Crime
2023 crime fiction highlights
Crime readers, rejoice! It has been another stellar year for Australian and international authors, including books from longtime favourites as well as those making their debut. From cosy and rural crime to thrillers and high-paced noir we've got you covered!
Everyone On This Train Is a Suspect by Benjamin Stevenson
Ernest Cunningham returns in a deliciously witty locked room (train) mystery.
When the Australian Mystery Writers’ Society invited me to their crime-writing festival aboard the Ghan, the famous train between…
The November crime review
These are the crime books which have been read and reviewed by our excellent booksellers this month - all in one place!
The Mantis by Kotaro Isaka & Sam Malissa (trans.)
Reviewed by Joe Murray from Readings Kids
Kabuto lives a double life: one as a loving father and dutiful husband, the other as a cold-blooded contract killer. Only one of those lives is terrifying – the other is just murder for hire. Trouble is, Kabuto wants out of the…
The October crime review
These are the crime books which have been read and reviewed by our excellent booksellers this month – all in one place!
Everyone On This Train Is a Suspect by Benjamin Stevenson
Reviewed by Lian Hingee from Readings online
Benjamin Stevenson’s bestselling novel Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone was a comedic delight: Agatha Christie meets Knives Out via a distinctly Australian first-person narrator.
In Everyone On This Train Is a Suspect, Ernest Cunningham – mystery-solver and now…
The September crime review
These are the crime books which have been read and reviewed by our excellent booksellers this month – all in one place!
Ripper by Shelley Burr
Gemma Guillory has lived in Rainier her entire life. She knows the tiny town's ins and outs like the back of her hand, the people like they are her family, their quirks as if they were her own.
She knows her once-charming town is now remembered for one reason only. That three innocent people…
Winners of the 2023 Davitt Awards
Sisters in Crime Australia has announced the winners of the 2023 Davitt Awards for best crime books by Australian women.
The winning titles in each category are:
Best Adult Novel: All That's Left Unsaid by Tracey Lien
‘Just let him go.’ Those are words Ky Tran will forever regret. The words she spoke when her parents called to ask if they should let her younger brother Denny out to celebrate his high school graduation. That night in 1996, Denny is…
The 2023 Ned Kelly Award Winners
The Australian Crime Writers Association (ACWA) has announced the winners of the 2023 Ned Kelly Awards.
Here are the recipients for each category:
Best Crime Fiction: Exiles by Jane Harper
At a busy festival site on a warm spring night, a baby lies alone in her pram, her mother having vanished into the crowds.
A year on, Kim Gillespie's absence casts a long shadow as her friends and loved ones gather deep in the heart of South Australian wine country…
The August crime review
These are the crime books which have been read and reviewed by our excellent booksellers this month – all in one place!
Dark Corners by Megan Goldin
True crime podcaster Rachel Krall is back, in search of a popular influencer who disappears after visiting a suspected serial killer.
Always know what you're walking into. Dark corners can be danger points.
True-crime podcaster Rachel Krall gets pulled into the cut-throat and narcissistic world of social media influencers as she investigates the…
Crime fiction in translation for Father's Day
Just in time for Father's Day, we've compiled a list of fantastic crime fiction in translation. From sleeper hits to those which have truly slipped under the radar, we've got you, and Dad, covered.
Prey for the Shadow by Javier Cercas (translated from Spanish by Anne McLean)
The mayor of Barcelona is being blackmailed. A sex tape from her student days - one she never knew existed. The price: 300,000 euros and her immediate resignation. A political chameleon who swept…
The 2023 Ned Kelly Awards shortlist
Running since 1995, the Ned Kelly Awards are Australia’s oldest and most prestigious recognition honouring published crime fiction and true crime writing. The Australian Crime Writers Association (AWCA) has just announced the 2023 shortlists for the awards’ four categories: Best Crime Fiction, Best Debut Crime Fiction, Best True Crime and Best International Crime Fiction. In its announcement, ACWA said that the shortlist highlights the ‘strength and identity’ of Australian crime writing.
Below are the titles for each category including comments…
The July crime review
These are the crime books which have been read and reviewed by our excellent booksellers this month – all in one place!
Lay Your Body Down by Amy Suiter Clarke
Reviewed by Aurelia Orr from Readings Kids
Lay Your Body Down is a powerful and alluring novel about mob mentality, indoctrination, and confronting one’s demons.
Delilah vowed never to return to her hometown in Minnesota and its cult-like church, but when her ex-boyfriend, Lars, dies, Del follows her gut instinct…
The June crime review
These are the crime books which have been read and reviewed by our excellent booksellers this month — all in one place!
Broken Bay by Margaret Hickey
Reviewed by Kate McIntosh, manager of Readings Emporium
South Australia’s Limestone Coast is covered in natural wonders, from dormant volcanoes to ancient caves, stunning lakes and, most remarkably, sinkholes. These are not your average sinkholes, either. (Google them, they really are something else.) Many of them open into enormous caverns and underground caves…
The May crime review
These are the crime books have been read and reviewed by our excellent booksellers this month – all in one place!
Death of a Bookseller by Alice Slater
Reviewed by Lian Hingee, digital marketing manager
'disquieting ... with a carefully paced story that ratchets up to a propulsive climax.'If you’ve picked up Death of a Bookseller hoping for a cosy crime read featuring a bespectacled protagonist with a penchant for cardigans, you will be sadly disappointed. If, however, you’ve…
2022 Crime fiction highlights
Each December, as we barrel towards Christmas, I really enjoy looking back over the year in crime. There are books that feel like they've been a part of the crime canon for years; there are some that I still refer to as 'this new book' even though they've been out for ten months; and there are just so, so many good titles, each and every year.
As the year began, we had a slew of great Australian books — Maryrose…
The best new crime reads in November
After 12 years, this is my final dead write column.
It’s grown in size to take over an entire page (which worked for me, since I always have far too much to say about every book), and I’ve worked with so many amazing Readings Monthly editors over the years (Ed. note: we think you’re amazing too). I’ve also been tremendously lucky to read so many incredible books! Australian crime fiction, especially, continues to impress me every time. Now…
The best new crime reads in October
CRIME BOOK OF THE MONTH
Exiles by Jane Harper
Much to the delight of just about every crime reader in Australia and overseas, The Dry’s Aaron Falk returns in Jane Harper’s latest small-town investigation. Falk’s not in his hometown this time, he’s in the South Australian wine town of Marralee, attending a christening at the same time as the famed local food and wine festival. It’s also the anniversary of the disappearance of Kim Gillespie: the woman who left…
The Davitt Award winners 2022
Congratulations to this year’s winners of the Davitt Awards for the best crime books by Australian women.
ADULT CRIME NOVEL
Once There Were Wolves by Charlotte McConaghy
Inti Flynn arrives in Scotland with her twin sister, Aggie, to lead a team tasked with reintroducing fourteen grey wolves into the remote Highlands. She hopes to heal not only the dying landscape, but a broken Aggie, too. However, Inti is not the woman she once was, and may be in need of…
Gift ideas for Fathers who enjoy crime fiction
If you are anything like me your father probably spent at least half of your teenage years trying to solve the mystery of the missing second work sock. Which may or may not have been gathering dust (and friends) behind your bedroom door, under your bed or in your sports bag. As dad ran out the door with one sock on, hoping his trousers were long enough, I looked on bewildered (fully socked) – how did he not know? Now…
The best new crime reads in August
Our crime specialist shares 10 great crime reads to look out for this month.
CRIME BOOK OF THE MONTH
Better the Blood by Michael Bennett
More than 150 years ago, on the top of Maunga Whakairoiro – or as the colonisers called it, Mount Suffolk – a picture is taken of a Māori chief, hanging from a tree, six victorious soldiers in the foreground. Despite all the inconsistent efforts of reconciliation in the intervening decades, there’s still injustice all over…
The best new crime reads in July
Our crime specialist shares 10 great crime reads to look out for this month.
CRIME BOOK OF THE MONTH
Stone Town by Margaret Hickey
A teenage boy takes a girl and her sister to Stone Town’s eerie bushland in the dark of night, in the hopes of impressing her with the alarming shrieks of a Barking Owl – but they find the dead body of local developer Aidan Sleeth instead. Sleeth’s death by gunshot sees local Senior Sergeant Mark Ariti…
The best new crime reads in June
by Fiona Hardy & Julia JacksonOur crime specialists shares 10 great crime reads to look out for this month.
CRIME BOOK OF THE MONTH
The Woman in the Library by Sulari Gentill
Under the soaring dome of the Boston Public Library, four people meet. Whit, studying to become a lawyer and doing his best to fail; handsome novelist Cain; tattooed Harvard student Marigold; and our protagonist, Freddie, who has arrived in America from Australia on a writing fellowship. Their connection is still tentative and new…
The best new crime reads in May
Our crime specialist shares 11 great crime reads to look out for this month.
CRIME BOOK OF THE MONTH
Wake by Shelley Burr
It has been nearly 20 years since Evelyn McCreery went missing. She went to sleep one night, in the bed next to her twin sister Mina’s; the next morning she was gone, her bed neatly made, no fingerprints on the windowsill, the only tyre tracks around their desolate farm property belonging to the farm cars. All these…
What we're reading: Briggs, Caro & Clarke
Each week we bring you a sample of the books we’re reading, the films we’re watching, the television shows we’re hooked on, or the music we’re loving.
Mike Shuttleworth is reading Fungus the Bogeyman by Raymond Briggs
A recent episode of the Backlisted Podcast prompted me to dig into the shelves for a copy of Fungus the Bogeyman, the Raymond Briggs graphic novel of 1977. Briggs, a graduate of the Slade School of Fine Art, takes the reader on…
Our top 10 bestsellers of the week
The Competition by Katherine Collette
The Shortest History of the Soviet Union by Sheila Fitzpatrick
Give Unto Others by Donna Leon
First Astronomers by Duane Hamacher
Love Stories by Trent Dalton
When We Fall by Aoife Clifford
Cold Enough for Snow by Jessica Au
Bob Hawke by Troy Bramston
Son of Sin by Omar Sakr
The Cane by Maryrose Cuskelly
Our best-seller from the past week is Katherine Collette’s novel, The Competition. The story follows Frances who is drawn…
The best new crime reads in March
Our crime specialist shares 10 great crime reads to look out for this month.
CRIME BOOK OF THE MONTH
When We Fall by Aoife Clifford
As she walks along the beach with her mother, discouraged barrister Alex Tillerson wishes she wasn’t back in her childhood town of Merritt. Alex is going through a painful divorce, her mother’s health is deteriorating due to younger onset dementia, and Merritt holds no good memories. She wants to leave, but there’s nobody to go…
Our books of the month, February 2022
OUR FICTION BOOK OF THE MONTH
To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara
Reviewed by
This highly anticipated follow-up to 2015’s A Little Life is an epic tour de force. In fact, it’s impossible for me to praise To Paradise enough. Set in an alternative America, this is a novel of three parts, its narratives traversing a slew of human experience and emotion.
Locational echoes and characters’ names recur from one story to the next, as if they are reincarnated or reimagined…
The best new crime reads in February
Our crime specialist shares 10 great crime reads to look out for this month.
CRIME BOOK OF THE MONTH
The Cane by Maryrose Cuskelly
The northern Queensland town of Quala is reeling: oneof its own is missing. Young Janet McClymont walked through the cane fields early one evening to go babysit her neighbours’ kids, but never arrived. Her bag was found, and nothing else. Now her parents trawl through the vast expanse of cane, begging their neighbours not to light…
The best of crime 2021
It’s honestly been such a strong year in Australian crime fiction that I could have easily made this entire list up of local writers—Australia just has some of the best talent out there. From debut authors like Jacqueline Bublitz’s devastating, interior Before You Knew My Name and Karen Manton’s heavy, atmospheric The Curlew’s Eye, to sequels like the hilarious romp Nancy Business by RWR McDonald, or the latest book in a series so epic we’ve all lost count, like…
The best new crime reads in November
Our crime specialist shares 10 great crime reads to look out for this month.
CRIME BOOK OF THE MONTH
Canticle Creek Adrian Hyland
Leading Senior Constable Jesse Redpath thinks she has the lie of the land about right in the Northern Territory town of Kulara by now. After replacing the useless-to-actively harmful last cop in town, she’s more open to what’s important so when local larrikin Adam Lawson commits something a bit more illegal than usual, she tries to offer…
The best new crime reads in October
Our crime specialist shares 9 great crime reads to look out for this month.
CRIME BOOK OF THE MONTH
The Shadow House by Anna Downes
When Alex drives up to her new house with her teenage son Ollie and new baby Cara in tow, she feels a surge of relief – and panic. She’s running away from Sydney, from what she’s left behind, and the eco-village of Pine Ridge is the perfect place to start anew: a caring community, a…
The best new crime reads in September
Our crime specialist shares 10 great crime reads to look out for this month.
CRIME BOOK OF THE MONTH
I Shot the Devil by Ruth McIver
Ruth McIver’s manuscript of I Shot the Devil won Australia’s Richell Prize for Emerging Writers a few years ago, and on reading the published book, you can see why: this America-set crime novel is riveting from start to end.
Erin Sloane is a journalist who sometimes writes longform crime pieces for Long Island outlet…
The Ned Kelly Awards 2021
Congratulations to the 2021 winners of the Ned Kelly Awards for the best in Australian crime writing!
BEST CRIME FICTION
Consolation by Garry Disher
Australia’s favourite country cop, Hirsch, is back in this new edition of Consolation, the follow-up to Peace and Bitter Wash Road.
In Consolation, Tiverton’s only police officer Constable Paul Hirschhausen is dealing with a snowdropper. Someone is stealing women’s underwear, and Hirsch knows how that kind of crime can escalate. Then two calls…
The best new crime reads in August
Our crime specialist shares 9 great crime reads to look out for this month.
This month’s crime new releases are a veritable smorgasbord for lovers of the genre. Truly, it’s a feast of veterans and old favourites. Once again I’m stepping into Fiona’s big shoes, and I must say, choosing the books to review in this column was really tough. Sadly, time and editorial demands meant exciting new books from stalwarts such as Stephen King, Daniel Silva, Yrsa Sigurðardóttir, and…
The best new crime reads in July
Our crime specialist shares 10 great crime reads to look out for this month.
CRIME BOOK OF THE MONTH
The 22 Murders of Madison May by Max Barry
I like to review Australian crime books, partly because it’s always good to boost local writing – it’s something that Readings has championed since the beginning – but also because it feels like authors here are doing much more interesting things than in other countries. I saw it this month in John…
The best new crime reads in June
Our crime specialist shares 9 great crime reads to look out for this month.
CRIME BOOK OF THE MONTH
Nancy Business by R.W.R. McDonald
Four months after 12-year-old Tippy Chan, her uncle Pike and his boyfriend Devon started The Nancys – an investigative team that solved the brutal murder of Tippy’s teacher – a new case blows up, quite literally, right nearby. Riverstone, Tippy’s New Zealand home town, is rocked by an explosion near the Airbnb home Pike and Devon…
Literary thrillers to read in the winter months
If you yearn for dark, tense and moody stories in the colder months, we recommend some of the most outstanding recent literary thrillers. Our picks span disaster novels, psychological tales, near-future dystopias, gothic contemporary fiction, historical thrillers and more.
The End of Men by Christina Sweeney-Baird
Glasgow, 2025. Dr Amanda Maclean is called to treat a young man with a mild fever. Within three hours he dies. The mysterious illness sweeps through the hospital with deadly speed. The victims are…
The best new crime reads in May
This month, Julia Jackson is stepping in as our crime specialist to share 10 great crime reads to look out for this month.
CRIME BOOK OF THE MONTH
Before You Knew My Name by Jacqueline Bublitz
This stunning debut is one of the best books I’ve read this year (so far). Melbourne-based author Jacqueline Bublitz has crafted a haunting story about grief, limbo, transition and friendship that’s by far the most literary of this month’s crime picks. Echoing Alice Sebold’s…
The best new crime reads in April
Our crime specialist shares 10 great crime reads to look out for this month.
CRIME BOOK OF THE MONTH
The Chase by Candice Fox
At a prison in Nevada, the annual friendly baseball gamebetween the officers and the minimum-security inmates is due to take place. A bus load of family members is coming to cheer on the guards, as they have done every year for the past decade or so. Only this year, someone knows they’re coming. This year, someone…
The best new crime reads in March
Our crime specialist shares 11 great crime reads to look out for this month.
CRIME BOOK OF THE MONTH
Long, Long Afternoon by Inga Vesper
In a picture-perfect house in 1959, model housewife Joyce Haney goes to the mall for some shopping, returns home, and then vanishes, leaving behind nothing except a bloodstain on the kitchen floor, a screaming baby, and a terrified young daughter.
Detective Mick Blanke is new to the region, missing his old hood of Brooklyn and…
The best new crime reads in February
Our crime specialist shares 9 great crime reads to look out for this month.
CRIME BOOK OF THE MONTH
The Spiral by Iain Ryan
I could tell you that Iain Ryan’s The Spiral is an immersive, captivating crime book, but that wouldn’t be enough to explain it. I could say it’s a twisted, psychological fever dream, but that’s not quite it. I could tell you it’s an Australian campus thriller, and that wouldn’t be wrong, but it’s not quite right…
The best new crime reads in November & December
CRIME BOOK OF THE MONTH
True West by David Whish-Wilson (available 5 November)
If you want to get truly knocked about by a book, True West is what you want in front of you. Set in Western Australia in 1988, this is the visceral tale of Lee Southern, a young man driving south, away from a bad life he’s literally set aflame, feeling hopeful that he’s going towards something better. With a freshly set-up tow rig and, frankly, minimal expertise…
Eight of our favourite psychological thrillers from the first half of 2019
byThe days are short, the nights are long, dark and chilly. What better time to curl up indoors in the warm with the best psychological thrillers of the year so far?
We’ve put together a list of some of our favourite recommendations for all those crime and thriller fans out there to sink their teeth into.
An Anonymous Girl by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen
Jess Farris signs up to a psychology study conducted by the mysterious Dr Shields, thinking…
The best new crime reads in May
CRIME BOOK OF THE MONTH
Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud and the Last Trial of Harper Lee by Casey Cep
Harper Lee – author of the slightly well known To Kill a Mockingbird – was by Truman Capote’s side when he wrote the brilliant work of fictionalised nonfiction, and arguably the first ‘true crime’ tale, In Cold Blood. After the copious notes and interviews she had completed for Capote, she thought that, perhaps, she could write her own true-crime story…
The best new crime reads in April
CRIME BOOK OF THE MONTH
Eight Lives by Susan Hurley
When a young Vietnamese-Australian doctor makes a medical breakthrough, inventing a drug that could essentially help broken immune systems fix themselves, everything seems as golden as the name bestowed upon him: David Tran, Golden Boy. But seven months after David appears on television, celebrating the financial backing that will lead to testing, trials, and a hopeful future, he is dead. How and why he died are the questions everyone is…
The best new crime reads in March
CRIME BOOK OF THE MONTH
The Scholar by Dervla McTiernan
Regular Readings Monthly readers will no doubt remember how obsessed we were by Irish born, Perth-based Dervla McTiernan’s debut crime novel. After turning the final page of The Rúin in early 2018, surviving the wait until we could read her second book seemed impossible, and yet she has kindly given it to us within a year. And not a moment too soon!
The Scholar sees Detective Inspector Cormac Reilly…
The best new crime reads of January and February
CRIME BOOK OF THE MONTH
Two Girls Down by Louisa Luna
Jamie Brandt has just about had enough of her two girls – in the same way any parent who loves their kids can also tire of them after a long week – when she leaves them in the car outside Kmart to pick something up. But by the time she gets back to her car, they are both gone. And so Jamie’s aunt hires Alice Vega – private detective…
Best new crime reads in July
CRIME BOOK OF THE MONTH
Black Teeth by Zane Lovitt
If you are a local who decides to rush out and buy Black Teeth just after you read this review, you’ll find yourself with the ultimate literary luxury: reading a book in July in Melbourne set in a Melbourne July not so long ago. When you turn the pages you’ll be wearing gloves, just like Jason Ginaff does a lot of the time, since he’s the kind of guy who…
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