece of a fun quintet at last month's Capital Crime
festival in London, alongside fellow Aussie crime writers Hayley Scrivenor
and Kate Kemp, myself, and Turkish journalist and author Elcin Poyrazlar

Do you enjoy Australian crime fiction? Have you watched the TV adaptations of Scrublands or Silver? 

Let us know in the comments

Review: THE FREEZER

THE FREEZER by Kim Hunt (2024)

Reviewed by Karen Chisholm

In the endless tracts of the New South Wales bushland Ranger Cal Nyx finds a dead body under unusual circumstances. It soon becomes apparent this is a historic death. Growing attention on the crime puts the blowtorch to a murderer who’s managed to evade justice. For now.

Detective Inspector Liz Scobie leads the police investigation while her partner, Nyx, uses her own considerable - some might say unorthodox - methods to chase down a killer. With speculation growing in the small community, someone privy to information becomes a new target for the killer.

Join Nyx and Scobie in their dogged pursuit of a bold predator with everything to lose?

The third Cal Nyx novel, THE FREEZER, would possibly work as a standalone, but the connections between this and the second novel, THE QUARRY in particular, make the characters here make a lot more sense. Nyx and her partner, DI Liz Scobie, her cousin Dif, and boarder Spike (complicated) are a great group of real feeling people and there's a backstory to how they all got here, together. 

Hunt is from New Zealand, but this series is set in Australia - New South Wales - where Nyx is a ranger, working way out in the bush. She comes and goes from her city base, a house that was left to her, and the job, where, during a work outing to check the state of bush trails and general maintenance after a storm she comes across a dead body in unusual (maybe unless you're a ranger) circumstances. It may be an historic death, but the discovery creates attention, and a murderer who has evaded justice until now, is worried that may all be about to implode. Whilst Nyx's partner, DI Scobie is leading the police investigation, Nyx is busy deploying her own, somewhat unorthodox methods in a small community, where it turns out, something that she unearths becomes very dangerous information to know.

Nyx is one of those characters who leaps off the page at the reader. Physically capable, emotionally not always so much, she's loyal, hardworking, brave, and a bit daft on occasion. It's rewarding to read a female character who is independent, strong and good at her job, despite the physical challenges, and remote locations she's working in. Her partner, DI Scobie is a good cop too, and whilst they don't work "together" as such, they compliment each other, when Nyx isn't driving Scobie mad. 

And then there's Dif - who goes way back with Nyx, and is capable, and complicated all at the same time. That backstory from THE QUARRY would be handy to know although there are hints about the past and the reality of Dif's life in this novel. 

All these books come with intriguing plots, and the build up of that cast of characters, with some social commentary sprinkled in there for good measure. They are a bit on the gritty side without falling into noir, emotional without being over the top, much like Nyx herself, who is very much a female working class hero.

Karen Chisholm is one of Australia's leading crime reviewers. She created Aust Crime Fiction in 2006, a terrific resource - please check it out. Karen also reviews for Newtown Review of Books, and has been a judge of the Ned Kelly Awards and Ngaio Marsh Awards. This review was first published on Karen's website; she kindly shares some of her reviews of crime and thriller novels written by Australians and New Zealanders on Crime Watch as well as on Aust Crime Fiction. 

Review: THE HITCHHIKER by Gabriel Bergmoser

THE HITCHHIKER by Gabriel Bergmoser (HarperCollins, 2024)

Reviewed by Karen Chisholm

Ahead he could see only the stretch of unending road, on either side brown-scorched plains of dirt and scrub, above it all a soaring blue sky and blinding sun. Desolation that looked, to him, a hell of a lot like freedom. He wasn’t playing by anyone’s rules anymore.

Have you ever done something bad? The question was like a clawed hand seizing his guts. It had taken everything he’d had not to whimper, to cower away and beg. But as he’d deflected, he’d told himself to stay calm. To be in control. He had to be in control here.

She’d made a mistake. Wasn’t the first time and wouldn’t be the last. Ever since she’d left, all she’d found was more trouble. More fights. More secrets. More scars. Now here she was, still alive but a long way from anywhere, and with options dwindling fast.

Fans of the Bee Gees might find themselves with psychological issues post reading or listening to THE HITCHHIKER. I'm not sure I'll hear the particular track that's on high rotation in the car at the centre of much of the action here without a slight twitch ever again to be honest.

A master of psychological suspense Bergmoser's gone all out with THE HITCHHIKER, creating a central character who starts off reasonably benign, rapidly being revealed as the sort of sick, depraved, just flat out creepy, awful bloke that you kind of know is probably out there, but could really live without knowing much about.

Based around three characters, the story starts out with the focus on "The Driver - Paul". Introducing "The Hitchhiker - Jesse" ramps up the creep, with something obviously not right about both these men, although who is the worst takes a tiny while to sort out. When it is clear, the question then becomes just how "not right" you can possibly get, with a psychological game being played that rapidly becomes overtly violent and shocking. Enter "The Fugitive - Maggie" who will be familiar to readers of other of Bergmoser's books. Everyone here may or may not be who they say they are, their reason for being on the road, in the middle of nowhere may or may not be as they claim, and their intentions, well, nothing's as straightforward as you'd hope with any of them.

This story is creepy, dark, confrontational and disconcerting to say the least. Actually that's not strong enough - this is hard to read. What starts out as the story of a man seemingly escaping the trauma of a broken marriage, driving into the outback as a way of challenging himself, doing the unexpected, gets more unexpected when he picks up a nervy, taciturn young hitchhiker who is obviously escaping something. Then there's the explosion when the fugitive arrives on the scene.

The shapeshifting, and reassessment of these characters starts out slow and steady, a search for enlightenment and testing of boundaries, or simply an escape, the reader is forced into a close up, uncomfortable relationship with them all as motivations and reactions get more and more out there. An exploration of weird, with a dose of Stockholm Syndrome thrown in, there's also the idea of like recognising like, which is very disconcerting.

Needless to say this is not a book for fans of cosy mysteries. It also might be a bit of a surprise for those who love noir, and psychological thrillers, because this gets pretty sick at points, and frankly, downright terrifying. There tension is intense, the creepy intense, the characterisations intense, the intent of everyone intense, and the desire to keep reading equally as intense. 

Which might make readers, including this one, worry about themselves ever so slightly. I mean you'll have a lot of time to consider those sorts of questions, what with the being kept awake, with the lights on, and the twitch that you're going to inevitably develop whenever you see an interaction between people that seems, I don't know, a bit off maybe.

Karen Chisholm is one of Australia's leading crime reviewers. She created Aust Crime Fiction in 2006, a terrific resource - please check it out. Karen also reviews for Newtown Review of Books, and has been a judge of the Ned Kelly Awards and Ngaio Marsh Awards. This review was first published on Karen's website; she kindly shares some of her reviews of crime and thriller novels written by Australians and New Zealanders on Crime Watch as well as on Aust Crime Fiction. 

Hannibal Lecter, Ned Kelly, and little white lies: an interview with Gabriel Bergmoser

Kia ora and haere mai, welcome to the 238th instalment of author interview series, 9mm, which has been resurrected this year after largely going into hibernation in 2021-2023. Thanks for reading and sharing the 9mm series, and Crime Watch in general (and my work elsewhere) over many years. I've had a lot of fun talking to some amazing crime writers and bringing their thoughts and stories to you.

You can check out the full list of of past 9mm interviewees here. What a line-up! With lots more fun to come. Thanks everyone. 

If you've got a favourite crime or thriller writer who hasn't yet been part of the 9mm series, please let me know, and now I'm back on deck more fully, I'll look to make that happen for you. We've got several interviews with cool crime and thriller writers from several different countries 'already in the can' that will be published soon, so lots to look forward to in the coming weeks and months.

Today I'm very pleased to welcome to 9mm an exciting newer voice in Antipodean crime fiction, aka 'Southern Cross Crime', with New Zealand-born, Australian-raised storyteller Gabriel Bergmoser, who made an immediate splash in our genre with his terrifying Outback thriller The Hunted, which has been translated into several European languages and is in film development with Hollywood producers. 

While he's an exciting, relatively new voice in crime fiction, Bergmoser has been deeply involved in storytelling since his teenage years, first in youth theatre, then completing a Masters of Screenwriting, before co-founding an independent production company. He's created several sell-out and award-wining Melbourne stage shows ranging across comedy, noir thrillers, and musician-inspired (eg Beatles, Springsteen) shows, and in 2015 he won the Sir Peter Ustinov TV Scriptwriting Award. Bergmoser has also written YA novels, and worked in writer's rooms for several screen production companies. 

Bergmoser has also written a couple of thriller Audible Originals, a follow-up to The Hunted (The Inheritance), and a standalone thriller, The Caretaker, which earlier this year was shortlisted for the 2024 Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Novel. Watch the video above where he chats about his writing. 

But for now, Gabriel Bergmoser becomes the latest author to stare down the barrel of 9mm.

9MM INTERVIEW WITH GABRIEL BERGMOSER

Who is your favourite recurring crime fiction hero/detective?

I’m gonna cheat slightly, and say not a detective. Well, kind of a detective. Lecter is the go-to for me, and he does involve himself in solving crime. So I think you can make the case of him being a detective, but to me, he is, and remains, the greatest creation in all of crime fiction. And I think the fact that the character is so malleable that Thomas Harris's fiction can be interpreted in vastly different ways by either Mads Mickelson's Hannibal or Brian Cox's Hannibal, or Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal, but yet always still be the same character. It speaks to the malleability of the character, but also the strength of the character that can sustain such vastly clashing interpretations. 

What was the very first book you remember reading and really loving, and why?

The thing that I remember reading that really, really struck and caught me when I was younger, it wasn't just one book, it was it was the Animorphs series, which was huge in the 90s, and in retrospect, I was probably a little bit young for it, because I read sort of a smattering of the different books. You know, it was one of those scholastic series where there was 62 books in the end. And there were always these moments in that series that were so seared into my brain that I always remembered this particular feeling that would always resonate when I thought about it over the years. And it wasn't until I reread the whole series during lockdown that I realized that this was a children's series that delved into some of the darkest, most unsettling, most challenging, moral and philosophical conundrums you can imagine. And that as a kid, I hadn't understood it, but it had completely shaped my own sensibilities and my own sort of attraction to genre stories that are kind of heightened but really grapple with some dark territory at the same time. I mean, I loved Animorphs as a kid. I fell in love with it even more rereading as an adult. I think it is one of the most underrated achievements in fiction for children that's ever been written. And I don't think I would be who I am without it.

Before your debut crime novel, what else had you written (if anything) unpublished manuscripts, short stories, articles?

Prior to The Hunted, which was my debut published crime novel, there were two main projects that had characterized my life. I'd written a few plays here and there, and some short stories, but the two main things where I had this one attempt at a crime novel that I've been trying to write since high school, and I wrote it over and over and over and over and over again, and it kept getting very close to being published, or getting very close to kind of breaking through. And it wasn't until that had its kind of most emphatic rejection in 2018 that I kind of finally put it away and I moved on to The Hunted. And that ended up being the thing that broke through for me. But the other one, I actually did have three published books before The Hunted, published by an indie publisher in Melbourne, which was a YA trilogy about a time traveling journalist, Boone Shepard, and it was much more sort of quirky and adventurous and written for younger readers, and could not have been more different to The Hunted. So those were sort of the two things that always characterized my life. But it wasn't until I sort of moved into really explicitly crime thriller stuff, that my career really started to move.

Outside of writing and writing-related activities (book events, publicity), what do you really like to do, leisure and activity-wise?

Oh, I wish I could say was more interesting than hanging out with my friends and hanging out with my dogs. Like, I live down on St Kilda in Melbourne. I can see the beach from my window. And, I mean, there's just such a litany of great cafes and bars and restaurants down here, and a lot of my friends live in the same area. So there's just never a hell of lot of reason to leave St Kilda, if I'm being completely honest, like, unless I'm out doing school talks or book events, I'm pretty much relegated this one suburb, working from home or any of the local establishments and hanging out with friends, hanging out with my dogs, going to the movies, reading books, that's kind of it. I wish my life was more interesting, but it's truly not. I do go skiing in winter, very badly. 

A waxwork of notorious bush ranger and folk hero 
Ned Kelly and his armour suit at Madame Tussauds

What is one thing that visitors to your hometown should do, that isn't in the tourist brochures, or perhaps they wouldn’t initially consider?

Okay, so my hometown, Mansfield, it's known for being sort of a gateway to the ski fields. It's right at the foot of Mount Buller, which is why I grew up skiing a lot and everything. And during summer, it's very famous for hiking and for sitting by the river and fishing and boating and that kind of thing. But to me, one of the coolest things about Mansfield is that it's very much a key location in one of Australia's most well-known historical stories, which is Ned Kelly, the outlaw bush ranger who wore armour and basically fought against the police and everything in the 1800s.

For those who are unaware of that story, the three policemen who Ned Kelly killed, which is what kind of kickstarted, what they call the Kelly outbreak, came from Mansfield and are buried in Mansfield. And in the central town there was a huge monument to the three of them that I kind of grew up seeing almost every day. And it wasn't until I learned about the history that I realized what that was, and then went to the graveyard and visited their graves and everything. And the more you start delving into it, the more you see how many locations in Mansfield and the surrounding areas were really a part of that history. As somebody who was deeply fascinated by that history and would love to write a book about it one day, growing up in that area, sort of being completely immersed in it, around every corner there's a location that's key to that story, it was absolutely fascinating. I think if you have even the slightest interest in Australian history, then Mansfield is a must stop location. 

If your life was a movie, which actor could you see playing you?

Oh, God, I don't even know what to say to that. Because the question where it's sort of like, if you choose someone too good looking, then everybody goes, “Oh, yeah, sure thing, mate”. But if you choose someone who isn't, then everybody goes, “Oh, don't be so self-deprecating”, or whatever. So it's not something I've ever, ever thought about … I'm gonna fudge it slightly. Like, if there's ever a movie made about my life, I hope that I'm cast as this much more intense, brooding, interesting, tortured artist character, than I actually am. So in that case, cast Adam Driver and just pretend I was like that. Like, it's not remotely what my actual personality is like, but if that can be the public persona that I can create, and if somebody like him can play me, then let's go with that. Yeah.

Of your writings, which is your favourite or a bit special to you for some particular reason, and why?

Look, any of the books, you can make an argument for almost any of them for why they might be special to me, but the one that really does mean the most to me - and there was a point early on where I'd sort of thought to myself that if my career stalled out early, as long as I published this book, I'd be happy - and that one, incidentally, is The True Colour of a Little White Lie, which was my YA book that came out right after The Hunted, and sort of slipped under the radar like it was, it was during Covid. It was hard to promote it properly, and, you know, it didn't, it didn't really make much of an impact, or much of a splash or anything. But it's the book that is most directly taking a lot from my own life, my own experiences, and, I guess, my own values as well. 

And you know, there were two questions my publisher asked me when that book was acquired. One was, is this book autobiographical? To which the answer is largely, yes. Then the second question was, are the lessons the main character learns in this book, the lessons that you wish you'd learned at that age? And I was like, absolutely yes. That's true as well. So it's personal for a lot of reasons, and I do still, you know, I've been incredibly fortunate my career. But if there was one thing that I kind of wish could have gone slightly differently, it would be that True Colour had maybe been read by more people. But as it stands, I'm still intensely proud of that book, and it still is probably my favourite of all my books, and I see it remaining so for quite a while.

What was your initial reaction, and how did you celebrate, when you were first accepted for publication? Or when you first saw your debut story in book form on a bookseller’s shelf?

So when The Hunted was picked up for publication, I still remember that morning. I met a few different publishers who were interested, and there'd been talk of offers being made, but nothing had come through. And I remember there was this morning where I woke up and it was like 5.30 am, or something like that, earlier than I would get up, and I opened my phone and I had this email from my agent that had come through overnight, and it just said, What the fuck? And it had HarperCollins's offer attached. And I remember opening it and without kind of going into extreme details or whatever, it was life changing money for a two-book deal. It was something that it was literally that dream come true moment, that I hadn't given up ... So I still remember just sort of sitting out there in the dark as the sun was coming up, just staring at my phone, just reading over the offer again and again and again and being like, how is this real?

And then it was, like, two days later, I think, I met up with some friends in the city, and we had a drink to kind of have a minor celebration, but didn't have anything planned. And then they were like, we should go to this restaurant tonight and get something to eat and everything. And I was like, Nah, I was just staying here and have a couple drinks. It's fine. You're all relaxing and everything. And they were like really adamant to get to this restaurant. And finally they convinced me, and so we went off to the restaurant, and it was in this different suburb, and I didn't really want to go. Then they're like, oh, we’ll just stop by your place quickly on the way back. It turns out they planned a surprise party for me, and my parents had come down, and my family had come down, and all these people and everything, and I'd been completely oblivious. I’d been just like, oh, let's just stay here and relax, I don't want to go for a fancy dinner or anything, but meanwhile, everyone's waiting at the house, being like, where is he? Hurry up. 

I mean, that was overwhelming, and really special. Like, for the rest of my life and the rest of my career, I'll never forget that exact period, even before The Hunted came out, because when The Hunted did come out, it was during Covid, and so it was still very exciting and everything, but it didn't feel as much of a whirlwind as those first days and weeks after the book was acquired and everything that came with that. That was just one of the most incredible times in my life. And I'll never, ever forget that.

What is the strangest or most unusual experience you have had at a book signing, author event, or literary festival?

There was a book signing I did once where this guy came in and he asked for me to sign his book and everything, and he just seemed really normal and stuff. But this was early on, so a lot of people who I met at signings would be people who I knew. I think it was a book launch this was, and this guy came in. I didn't know who this guy was, and he asked the book to be signed and everything. And then, like, later that night I got, via my contact form, this, like this, like almost 1000 word long stream of consciousness email from him talking about how he'd read the book and he found the book disappointing, and then when he met me in person, like he'd realized I was a human being, because he'd seen that I was nervous at the book signing, and how that inspired him to sort of realize that authors are human beings as well, and it just went on and on and on, but it started to just get really weird and really intimate and really strange after a while. 

And like, I knew who he was, because he mentioned the brief exchange that we'd had, but I just remember getting to this point being like how do you extrapolate that much analysis from the brief exchange of us signing a book and me being a bit nervous about it? I remember asking a friend later on, is this normal? And he was just like, I think this guy is on acid in a bathtub, writing this out to you, but, yeah, it's just like, in one way or another, this might be sort of a roundabout way to arrive at this, but it does sort of shine a slight light on, I guess, the discrepancy between, your self-perception at those events, or your self-perception of your work, and the perception that readers can have of your work. I mean, that would be one of the strangest things ever happened to me, because the more I read this email, just the more insanely self-conscious I became, because every little tick or every little detail of how I'd acted that night had been analysed and taken apart as part of this treatise that he'd written about how that had taught him something about himself. It was simultaneously flattering and unsettling.

Kia ora, Gabriel, we appreciate you having a chat with Crime Watch. 

Review: UNBLESSED

UNBLESSED by Roger Simpson (Simon & Schuster, 2024)

Reviewed by Karen Chisholm

Within hours of arriving in New York City, Jane is dragged into a case and finds herself up against one of the toughest minds she’s ever had to crack: a Silicon Valley billionaire whose ex-business partner has just been murdered.

Sarah Noble is the darling of the tech world – the genius behind an AI defence system that hijacks enemy missiles. But when Sarah’s estranged business partner is killed in a mysterious plane crash, suspicion immediately falls on one of the few people who could hack the plane’s guidance system and had a motive to do so: Sarah herself.

Against her better judgement, Jane agrees to profile Sarah and is immediately drawn into a world beyond her control, where money is no object, murder a tool of trade and the stakes go straight to the heart of the United States itself. Jane Halifax will need all her forensic experience to unlock the secrets of one of the world’s most formidable minds..

UNBLESSED is the latest in the Jane Halifax series of books, featuring the TV series character of the same name. A forensic psychologist, Halifax has worked with all sorts of criminal types - from serial to opportunistic killers, and in the last book, herself, when she suffers from sudden onset amnesia as a result of a car accident. You don't need to have read the earlier books in the series necessarily, although Halifax has got a bit of baggage that she's carting around with her which is not always fully revisited in each outing.

In UNBLESSED she's in the US visiting her stepdaughter Zoe, when she finds herself dragged (kicking a lot) into the case of a tech mogul who is initially suspected of killing off her business partner and his girlfriend (who is also the CFO of the company). Now Sarah Noble is, in many ways, a typical tech mogul. She's on the autism spectrum, renowned for her constant wearing of headphones to block out the world and her astounding mathematical aptitude. She's got a company that is working with the American Defence force in the area of missile defence systems. Working with weapons systems, there are complications like the official secrets act, federal government and agency oversight, and some complicated contractual obligations and implications. Although it was an argument much closer to home that threatened the end of the company. Her now dead business partner attempted a takeover / to remove Noble, a problem that conveniently went away when he died in a mysterious plane crash. Needless to say, Noble has a perfect motive and the ability to hack the plane's guidance system.

Halifax finds herself court appointed to care for the sometimes mercurial, always tricky, moody, and flat out a bit odd Noble in a series of very luxurious locations, with an increasingly unnerving range of threats getting closer and closer.

To say there's a lot going on in this plot might be setting too low an expectation. Along with the plane crash, there's a tanking share price and a market that had already been twitchy about the battle for control. The work is extremely secretive and sensitive - the interception and redirection of missiles - which according to a badly timed whistleblower's accusations, may not be as solid as investors have been led to believe. Then there's Noble herself, and the struggle that Halifax has in trying to get her to cooperate with the conditions of the court imposed care and therapy orders. Noble's her own worst enemy frequently, maintaining a manic work schedule, alongside some serious depressive episodes, alienating everyone who seems to be trying to help her, and refusing to acknowledge the reality of a situation that keeps changing anyway. Add to that drugs, Hollywood connections, people wandering about shooting guns, and an armed drone attack, and, well it's no exaggeration to say there's a lot going on.

Reading UNBLESSED was a bit of a mixed bag. On the one hand there is so much to this, you'd think it would be moving at a serious pace, juggling enough balls to keep a reader on the edge of their seats. Too often though, it slowed to snail's pace, bogged down in repetitiveness and side lines. Whilst the Halifax / Noble dance was all a bit predictable, the biggest problem for this reader was the way that big things just seemed to disappear into the ether. There is also Noble's tendency to move around a lot, which meant that the action seemed to be constantly packing up and going somewhere else, a metaphor that never quite became clear. Perhaps the biggest problem of all was that there were such big stakes in this mysterious weapons system, that one of the aspects of the plot around this just. never. made. sense. And came and went in the blink of an eye. As that resolution kind of collapsed into place, this reader was left wondering why the very long build up.

Karen Chisholm is one of Australia's leading crime reviewers. She created Aust Crime Fiction in 2006, a terrific resource - please check it out. Karen also reviews for Newtown Review of Books, and has been a judge of the Ned Kelly Awards and Ngaio Marsh Awards. This review was first published on Karen's website; she kindly shares some of her reviews of crime and thriller novels written by Australians and New Zealanders on Crime Watch as well as on Aust Crime Fiction. 

"Plenty of promise for an ongoing series" - review of WOMAN, MISSING

WOMAN, MISSING by Sherryl Clark (HarperCollins, 2024)

Reviewed by Craig Sisterson

Former policewoman Lou Alcott is turning over a new leaf as a private investigator. On her first day she draws two cases helping at-risk women. First there's Diane Paterson, who has apparently left her husband without a word. Who should Lou believe? The charmingly distraught husband, Diane's suspicious parents, or the freezer full of lovingly prepared food left behind?

Then a house security check for an isolated young woman who is convinced her abusive ex is stalking her again turns worrisome when she fails to show up for their meeting. With her protective radar pinging, Lou keeps digging until she unearths chilling evidence that puts her in the hot seat. Suddenly Lou is embroiled in a cat-and-mouse-game where there will only be one survivor... 

After twenty plus years writing dozens of books for children (alongside teaching creative writing at Victoria University Polytechnic in Melbourne) – which recently earned her the 2022 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Children’s Literature – in the past few years Sherryl Clark veered to the darker side with an adult mystery trilogy starring grumpily resourceful amateur sleuth Judi Westerholme.

The first in that engaging series, Trust Me, I’m Dead, was shortlisted for the CWA Debut Dagger (unpublished books), secured Clark a publishing deal, and went on after publication to be longlisted for another CWA Dagger in the UK and the Ngaio Marsh Awards in Clark’s native New Zealand. 

Now in Woman, Missing, Clark introduces another fascinating heroine with plenty of series potential. On her first day working for a private investigations firm, former Melbourne police constable Lou Alcott is tasked with two tricky cases. Diane Paterson has vanished, leaving behind a freezer full of prepared meals for her distressed husband and kids. But her parents are suspicious. Has she run off, been abducted, or worse? Meanwhile, Melinda is a nervous young woman, new in town, who fears her abusive ex in Sydney may have tracked her down across the country. But are Lou’s past dealings with domestic abusers clouding her judgment? They did end her police career.

Then Melinda also goes missing. Is Lou too late to save her? 

At the same time, Lou’s beloved grandfather, a notorious Melbourne ‘legit businessman’ that Lou’s former police colleagues, including her high-ranking and estranged father, view rather differently (ie, a major crime boss in the city) is in grave danger. As are those he cares about, including Lou. 

Clark draws readers in with a solid setup and fascinating heroine, and keeps the pages turning with unobtrusive writing and plenty of action and intrigue alongside a memorable supporting cast. While some characters are starkly evil, many others live in the grey, on both sides of the law. Overall, Woman, Missing is a good read that shows plenty of promise for an ongoing series. Hopefully we’ll see more soon from Lou Alcott, private investigator, and the wider ensemble.

Craig Sisterson is a lawyer turned writer, editor, podcast host, awards judge, and event chair. He's the founder of the Ngaio Marsh Awards, co-founder of Rotorua Noir, author of Macavity and HRF Keating Award-shortlisted non-fiction work SOUTHERN CROSS CRIME, editor of the DARK DEEDS DOWN UNDER anthology series, and writes about books for magazines and newspapers in several countries.

"Intrigue, adrenaline, and great character studies" - review of STORM CHILD

STORM CHILD by Michael Robotham (Sphere, 2024)

Reviewed by Craig Sisterson

Some memories are buried for a reason... The most painful of Evie Cormac's memories have been locked away, ever since she was held prisoner as a child - a child whose rescue captured hearts and headlines.

Forensic psychologist Cyrus Haven's mission is to guide her to something near normality. But today, on a Lincolnshire beach, seventeen bodies wash up in front of them. There is only one survivor, with two women still missing. And Evie's nightmares come roaring back... Whatever happened all those years ago lies at the core of this new tragedy. Because these deaths are no accident. The same dark forces are reaching out, dragging her back into the storm.

Evie must now call upon Cyrus's unique skills, and her own, in their search for the missing pieces of this complex and haunting puzzle. But will that be enough to save them? And who will pay for the past?... 

While Outback Noir has taken hold all over the reading world, thanks to authors like Jane Harper, Chris Hammer, Shelley Burr, and Gabriel Bergmoser (among many others), one giant of modern Australian crime writing has eschewed the rural landscapes of his homeland. In fact, Sydney author Michael Robotham, one of only a handful of authors in history to win multiple CWA Gold Daggers (ie, best crime novel in the English language, from any country) – as well as being the only non-British author, and only author this century to do it – has yet to set any of his 18 terrific novels in Australia.

So Robotham’s latest, Storm Child, the fourth to star forensic psychologist Cyrus Haven and enigmatic ‘human lie detector’ Evie Cormac, opens near the Lincolnshire seaside of England, looking out towards western Europe. When Cyrus and Evie witness a horrifying tragedy as bodies of desperate refugees wash up on the beach, Evie becomes catatonic, overwhelmed by nightmarish flashbacks. Cyrus, who has his own traumatic past and was a protégé of Robotham’s long-time protagonist Joe O’Loughlin, knows Evie was held prisoner as a child, likely trafficked, but not where she came from.

As the pair try to piece together Evie’s splintered memories while Cyrus helps the police deal with ongoing targeting of refugees, it becomes clear that evil deeds past and present are linked. 

While Robotham is a long-time master of thrilling storylines, his novels are built on much more than intrigue and adrenaline. In particular, he has a great touch for character, drawing readers in with the people in the story as much or more than the story itself. 

With the important revelations and character realisations in Storm Child, it’s a landmark novel in an outstanding series (one that’s already earned Robotham his second Gold Dagger, for Good Girl Bad Girl in 2020, and an Ian Fleming Steel Dagger for When She Was Good). Robotham delivers a masterful story that weaves together ripped-from-the-headlines issues of real importance with an entertaining, thought-provoking storyline and characters that make you care, deeply.

Craig Sisterson is a lawyer turned writer, editor, podcast host, awards judge, and event chair. He's the founder of the Ngaio Marsh Awards, co-founder of Rotorua Noir, author of Macavity and HRF Keating Award-shortlisted non-fiction work SOUTHERN CROSS CRIME, editor of the DARK DEEDS DOWN UNDER anthology series, and writes about books for magazines and newspapers in several countries.

Review: THE CARETAKER

THE CARETAKER by Gabriel Bergmoser (HarperCollins, 2023)

Reviewed by Karen Chisholm

An isolated, empty ski resort in the off-season. A woman who doesn't want to be found. A man who may not be who he appears to be. A game of cat and mouse - with deadly consequences. On the run from a controlling husband and his underworld associates in Melbourne, Charlotte has adopted a new identity and found a job as an off-season caretaker in a tiny, deserted alpine resort. Some dangerous people are looking for Charlotte and so she's lying low, tending to the lodges, happy to be alone, but jumping every time a floor creaks or the wind whistles through the empty buildings. 

She's trying to convince herself she's okay, that she got away. But then strange things start happening around the resort. And Charlotte starts to realise that every escape route is being sealed off, one by one. From Gabriel Bergmoser, the master of propulsive, page-turning storytelling, The Caretaker will have readers second-guessing themselves at every turn. What's real and what isn't? Who's dangerous and who isn't? And who will survive?

Gabriel Bergmoser's one of those author's that is building a back catalogue of creepy, tense thrillers full of interesting psychological analysis and, frankly, disturbing scenarios. Which is exactly what you're given in THE CARETAKER.

Charlotte is on the run from a controlling husband and his underworld associates, adopting a new identity and taking on the role of off-season caretaker at a small, deserted alpine resort, way off any beaten track. She's lying low, doing the small maintenance and cleaning jobs required, revelling in the isolation, dealing with the limited communications and jumping at every unexpected noise.

Until strange things start to happen around the resort, and the only staying guest there starts to seem very ominous, especially as her escape routes are disappearing, one by one, and the options for how she's going to survive dwindle before her very eyes.

Needless to say, this is a creepy one. Probably creepy enough to put you off small ski villages for life, to say nothing of being a caretaker of a few under-rented villas and unexpected guests. Basically we're talking a novel that could be seen as a threat to remote area hospitality jobs. Although there's also the potential for this to be very empowering. After all, if Charlotte can survive this, beat the very bad guys, and escape, then she's taken on some seriously stacked against her odds, and won. Which is a very attractive idea, and may just be enough for readers to deal with the fright and press on, if you're not utterly hooked by the narrative in THE CARETAKER in the first place. Which this reader must admit was so engaging it became a couple of sittings read, during daylight I might add, even if it was in a remote place. 

The strengths of this novel are many, it's essentially a psychological thriller with the potential of threat and peril infecting both Charlotte's reactions, and the readers. Charlotte, as the main character, holds up to the focus very well, she's believable and easy to relate to. The sense of place is vivid and very compelling, with the isolation, and wildness of the place nicely reflecting the feelings and responses of Charlotte as she battles an invisible threat, that becomes slowly more solid, and closer than she had hoped when she first disappeared into this remote location.

At this point the remoteness becomes less of a protection and more part of the problem, although there is the possibility, if she's good enough, that she can use that to her own advantage. Whether or not she's completely successful, well you'll have to read the book to find out what happens to Charlotte, and whether she has a future in which to create a new life.

Karen Chisholm is one of Australia's leading crime reviewers. She created Aust Crime Fiction in 2006, a terrific resource - please check it out. Karen also reviews for Newtown Review of Books, and has been a judge of the Ned Kelly Awards and Ngaio Marsh Awards. This review was first published on Karen's website; she kindly shares some of her reviews of crime and thriller novels written by Australians and New Zealanders on Crime Watch as well as on Aust Crime Fiction. 

Guest Review: RESURRECTION

RESURRECTION by Roger Simpson (Simon & Schuster, 2023)

Reviewed by Alyson Baker

Jane Halifax is back in a twisted story of betrayal, where the formidable forensic psychiatrist will discover that the only person you can trust is yourself. A near-fatal car accident left Jane Halifax in a coma, and when she wakes, she has no idea who she is …

Initially comforted by unlikely specters of past cases, Jane has no memory of the accident and is unaware of everyone else’s the police, who believe she was deliberately run off the road; the lawyer, whose files were in her car at the time of the accident -- files he never should have given her; her neurosurgeon, who fears a relapse; and her partner, Tim, who is slowly realizing Jane remembers nothing of the last two years -- including their relationship.

A young woman named Luna is the only one who seems able to bring Jane back to the present. Linked to a thirty-two year old case from Jane’s past, Luna has a quest of her own she can only solve with Jane’s help. But if Jane wants to help her, she first needs to heal, and discovers there are things other than the car accident hampering her recovery …

Lou Jane might finally be making headway with a twenty-year-old case, when an accident sends her spinning into a strange world. Three months after the accident, she is surrounded by “strangers who somehow feel familiar” – are they familiar because she knows them, or just because she has recently got used to them? Are they friends, carers, guards, or gaolers? Is she really ‘Jane’?

The things that usually give us certainty, photographs and mirrors, are treacherous to Jane, and from amongst the characters around her who can she trust? Surely not “Doctor Two-Bob Each Way, Doctor Spin the Wheel and Bet on Red, Doctor Don’t Ask Me – I’m a Neurosurgeon”. And then there are the trips to the spaceship. Disorienting and scary. For Jane, spaces keep changing, getting around is not just a physical but a mental challenge.

I don’t want to say who or what Jane is – the intrigue is in finding out alongside her, and in piecing together the various mysteries she is trying to solve, both professionally and personally. The reader is given clues and guesses some of the answers, but the mystery/thriller angle wasn’t really the focus for me, it was the pleasure of reading about the complexities of the central character, at once damaged and vulnerable and staunch and smart.

I read Resurrection not knowing the Jane Halifax TV series or having read the first book in the series; Resurrection is #2. I am glad that’s how I got to know Jane – with her story for a long time hopping around like her confused mind. It is at once sad, “Lonely. Desolate would be a better description …”, and intriguing, “But how can you tell when a liar is telling the truth?”

Once the murk begins to clear, Jane starts recognising herself, but also recognising that she is no longer the person she thinks she might  have been before the accident. The various mysteries are solved: Why was she always thinking of a 20-year-old TV show? Why did she have recurring vivid memories that made no sense? What where the files she was collecting before the accident, and why was she revisiting that old case? Jane picks up more challenges as she struggles with her lingering amnesia, trusting only her instincts to judge who she should help and who she should remain wary of.

There are real threats to Jane’s safety and some tense moments in Resurrection, and the various mysteries are resolved in an interesting, messy, not black-and-white psychological way. There are lots of good solid characters, and Jane adds humour amidst her trauma: “Well, it’s easy for her to say; she hasn’t lost touch with herself.” She gives people great nicknames in retaliation for them calling her by someone else’s name. She summarises herself: “The transgressive mind is my addiction.” Resurrection is a great and unusual read.!

Alyson Baker is a crime-loving former librarian in Nelson. This review first appeared on her blog, which you can check out here. 

"A kinetic, fascinating tale" - THE PIT review

THE PIT by Peter Papathanasiou (MacLehose Press, 2023)

Reviewed by Craig Sisterson

With DS Manolis on leave in Greece, Senior Constable Sparrow receives a phone call from a man who wants to turn himself in. Bob is sixty-five years old, confined to a Perth nursing home. But thirty years ago, he killed a man in the remote northern Kimberley mining region. He offers to show Sparrow where the body is, but there's a Sparrow must travel north with him under the guise of being his carer.

They are accompanied on the drive by another nursing home Luke, thirty years old, paralysed in a motorbike accident. As they embark on their road trip through the guts of Western Australia, pursued by outback police and adrenaline-soaked miners, Sparrow beings to suspect that Bob's desire to head north may have sinister motivations. Is Luke being held against his will? And what lies in store for them when they reach their goal?

I was not alone in being mightily impressed by Canberra author Peter Papathanasiou’s hard-hitting 2021 debut The Stoning, where the brutal death of a rural schoolteacher incited a terrific Outback Noir that delivered a fascinating storyline while exploring Australia’s treatment of refugees alongside a clear-eyed look at hypocrisies old and new and the uglier side of modern life in ‘the Lucky Country’.

That book also introduced Detective Sergeant Georgias ‘George’ Manolis, a big city cop sent to his childhood hometown to help the locals investigate the death and douse escalating reprisals, and local Aboriginal constable ‘Sparrow’. In Papathanasiou’s third and latest novel, The Pit, Manolis is on leave in Greece, so it is Sparrow that receives a call from a killer that wants to turn himself in.

Bob wants to make a deal. In his mid-sixties, he’s relatively young compared to some of his fellow residents in a Perth nursing home. Though he’s not the youngest there. Maybe Bob’s paying for past sins. Decades ago he killed someone in the remote mining region of north Kimberley. He offers to show Sparrow where the body is, saying he’s unable to find it without going there himself.

Sparrow isn’t sure, while thinking the juice may be worth the squeeze. But there are a couple of hitches: Sparrow must pretend to be Bob’s carer as they travel north, and they’re joined on the road trip by another nursing home resident: Luke, a 30-year-old who was paralysed in a motorbike crash. What is Bob’s real motivation to take Sparrow deep into the dusty back-blocks of Western Australia, and why is the surly Luke along for the ride? What secrets may come to light, if they ever reach their destination and somehow manage to survive a series of misadventures and dangerous encounters?

Papathanasiou delivers a kinetic, fascinating tale that may divide readers when it comes to whether it surpasses or falls short of his excellent debut. Australian social history and harsh landscapes provide a stark backdrop to the mystery of Bob’s quest, his past, and his intentions. As well as the action sparked by clashes the trio face, and sometimes instigate, with an array of humanity that roams the lonely roadways of Western Australia, eking out a living in various ways.

A very good read that centres an indigenous character while exploring varying prejudices and their real-world impact in times present and past. I’m curious to see what Papathanasiou delivers next.

Craig Sisterson is a lawyer turned writer, editor, podcast host, awards judge, and event chair. He's the founder of the Ngaio Marsh Awards, co-founder of Rotorua Noir, author of Macavity and HRF Keating Award-shortlisted non-fiction work SOUTHERN CROSS CRIME, editor of the DARK DEEDS DOWN UNDER anthology series, and writes about books for magazines and newspapers in several countries.

"Unabashed playfulness" - review of EVERYONE ON THIS TRAIN IS A SUSPECT

EVERYONE ON THIS TRAIN IS A SUSPECT by Benjamin Stevenson (Michael Joseph, Feb 2024)

Reviewed by Craig Sisterson

When the Australian Mystery Writers' Society invited me to their crime-writing festival aboard the Ghan, the famous train between Darwin and Adelaide, I was hoping for some inspiration for my second book. Fiction, this time: I needed a break from real people killing each other. Obviously, that didn't pan out.

The program is a who's who of crime writing royalty: the debut writer (me!), the forensic science writer, the blockbuster writer, the legal thriller writer, the literary writer, the psychological suspense writer. But when one of us is murdered, six authors quickly turn into five detectives. Together, we should know how to solve a crime. Or commit one ... But how do you catch a killer, when all your suspects know how to get away with murder?

After a couple of solid mysteries to begin his oeuvre, Australian author and stand-up comedian Benjamin Stevenson hit an absolute grand slam with his startlingly clever and absolutely delightful third at-bat, Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone. Stevenson gave himself a high degree of difficulty too, setting up his homage to classic mysteries with the narrator Ernie Cunningham, a ‘how-to’ writer turned recorder of events, outlining the fair play rules and Golden Age ‘Ten Commandments’ at the off, while even telling us on what pages deaths will occur. Like Houdini, Stevenson tied himself up, then proceeded to dazzle us with his sleight of hand and storytelling.

How do you follow-up a book like that, which delighted in longstanding tropes and genre ‘rules’, danced with meta while being brilliantly structured and told, and was both timeless and fresh?

Somehow, Stevenson has done it again with Everyone on This Train is a Suspect, a superb mystery that manages to surprise and delight even when we think we know how the game is played now. This time around Ernie has been invited to a unique crime writing festival, which will take place aboard the famous Ghan train from Darwin to Adelaide, slicing through the iconic Red Centre of Australia. A trip to celebrate 50 years of the Australian Mystery Writers’ Society. Rubbing shoulders with mystery writers, agents, editors, and keen readers, Ernie hope he may be inspired in some way for his stalled second book. It’s not so easy, he finds, to come up with fictional murders rather than just retelling the true stories from behind the scenes of his own family’s headline-grabbing violence.

He really doesn’t want to have to return his advance for an unwritten novel.

Ernie, the debut writer, is joined on the programme by authors of forensic science mysteries, legal thrillers, blockbuster bestsellers, psychological suspense, and even a noted literary author. A combustible mix. But when one of the writers is killed (obviously not Ernie, or how would he tell the tale? Fair play, after all), the other five turn into detectives trying to solve the crime.

Then again, with a whole group of people gathered who know lots of ways to commit and hide crimes, and how to get away with murder (at least fictionally), where does the danger truly lie?

Put simply, Everyone on This Train is a Suspect is sublime. It’s ridonkuously clever and brilliantly structured, with Stevenson demonstrating a Penn and Teller level of storytelling magic – giving away some of the secrets, showing you how a trick is done, yet still managing to surprise and amaze. There are lots of twists and turns, both in the mystery storyline and the relationships between characters, including Ernie and his amour Juliette, the former owner of the resort where the Cunningham family killings occurred. Juliette also wrote a book on those events, but chose to accompany Ernie on the Ghan trip even though she’s not on the festival programme herself.

There’s an unabashed playfulness, almost tongue in cheek, to Stevenson’s storyline and storytelling, where he’s both honouring and parodying classic Golden Age mysteries. Ernie offers clues along the way, such as the number of times he’ll mention the killer or killers’ name, updating the count at times for our benefit, and things once again get a little meta, while also being dosed with some high-octane action reminiscent of Western movies as the Ghan chugs through the Australian desert.

Along the way Stevenson seems to show us and his protagonist that death is not just a clever puzzle to solve - it has far greater impact than that. He does this via an extraordinarily clever puzzle, of course. It’s early on in the year, but Everyone on This Train is a Suspect may very well end up one of the best mystery reads of the year; a smile-inducing, brain-whirring magic trick, with heart.

Craig Sisterson is a lawyer turned writer, editor, podcast host, and event chair. He's the founder of the Ngaio Marsh Awards, co-founder of Rotorua Noir festival, author of Macavity and HRF Keating Award-shortlisted non-fiction work SOUTHERN CROSS CRIME, series editor of the DARK DEEDS DOWN UNDER anthology, and writes about books for magazines and newspapers in several countries.

Review: BOXED

BOXED by Stephen Johnson (Clan Destine Press, 2023)

Reviewed by Harold Bernard

A captive woman, a lover betrayed, an idealistic journalist.

Three women - their fates strangely aligned by a killer obsessed with retribution. Melbourne Spotlight journalist Kim Prescott is promoted to the TV reporting staff after the program's expose of the Tugga's Mob murders in Australia and New Zealand was a ratings bonanza.

The TV show's high profile now attracts stories. One anonymous tip-off will horrify the nation all over again. Despite the scandal that nearly closed the greyhound racing industry, it seems live baiting is still going on. The trail leads Kim and her camera crew to the Victorian gold-mining ghost town of Steiglitz. They find horrific scenes at a trainer's starting boxes - but not at all what they expect.

Meanwhile, production assistant Jo becomes the pawn of an activist with a vendetta, testing whether her loyalty lies with him or her current affairs team. And, most desperate of all, hope finally flickers for a woman who scratches the record of her captivity into a cellar wall..

This story is set amid the greyhound racing scene in Melbourne. It is full of action involving murder with a chainsaw, poisonous snakes, bodies crammed into greyhound starting boxes, the activities of a TV investigative journalist crew, and a prisoner scratching a record of the passing days on the wall of her prison. The scenario is complicated by a protest group seeking to end greyhound racing.

Kim Prescott, a reporter for the Spotlight, receives an anonymous tipoff that live baiting is still occurring in Melbourne, so she and crew go to the old gold mining town of Steiglitz, hoping to find evidence. What they do find crammed into a greyhound starting box is a body savagely butchered with a chainsaw. Other murders take place as the story unfolds.

The book shows the inner workings of a news office in the Melbourne television industry, on one hand and the characters who make up the dog racing fraternity on the other. It shows a close knowledge of the greyhound racing industry, Melbourne and the surrounding  district. 

The author uses short chapters, rapidly changing scenes, and characters that develop as the story builds to a climax. The story is very fast paced and contains a lot of detail forcing me to pay close attention to the book. I liked the book and would recommend it to all.. 

This review was first published in FlaxFlower reviews, which focuses on in-depth reviews of New Zealand books of all kinds, and is reprinted here with the kind permission of Flaxflower founder and editor Bronwyn Elsmore. 

Review: DIRT TOWN

DIRT TOWN by Hayley Scrivenor (Macmillan, 2022)

Reviewed by Craig Sisterson

On a sweltering Friday afternoon in Durton, best friends Ronnie and Esther leave school together. Esther never makes it home.

Ronnie's going to find her, she has a plan. Lewis will help. Their friend can't be gone, Ronnie won't believe it.

Detective Sergeant Sarah Michaels can believe it, she has seen what people are capable of. She knows more than anyone how, in a moment of weakness, a person can be driven to do something they never thought possible.

Lewis can believe it too. But he can't reveal what he saw that afternoon at the creek without exposing his own secret.

While deadly deeds in remote Australian small-towns surrounded by heat-struck landscapes have become more familiar to international readers in recent years thanks to the likes of Jane Harper, Chris Hammer, and Gabriel Bergmoser - not to mention the Quiet King of Aussie Crime, the great Garry Disher - newcomer Hayley Scrivenor shows there’s still plenty of mileage and fresh takes left in ‘Outback Noir’. 

Scrivenor’s excellent debut DIRT TOWN (DIRT CREEK in the United States, where it's published by Flatiron Books) is an intimate portrait of a community torn asunder by the disappearance of 12-year-old Esther Bianchi, told via kaleidoscopic narration.

Readers are plunged into Durton, a sunburnt rural town of ‘dirt and hurt’, via the eyes of Sydney detective and missing persons expert Sarah Michaels, called in to investigate Esther’s disappearance, along with several other narrative viewpoints, including Esther’s mother Constance, Esther’s two school friends Veronica “Ronnie” Thompson and Lewis Kennard, and an omniscient ‘We’: a Greek chorus of unidentified Durton children.

This latter device, along with several other aspects including Michaels’ sexuality and relationship history, bring a fresh perspective to an increasingly familiar if fascinating backdrop. But the greatest triumph of DIRT TOWN aka DIRT CREEK is the exquisite characterisation, as Scrivenor deftly brings a variety of townsfolk to vivid life, along with the intricate tapestry of their connections, secrets, feuds, prejudices, and (mis)perceptions. 

In such a tiny town, people know so much about their neighbours, but can be oh-so-wrong about them too. Esther’s disappearance is the violent tremor that sheers open the dusty veneer of Durton, and as Detective Sergeant Michaels and her partner Smithy dig into the cracks, they’re confronted with a clear suspect – Esther’s father – along with plenty of other wrongdoing. 

But why is Esther’s friend Lewis reluctant to share what he saw on the day of Esther’s disappearance? And what is really going on behind some of the town’s closed doors? 

Scrivenor deftly juggles her multiple narrators, building tension and her piercing portrait of the town. 

A character-centric crime novel imbued with hurt and heart.

Craig Sisterson is a lawyer turned features writer from New Zealand, now living in London. He’s interviewed hundreds of crime writers and talked about the genre on national radio, top podcasts, and onstage at festivals on three continents. He's been a judge of Australian, Scottish, and NZ crime writing awards, and is co-founder of Rotorua Noir. He's the author of the HRF Keating award-shortlisted non-fiction book SOUTHERN CROSS CRIME, and the series editor of acclaimed anthology DARK DEEDS DOWN UNDER. You can heckle him on Twitter.