In the starkness and wild of the Victorian coastal countryside, a seemingly straightforward murder is committed. Detective Joe Cashin, who is in recovery from a mentally and physically scarring encounter on the job, pushes through the veneer of simplicity, and is plunged into a dark, complex crime...

If this was written by a middle-class douchebag with all the observational skill but zero percent of the humour, it would be any Ian Fleming book.

The fat man of crime is back - in a tale of word games, murder, mayhem, and divine intervention.

Joey Perrone wants revenge on her husband for trying to kill her for no good reason. Her husband, Chaz, wants to get rich and stay that way, by keeping his dirty little un-environmental secret. Can Joey get her husband back and save what's left of the Florida Everglades?

Cover

A rather lovely blue-green photograph of a body silhouetted in water, under some understated silver text. Nicer than the library's hardcover, which was a bland white thing with cartography and so forth.

Why do I do it to myself? No, really, why? The only saving grace is that it was over in a couple of hours... oh yes, and I get a kick out of reviewing trash every now and again.

A rollicking adventure starring Peter Pascoe, about blue movies, dubiously moralled Kinema Clubs, even more dubiously moralled girls, the women’s liberation movement, and whether or not the dentist did it, orchestrated by the fat and brilliant Superintendent Dalziel.

If this was an egg, it would be a curate’s egg.

If this was a film, it would be Miami Blues, starring Sir Alec Baldwin.

If The Shanghai Murders taught me one thing, it was this: David Rotenberg makes me rethink how I felt about author John Burdett. For those of you who didn't read my review of Bangkok Tattoo, I was faintly worried about the authenticity of Burdett's writing as an Asian character. Forget it.

If this was about Big Brother, rather than UK Idol, and marginally less sucky, it would be called Dead Famous, the author's previous literary nadir.

Meet Camilla MacPhee, crotchety, cat-hating, legal representative for victims, who winds up representing a murder defendant. It wasn’t a bad yarn, but I only read it a week or so ago and I’ve already forgotten the particulars. It passed the time, but it has a general sense of ho-hum about it. What I do remember was that the story didn’t take itself too seriously, which is a good quality.

This may be Val McDermid’s most famous book—it’s been widely acclaimed and televised, and as I recall it was a big hit on the Australian ABC when it came out as a mini series. And I can see why. It has a touch of Thomas Harris about it; macabre, graphic, tense, thrilling... but I thought The Wire In The Blood beat Silence Of The Lambs hands down.

I do like Val McDermid. Maybe it’s because her books have that lurid thriller front cover vibe but manage to be a cut above most of the others. Maybe it’s because her main characters avoid stereotyping by being lovably dysfunctional and uptightly British at the same time. Maybe it’s because she just writes a bang up yarn.

I was pleasantly surprised by The Return Of The Dancing Master. I guess from the cover I was expecting a pulp thriller of the most noxious and basic kind, with a name selected for whimsy and to sucker in people like me. What I DIDN’T look at was the author’s name... Henning Mankell. Turns out he’s Swedish. Who knew? Anyway, more to the point, the book was actually originally written in Swedish, and then translated into English. Which gives the whole experience less of a thriller feeling and more of a smugly-reading-foreign-text feeling. Which was nice.

As I have stated unequivocally in many a previous review, I do love British novels. The crime thriller ones have a sort of depth and an element of class to them that is undiscovered to all but the best of American authors. Maybe it’s because mysteries seem like things that should happen in the rain and fog and gloom and these things all happen naturally in the United Kingdom. I think it’s also that sly, dry wit that British authors seem born with. That ability to make fun of oneself and the world. Australians have it too, but the Americans are just all a bit too serious. With these profound thoughts in mind, Dirty Tricks is no exception to an excellent display of British wit, and once again proves the rule—those Brits know what they’re on about when they write a good suspense yarn.

The Black Dahlia and the last book I reviewed, Eureka, have some interesting superficial similarities. Firstly, they are both set, for at least part of the time, in the mid 1940s. They are both set in Los Angeles during that time. The protaganist in both is a police officer (both are written mainly in the first person) and the plot line in both focuses on the death of a woman which the protaganist gets a bit obsessive about and is willing to go above and beyond to solve the mystery. However, for all the similarities, Eureka and The Black Dahlia couldn't be more different when it comes to the crunch. Why? Because that would be like comparing a dry cracker to a three course meal.

Eureka: where the California dream turns to deadly nightmare...

Pah-leeze. Who’s he trying to kid? More like Eureka: dull, plodding, took too long to get into the plot and when it did it was a bit of a let down... And the early 1900’s both-world-wars ambience didn’t really do much to improve matters in this trite and utterly standard saga replete with the wild west, whorehouses, and whodunit shoot’em mystery. I realise the man is famed for Primal Fear, but I think that is more famous thanks to Edward Norton than William Diehl’s writing skill, and Eureka didn’t even have the obligatory gore to keep the reader mildly interested.

No Trace by Barry Maitland is a just a cut above in the crime fiction genre. Maybe it’s the fact that he’s English. Maybe it’s the fact there are so many substandard, poorly written, just-out-to-snare-a-movie-script competitors to compare him to. Maybe it’s the feeling that you are reading something almost literary. Maybe it’s the smart-looking, glossy cover. Whatever it is, No Trace was a relief to read.