Review: THE GAMBLER

THE GAMBLER by JP Pomare (Hachette, 2026)

Reviewed by Karen Chisholm

PI Vince Reid is visiting an old friend when he's offered a case he can't refuse: Why did a respected local woman open fire at a political rally, killing a promising young university graduate? It's easy money, he's told. A sure thing.

But as Reid delves further into the case, the stakes are higher than he imagined. There are invisible players pulling the strings. Will he walk away a winner or pay for the ultimate gamble with his life?

Any new novel from JP Pomare needs to be approached with caution. You're going to have to make sure that you've cleared your calendar, stacked up the pre-made meals, and maybe set some alarms to remind you of the animal medication schedules and feeding rounds, because I can just about guarantee that the "well I don't know what's going on here" is rapidly going to suck you in and hang onto you until the final page.

He's a deceptive writer, this man. Setting up a story in THE GAMBLER that started out almost gently, creating a few doubts that the planning mentioned above would be required (luckily I've been here before), it's a slow builder. Private Investigator, Vince Reid, is visiting an old friend when he's offered a case he can't refuse, and his friend can't do. Maybe therein lies the reason for the gentle deceptive start, Reid also thinks this one is going to be a bit of a doddle - find out why a young woman was shot at a political rally. Why she was targeted by a seemingly respectable older local woman who drove into that rally and fired, seemingly directly, at a young woman she didn't know or have any connection to whatsoever. The gunwoman herself was killed almost immediately afterwards by a young man who did actually have a connection to the victim, but he's elusive, hard to track down, hard to understand, increasingly hard to explain who or exactly what he is to do with the whole thing. It's as Reid tries to understand his part in the main that the connections get even more murky, and the layers in this deceptively chilling tale of manipulation, control, money, power and cruelty start to emerge. 

From small towns, to online communities, the Amish and working class families who just want to know what the hell happened, Reid starts out on an investigation that seems like it would be easy money, only to find it's anything but. In fact, it gets more and more dangerous as it gets more and more complicated, and it gets less and less clear who he can trust, and just how high the stakes are.

THE GAMBLER is the second novel in the PI Vince Reid series, the first being THE WRONG WOMAN. Both these novels are set in the US, in small towns dealing with what seems unimaginable, and turns out to be anything but. As is also often the way with his novels, victims are complicated, motivations are messy, and outcomes are always beset by edge cases and questions unanswered. Reid is a perfect character around which to centre such a complicated world, as is his friend and mentor - both of whom are either hiding, dodging or dealing with a lot of personal stuff. 

Clever and fascinating, utterly unputdownable, THE GAMBLER is standalone in story, but readers would benefit from reading the first novel simply because Reid is a character in whose company time is not wasted.

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 regular 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 New Zealanders and Australians on Crime Watch as well as on Aust Crime Fiction. 

Review: THE BOAT SHED

THE BOAT SHED by Robyn Cotton (Hatherop Books, 2024)

Reviewed by Carolyn McKenzie

An unidentified young girl is found dead in suspicious circumstances in an abandoned boat shed on Rangitoto Island. Detective Frank Smythe of the Maritime Police teams up with Detective Anahera Raupara of CIB to investigate. There is more to this than first thought after a second body is discovered. Anahera, while dealing with her own family crisis, finds herself emotionally involved. In a race against the clock to find the culprit before the body count rises, they find themselves delving into Auckland’s darker side and uncover an evil that has tentacles that stretch across the globe.

Set in Auckland, The Boat Shed follows The Jibe and is the next major case for Detectives Smythe and Raupara.

If The Boat Shed were an item on the TV news or in a newspaper, it would come with a warning: Some viewers/readers may find this content disturbing.

And the content of The Boat Shed is disturbing. The story revolves around the importation of children to service an apparently flourishing sex industry in Auckland. When a dead girl is found in a Rangitoto Island boat shed and another is found drowned a short distance away, Detective Frank Smythe of Auckland’s Maritime Police is called in to investigate.

The girls’ autopsies reveal prolonged deprivation and sexual abuse. Frank works with Detective Anahera Raupara from the CIB in a bid to identify the girls (aged 10 and 12 and both Nepali) and discover who is responsible for their deaths.

The investigation is both land and sea based. There are raids on illegal brothels, an adult nightclub, container ships and shady import companies. As well, Frank Smythe looks into the yachting community that frequents the bays around Rangitoto Island and studies tides and currents to determine how the deaths are connected. Solving this is a huge operation and The Boat Shed shows how, especially where children are involved, a number of investigative units will put their rivalries aside and work as a team to see the perpetrators punished.

Robyn Cotton’s knowledge of Nepal and the work being done there to save vulnerable children from being trafficked in the sex trade has inspired this book and it has been written with great sensitivity while at the same time the police work moves along at a good pace. Cotton reports that, according to India Today, 50 Nepali women are trafficked every day.

As a convenient sub-story line, Anahera discovers that her teenage son has been exploring pornography with his school mates, giving Cotton the means to drum home the evils of sexual exploitation.

So yes, The Boat Shed’s theme is disturbing, and all the characters involved in the investigation are justifiably upset and angered by what they discover, and highly motivated to solve the mystery. However, at times I found their indignation and sorrow somewhat laboured and repetitive. Less frequent expressions of grief and disgust would make this a tighter, more compact read..

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: EMPATHY

EMPATHY by Bryan Walpert (Makaro Press, 2025)

Reviewed by Alyson Baker

Marketing executive Alison Morris bets her reputation on a project to sell empathy in a perfume bottle. Her husband, Jim, is inspired to try a similar thing in a game he’s developing—sinking all their money into EmPath, where people progress by learning to understand one another without direct communication. 

All at once Alison’s fragrance develops dangerous effects and Jim’s game falters in the market, then the chemist working on the perfume project vanishes. His son, David, seems to be the only one looking for him. A widower with two children, David is a man of routine who just wants to get on with his life, but his love for his father takes him into a murky world where empathy can be bought and sold and can lead to murder.  . 

David Geller is a father of two, Gemma and Finn. He is  a grieving widower. He is an “upper-level chemistry and biology” teacher. He is a compulsive organiser “a little OCD”. When David’s father, Edward, goes missing, things get very messy when he turns into an amateur sleuth. External to his endeavours is the backstory of his father, a chemist the reader comes to like through a brief introductory chapter, where he is in a very bad situation. And there is also the narrative of the predicament of Alison Morris, an ambitious manager in a perfume corporation, and her dream-driven husband Jim, a gaming software developer.

What draws all these people together, as you would expect from the title, is their ability or lack of it, to empathise with others. It is a layered story, and very current – David’s teenage daughter is traumatised not just by the death of her mother, but from being the target of online bullying – that stark example of a lack of empathy. David in his grief has become quite insular, oblivious to the hurt he may be causing a long-time friend.    

As well as the plot being moved along by the stories around David, there are his online experiences of playing Jim’s game: EmPath. The game allows both an explanation of empathy and the irony of an online anonymous game designed to engender understanding between people – a game where your interactions are distant and with avatars. There is also the nice contrast of the game’s use of the choice of self-sacrifice for others, and the reality of being confronted with that choice in real life.

The reader gets a feel for maybe why EmPath is not a sure-fire hit, and that, plus Jim’s business partner being an empathy-less ratbag, leads to loan shark collection guys entering the story. Guys with an interest in any way to recoup their money. The aim of Jim’s game is also that of Alison’s new project; the creation of a fragrance that will engender empathy. Alison had contracted Edward to develop the formula.

What a great idea – a fragrance that creates what the world so desperately needs – people to understand the ‘other’s’ point of view. The magic of Empathy is in its so convincingly showing that whatever the world needs for good can so easily be weaponised for bad. Empathy turns into not just a good mystery story, but an exciting thriller.

The plotting is excellent, when I feared towards the end it wasn’t going to round out, it did so in a satisfying way. And in keeping with the theme of the book, the  characterisations are totally engaging. You understand all the motivation, the mistakes, and the aspirations of the characters. Even David’s eleven-year-old son Finn adds to the other characters and to the plot. Emphasising the question of how much we ever understand another person, or merely create them in our mind, is the very present character of David’s dead wife throughout the book.

If all this sounds a bit intellectual and heavy, Empathy is a very entertaining read: “for a detective he made a pretty good science teacher.” As in his previous novel, Entanglement, Bryan Walpert has given us in Empathy a wonderfully complex novel packed with important ideas and heart-felt emotions.

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

"More festive than mystery" - review of MURDER UNDER THE MISTLETOE

MURDER UNDER THE MISTLETOE by Richard Coles (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2024)

Reviewed by Craig Sisterson

It is Christmas Day and at Champton Rectory, Canon Daniel Clement and his mother Audrey are joined by the residents and guests of the big house to drink, eat and be merry.

At the festive feast, peace and goodwill prevail.

Until two meet under the mistletoe. One of them falls down dead. And Daniel suspects murder has returned to Champton...

Can Daniel and Detective Sergeant Neil Vanloo solve the crime and catch the Christmas killer? 

Last year, the Reverend Richard Coles, who seems like a really lovely man (having seen him at festivals and events, etc), got all doubly trendy by adding the 'writing a Christmas book' arrow to his 'TV celebrities writing crime novels' bow, so to speak. A publicist's dream, perhaps...

I do like to read a few Christmas-themed books around the holiday season, including crime novels, and have really enjoyed the likes of The Mistletoe Murder And Other Stories by P.D. James and Christmas is Murder: A Chilling Short Story Collection by Val McDermid in recent years.

Funnily enough, in each case those books from two Queens of Crime contained multiple short stories or novellas, sort of like lovely little stocking fillers for the season. High quality though, very good reads, the titular tales and others included. Well worth reading.

So rather than being put off by the slim (140 pages or so) nature of Richard Coles festive offering, Murder Under the Mistletoe, I was intrigued, and really looking forward to a lovely one-sitting read, digging into a festive mystery.

Sadly, while Coles does a pretty good job with the 'festive', he faceplants with the mystery.

Most of Murder Under the Mistletoe lathers readers in oft-fascinating, sometimes overdone details of the parish preparations by Canon Daniel Clement and his formidable mother Audrey, for the festive services and a stress-inducing Christmas Dinner that unexpectedly grows in size and importance when the local Lord and his family are added to the guest list.

Rather than an early dead body that provokes a fascinating investigation full of suspects, motives, red herrings, and revelations, Coles delays the death itself (trumpeted in the title and blurb) til very late in the piece - which in of itself isn't fatal to a good crime read, but unfortunately he's compressed the 'investigation' to such a point its nearly non-existent, erasing may of the reasons a lot of readers may pick up a 'festive mystery'.

There's little to no mystery (I actually picked the killer before the murder even occurred), and most things surrounding the crime are fairly obvious. Coles serves up some wit or charm with his characters, and big fans of his ongoing series may enjoy spending some more time with the regulars in a festive setting, but overall Murder Under the Mistletoe feels like a short story idea that could have been great at 15-25 pages but instead was stretched out to 140 or so.

One for the ardent Coles fans, perhaps, not first-timers to his oeuvre.

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 JIBE

THE JIBE by Robyn Cotton (Hatherop Books, 2024)

Reviewed by Carolyn McKenzie

Ella Hampton makes a mayday call from Aurora on the Hauraki Gulf saying her husband has been lost overboard during a jibe manoeuvre. A body identified as Dean Hampton washes up with a gash to the head and other injuries. The coroner rules it an accident.

Amy Fagin, Dean's sister, while dealing with her recent diagnosis of young-onset Parkinson's disease, suspects something is amiss. Determined to find the truth about her brother's fate, she convinces Frank Smythe, of the Maritime Police Unit, to investigate the case further. Frank partners with Anahera Raupara to determine what really happened aboard Aurora.

Sailing back to Auckland after a few days on Great Barrier Island, Dean Hampton is lost overboard. His wife, Ella, is the only crew member and her mayday call sets a search in motion. Several days later Dean’s body is found with significant injuries probably caused by a propeller blade and a head injury which ties in with Ella’s account of Dean being hit on the head by the boom as the yacht changed direction. The coroner’s decision that it was an accident is widely accepted, although anyone who knew Dean is surprised that he wasn’t wearing a life jacket. Among the mourners at the loved and respected dentist’s funeral are his sister Amy, and Frank Smythe who had sailed with Dean many years ago. Now, as a detective in Auckland’s Maritime Police Unit, Frank also accepts that it was an accident until Amy contacts him to say there are some things which don’t add up. Could it have been murder?

What follows unwinds as a cunningly constructed plot which seesaws between the certainty that Ella must be innocent to no, she must be guilty, but then how did she do it? I can imagine readers with a sailing background joining Frank in calculating how winds and tides impacted the marine tragedy.

The story clips along at a good pace and is hard to put down, with any hint of the solution held back until the very last pages. 

Sailing on the Hauraki Gulf is central to the story but the terminology is so well explained that non-sailors won’t have any trouble understanding what supposedly happened and what really happened. Great Barrier Island, Waiheke, Westhaven Marina and Sea Cleaners all play their part in this mystery along with the police launch Deodar III. The concept of setting a lot of the action in the Gulf rather than onshore is a refreshing novelty.

The Jibe is a novel about Kiwis doing things that we can all relate to: in spite of not being close to her sister-in-law, Amy puts her all into catering for the visitors who flock to Ella’s place to pay their respects after Dean is killed. Amy is less stoic than Ella – her grief is heightened by her young-onset Parkinson’s disease and the book discreetly informs readers of what living with this illness is like and answers some FAQs about it.

Given the essentially kiwi nature of this novel, I was at first puzzled by Cotton’s choice of jibe rather than the British English gybe to describe the fatal manoeuvre. There isn’t a lot of US English in the book, so when there is, it grates – turn off the faucet, instead of tap. However, jibe has other meanings besides the sailing one and these sit well with how the plot unfolds. To jibe with means to agree with and as the story moves along, various accounts and theories of what happened to Dean certainly don’t jibe with each other. As well, to make a jibe at means to taunt and there is plenty of that in the lies and the surprising truths that lay a false trail throughout. 

The Jibe is Cotton’s first book in the crime fiction genre and I’m looking forward to reading more from her.

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. 

"Excellent storyteller with knack for atypical protagonists" - review of BLACK AS DEATH

BLACK AS DEATH by Lilja Sigurðardóttir, translated by Lorenza Garcia (Orenda Books, 2025)

Reviewed by Craig Sisterson

When the chief suspect in the disappearance of Áróra's sister is found dead, and Áróra's new financial investigation leads to the street where her sister was last seen, she is drawn into a shocking case that threatens everything. A three-year-old claims she is the reincarnation of Áróra's sister, Ísafold, and knows details of her death that have never been made public. Is it a hoax, or could there be a more sinister explanation?

As Áróra delves deeper, she uncovers a web of secrets and lies, forcing her to confront her own guilt and the possibility that she never really knew her sister at all. With the help of her boyfriend, Daniel, and her eccentric friend, Lady Gúgúlú, Áróra must unravel the truth before it's too late. But as the lines between the past and present blur, Áróra finds herself in a race against time to save not only herself but also the memory of her sister. 

While Icelandic screenwriter, playwright and crime novelist Lilja Sigurdardottir brings the curtain down (for now, at least) on her award-winning Áróra Investigates series with this gripping fifth instalment. 

A few years after returning to Iceland to search for her estranged sister, financial investigator Áróra is forced to confront some hard truths after Bjorn, the abusive boyfriend and chief suspect in her sister’s disappearance, is found dead, folded into a suitcase in a volcanic fissure. What now?

When Áróra’s investigation into a strangely profitable coffee chain leads to the very street her sister Ísafold was last seen, her search for answers see hers tumbling into a dangerous Europol case.

As Áróra and her police detective boyfriend Daniel probe into the darker sides of the Icelandic community, readers also experience Ísafold’s life in the months leading up to her disappearance.

An excellent storyteller with a knack for atypical female protagonists, Sigurdardottir doesn’t shy away from the trauma and complexities of domestic violence, as Ísafold struggles with her love for, and fear of, Bjorn. While the climax to Isafold’s narrative seems inevitable, Sigurdardottir masterfully keeps the tension high, playing with what we and Áróra know, or think we do.

A fine slice of Nordic Noir that will likely have even more impact if you’ve read some or all of the preceding four books in what is an excellent series. 

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: OKIWI BROWN

OKIWI BROWN by Cristina Sanders (The Cuba Press, 2024)

Reviewed by Karen Chisholm

The Burke and Hare anatomy murders of 1828 terrify Edinburgh, until Burke is hanged and Hare disappears. Over a decade later, in the early days of New Zealand colonial settlement, a whaler washes up on the eastern shores of Port Nicholson. He calls himself Ōkiwi Brown, sets up a pub with an evil reputation and takes in a woman abandoned on his beach. Nearby, children sing dark nursery rhymes of murder.

One afternoon, Õkiwi is visited by a pair of ex-soldiers, a bosun looking for a fight, and itinerant worker William Leckie with his young daughter, Mary. When a body is discovered on the beach, it could be that a drunken man has drowned. But perhaps the gathered witnesses know something more.

Cristina Sanders is a new to me author who has written a number of books in the past along the same lines of ŌKIWI BROWN - a fictionalised version of historical events that incorporate early tales (tall and true) of Aotearoa. 

This story is told in a series of anecdotes, incorporating the story of a man, a waler who washed up on the eastern shores of Port Nicholson many years ago, in the early days of colonial settlement. He sets himself up with a pub and makes a home with a woman found abandoned on the nearby beach, quickly developing a reputation for evil and nasty going's on. 

The set up to this is an unusual one, perhaps not so out of the ordinary for Cristina Sanders if the blurbs for her other books (MRS JEWELL AND THE WRECK OF THE GENERAL GRANT, JERNINGHAM and DISPLACED) are anything to go by, although this one appears to be the only novel that so directly connects the possibility of past and present murders, and a potential character from history. 

Told with incredible strength, and a profound sense of place, ŌKIWI BROWN never shies away from the intrinsic evil of that unknown waler, or the difficulties of life in the new colony, whilst weaving in enough of the story of Burke and Hare to give the assumption of identity some credence. 

Overall it's well depicted, although populated by a lot of characters and some very disparate stories. All in all, it was increasingly disconcerting to think about the possibility of who else washed up on what shores in the days of very limited communications.

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 regular 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 New Zealanders and Australians on Crime Watch as well as on Aust Crime Fiction. 

"Full throttle thriller, well written" - review of NOBODY'S HERO

NOBODY'S HERO by MW Craven (Little, Brown, Oct 2024)

Reviewed by Craig Sisterson

When a shocking murder and abduction on the streets of London leads investigators to him, Ben Koenig has no idea at first why the highest echelons of the CIA would need his help. But then he realises he knows the woman who carried out the killings. Ten years earlier, without being told why, he was tasked with helping her disappear.

Far from being a deranged killer, she is the gatekeeper of a secret that could take down the West, so for years she has been in hiding. Until now. And if she has resurfaced, the danger may be closer and more terrifying than anyone can imagine.

So Ben Koenig has to find her before it's too late. But Ben suffers from a syndrome which means he can't feel fear. He doesn't always know when he should walk away, or when he's leading others into danger...

While I've really enjoyed some of MW Craven's excellent crime novels starring DS Washington Poe and civilian analyst Tilly Bradshaw - last year's The Mercy Chair was one of my top reads of 2024 - I hadn't read Fearless, Craven's then-standalone thriller that introduced Ben Koenig, a former US Marshall turned ghost of a man; a man who couldn't feel fear in the way normal humans do. 

So I went into Nobody's Hero, the sequel, not knowing quite what to expect. Overall, it was a highly compelling, page-whirring read. A little different in style - more full-throttle thriller with a shade less character development or layers compared to the Tilly and Poe books, while still being well written. 

And involving huge stakes. Save the world kind of matters, compared to Poe's more local investigations. Speckled too with memorable, if at times over-the-top, characters. Echoes of 007. 

The reappearance of the woman Koenig helped vanish ties to 'the Acacia Avenue Protocol'. In a CIA safe is a list of four names. Koenig is the only one still alive. But he has no clue what the Acacia Avenue Protocol is, or why he's on the top secret list. At first appearance, the nomadic Koenig also doesn't seem like the kind of operative to task with such a mission. But he knows that if the woman has resurfaced then something must be very, very wrong. Sent to London to pick up the trail, Koenig gets sucked into a globe-trotting, action-packed quest taking him from Scotland to New York to Nevada. While dodging or dealing with some very dangerous individuals, including a cabal of corrupt cops, and a peculiar hitman. 

With Nobody's Hero, Craven crafts a master class in action thrillers: lots of intensity, lots of movement, high stakes, interesting characters, an intricate plots and some wonderful set pieces. Koenig is an intriguing hero - even if he feels like nobody's idea of a hero - and the surrounding cast, including frenemy Jen Draper, add extra colour and intrigue. Other than blowing the budget with some spectacular set pieces, Nobody's Hero would likely translate very well to the screen. 

For now though, at least we can all enjoy a ripsnorter of a read. 

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.