Connections: ‘Three Reasons for Revenge’ by Dervla McTiernan
Fans of Irish-Australian crime writer Dervla McTiernan will welcome the arrival of her latest book, Three Reasons for Revenge. Her previous book (2025) continued the Cormac Reilly series, and she has also written stand-alone stories such as What Happened to Nina? (2024).
This is another stand-alone, pleasingly set in Australia, and featuring as protagonist Detective Sergeant Judith Lee, who could well become the centre figure of another series. She is an experienced and able police officer, but the case that opens up when she takes the complaint of young Alexis Turner, is unlike any other she has dealt with.
Alexis has alleged sexual improprietry on the part of a university clinic counsellor, a man who has been on Judith’s radar since a similar complaint years earlier. But no sooner has Judith opened the inquiry, than Alexis disappears. And then the case turns into a murder investigation.
She must work against the clock to connect three seemingly disparate individuals to the case and to each other. The only thing they appear to have in common is that they have been recipients of a beautifully wrapped parcel with an ambiguous object inside, along with a cryptic note.
This author excels at weaving intricate tales in which the obvious answers are the wrong ones and the unexpected is sure to happen. This one is no different. There are several twists and surprises, before the mystery is solved.
I enjoyed the characters, finely drawn and believable, and the pace keeps the pages turning quickly. Along the way, the novel explores themes of grief, childhood trauma, and psychological distress.
As often the case for me, I wasn’t completely convinced by the reveal towards the end; however that did not stop me finding this one a great holiday read. I hope to meet Detective Sergeant Judith Lee again, too.
Three Reasons for Murder was published in April 2026 by HarperCollins.
My thanks to the publishers and to NetGalley for an advance review copy.
Crime fiction for kids: ‘The Lost Ghosts of Lawson’ by Antony Mann
Several months ago, Blue Mountains creative Antony Mann was in my husband’s recording studio working on a new project. (Shout out to Blue Mountain Sound!) Over lunch, Antony happened to mention he was also a writer and had published a children’s book. Of course I pricked up my ears! Being an avid supporter of books for children and of local creatives, I was interested.
In one of those serendipitous moments that can sometimes occur, a little later I was having coffee at a local cafe when I spied copies of The Lost Ghosts of Lawson for sale on a counter. Bingo!
This book is aimed at middle-grade readers, from later primary school to early teens. It is perfect for readers who can handle slightly darker themes, because it is essentially a crime novel for kids.
At the centre is Lewen, who with his mum, dad and younger sister Anna, has just moved to the Blue Mountains from a Sydney beach suburb. Obviously there are many changes he has to adjust to: a very different physical environment (no beaches for a start), a new school where he struggles to fit in, missing his old friends and neighbourhood. Oh, and the ghosts that populate the old house in Lawson the family have moved into, and its surrounding streets.
These are the ghosts of youngsters who have died decades ago, and Lewen and Anna can both see and speak to them. Tricky enough, you’d think, but it gets even more complicated when Lewen begins to suspect that at least one of the children died, not from an accident, but at the hands of an adult.
So, definitely a dark-ish theme there.
This realisation begins a search for clues helped by a girl who goes to the same local school. Roxanne is a bit odd, but friendly, and she and Lewen embark on an investigation into what happened all those years ago, in their very street.
Despite the serious subject, there are moments of humour, especially from the mostly friendly ghost children, and some of the antics that they get up to.
The novel encompasses themes of friendship, right and wrong, duplicity and trust. And it was an absolute delight for a Blue Mountains resident to read a work of fiction where so many familiar places take centre stage. Most of the action takes place just up the road from me and the author has done an admirable job portraying the special nature of the physical environment, heritage and community of the Mountains.
The Lost Ghosts of Lawson will suit readers who are ready for an engrossing story that tackles grittier themes with a slight fantasy and adventure bent.
It was published by Loose Parts Press in 2023.Literary + Crime: The Name of the Sister’ by Gail Jones
This very Australian novel is best described as ‘literary crime’. Crime, in that there is a crime that is central to the story line: why things in the novel play out the way they do. Literary, in the sense of its beautiful prose and the strong focus on character and theme.
The plot concerns Angie, a disillusioned journalist who is trying to make a career from freelance work. Her husband Sam is a teacher, also somewhat jaded in his chosen career. The third main character is Angie’s childhood friend Beverley, now a senior detective in the NSW Police. The three individuals and their interactions form the core of the story, around their own concerns and preoccupations and the novel’s crime.
So, to the crime. A young woman is found on a deserted road one night, near the mining town of Broken Hill in outback NSW. She can’t speak, has no ID and no one knows who she is. She becomes Unknown Woman, then given the moniker Jane.
As you might expect, the media and online social platforms are full of rumours, speculation and theories about who ‘Jane’ really is and what happened to her.
Angie is herself drawn to the story and thanks to her connection with Bev, ends up fielding calls from among the many people who contact the Police information line, certain that ‘Jane’ is their missing daughter, friend, or sister. Despite her misgivings, Angie becomes a sounding board, a witness to the loss and grief that these people have carried for months or years. It starts to become a heavy burden but she feels unable to stop.
She bears her own burdens, including her inability to have a child, and the grief of her slow realisation that her marriage was failing, her previously uncomplicated relationship with Sam becoming distant and unsatisfying. She knows that Marriages of a decade were destroyed by less: this gloom of worn expectations, this failure wholly to connect. (p21) Worse still, she doesn’t know what to do about it.
Then a family arrive from Germany to identify the Unknown Woman as their daughter who’d gone missing a couple of years earlier on a holiday in Australia. ‘Jane’ is Hannah Bloch; the mystery of her identity solved but not what had happened to her.
As Bev goes to Broken Hill to work on the case, Angie decides to join her there in the hope of…what? Distraction from her own problems? That she might have something to contribute to the police investigation? She’s not really sure.
It’s in Broken Hill that the novel’s climax takes place, a resolution of the mystery at the heart of the novel, and a revelation of the (very clever) meaning of the title.
Jones’s writing is beautiful, deftly capturing the various landscapes of inner-suburban Sydney and outback Broken Hill, along with relationships in all their wonderful supportiveness and messiness:
When Bev and Angie next met it was at Bev’s apartment, for a pizza.
Girls’ night, Bev called it; both needed to talk. They were alike in wanting the other to confirm what Angie called constitutional seriousness, how they had seen in each other – perhaps from the beginning, and certainly before they had words for it – the ability to not look away, to search for deeper meanings, to take themselves seriously.
The Name of the Sister p50-51The Name of the Sister was published in 2025 by Text Publishing.
Buried secrets? ‘Treasure and Dirt’ by Chris Hammer
Published in 2022, Treasure and Dirt is set in the fictional outback NSW town of Finnigan’s Gap, loosely based on Lightening Ridge, famous for its opals.
Chris Hammer does ‘place’ brilliantly in all his novels. As Sydney-based Homicide detective Ivan Lucic steps off the plane at the Finnigan’s Gap airstrip to investigate the bizarre murder of a long-time resident and miner, readers can feel the slap of the heat as it hits him, dressed as he is in city clothes. The heat and the surrounding landscape of the town become characters in themselves, factors that locals and visitors alike must navigate simply to exist in this unforgiving environment.
There are multiple layers to the crime and the investigation. The murder itself, of course, and the complexities surrounding motive, method and circumstances that are revealed as the detectives begin their work.
Lucic is assisted by an inexperienced detective, Nell Buchanan, who had previously been stationed at Finnigan’s Gap and so has valuable local knowledge. She sees this as her big chance to make her mark, get started on the ladder of successful solves while working alongside a well-known Detective like Lucic.
However their early encounters leave Nell with mixed feelings; she isn’t sure what to make of him. Having read later books featuring the Ivan and Nell team, such as The Tilt and The Seven, I enjoyed reading their ‘back story’: their first time working together, with all the awkwardness and unfamiliarity that comes with that.
Another complicating layer in this investigation is thrown in by the police Professional Standards unit: a whiff of corruption or wrongdoing always throws the cat among the pigeons, after all. There are corporate mega-rich who seem to act with total impunity (just imagine!!) lots of hard-drinking, hard-living, worn out miners leading somewhat eccentric lives (to put it mildly), a small team of local police with their own issues to deal with, and a twenty-year old family tragedy. Oh, and a local cult led by a pretty bizarre chap who calls himself the Seer.
Just your everyday outback community, then.
Maybe not, but it does make for a heady mix for our investigators to dig through in their search for answers.
In the end, they are unable to tie everything up with a neat bow. Much more like real life, I suspect. Towards the novel’s final pages, Nell reflects that:
They’ve achieved something, she and Ivan. Maybe not enough, but something. Brought justice to some, resolution to others. She looks to her partner and realises that she likes him. At last, she likes him. Understands him, respects him. Maybe even admires him. A good man, trying his best.
Treasure and Dirt, p703 (ebook)Treasure and Dirt was published in 2022 by Allen and Unwin.
Welcome back Cormac Reilly: ‘The Unquiet Grave’ by Dervla McTiernan
Have you heard of the Irish bog bodies? Gruesome topic, I know, but fascinating in its own way. The peat bogs occasionally reveal bodies of people who have died long ago, corpses preserved in the special environment in which they fell. Some of them thousands of years old, bearing signs of strange ritual torture or sacrificial customs from long ago.
This is the setting of the opening scene of Irish-Australian Dervla McTiernan’s new mystery novel. A body is discovered in a Galway bog. There are ritualistic mutilations on the body, just like those from ancient times. But on closer inspection it is not an historic corpse, but the body of the local teacher, a man who went missing two years earlier.
The investigation is led by Cormac Reilly, a welcome return to the pages after some stand-alone works by McTiernan set in the US (What Happened to Nina? and The Murder Rule) I’ve read those novels and they are good, but I do think her books set in Ireland are the stronger for the brilliant settings and the fully fleshed out characters who inhabit them, Cormac in particular.
He is a good detective with a strong moral compass which in earlier books has led him into difficulties with colleagues and ‘the system’ and in this novel he confronts new dilemmas. Not least of which is being asked by his ex-partner Emma to help her find her missing husband Finn, who has disappeared while on a work trip in Paris. It’s a distraction that Cormac really doesn’t need but he is a generous man and still genuinely cares about Emma and so he becomes involved, against his better judgement.
Complicating matters further are other new murder cases to solve, possibly connected to the first, possibly ‘copycat’ cases, possibly completely coincidental. It’s up to Cormac and his team to figure out if there are connections or – worst case scenario – a serial killer at large.
The cases are eventually solved but for Cormac and his partner Peter, the moral questions to do with the application of the law and justice are then front and centre. Does arresting the person who commits a crime really serve justice in this case?
As in the best crime and mystery fiction, this novel leaves you with much to think about even after the case is solved and the last page turned.
The Unquiet Grave is published by HarperCollins in April 2024.
My thanks to the publishers for a review copy.
Twisty mystery: ‘The Ledge’ by Christian White
I picked up White’s latest mystery novel with great relief. Why? I had just ploughed through a tome-like, rather tedious and repetitive 444 page novel which I was extremely glad to have finished – one of those irritating books that are just intruiging enough to keep you wanting to know how it all pans out but makes you really, really wish you’d picked up the skill of speed-reading somewhere along the way.
Anyway.
I had read Christian Whilte’s best-selling The Wife and the Widow so I knew The Ledge would be one of those books that would keep me turning the page without a yawn or a desire for speed-reading skills. And there would be a super twist.
I was not wrong.
The novel centres around four teenaged friends, one of whom goes missing in 1999. Fast forward and the remaining three are now in adulthood, grown apart but harbouring a heavy secret and a pact of silence about events that took place back when they were in high school.
When human remains are found in the bushland beneath a high rocky outcrop – the ledge of the title – things start to unravel and the burden of the secrets they carry becomes unbearable.
White’s signature twisty ending is there – a dramatic one that had me almost spluttering ‘wait, what?…’ as I rifled back through pages to see if I’d missed something. Still not sure if I buy the twist but that’s OK, I often don’t in novels of this kind. Twists are fun and keep you reading but for me, never the main point of the novel.
Though I read this quickly, it’s not a trivial murder mystery, as I think it does deal with issues other than a simple ‘who done it?’
There is a deeper theme in this one, I think. It is really a coming of age story, about masculinity, adulthood, friendship and loyalty, small towns and the strengths and hurts they can bestow on their inhabitants.
The Ledge was published by Affirm Press in 2024
Twisty tale from home: ‘Girl Falling’ by Hayley Scrivenor
A new crime novel by an author I enjoy, set in my home region of the Blue Mountains of NSW. How could I resist?
Hayley Scrivenor’s debut novel, Dirt Town, received well-deserved accolades (my review is here.) I was looking forward to her next book and was delighted to learn that it was set amongst the sheer cliffs and amazing views of the Blue Mountains.
The thing I enjoy most about crime fiction are the characters and emotions, plus of course a well-drawn setting, and Girl Falling doesn’t disappoint.
The title is well chosen, as it can imply both the physical act of falling (in this case, from cliffs) but it can also be an emotional plunge for characters – in this case, pretty much all the characters.
The premise is intruiging: two high school girls bond over the shared trauma of losing a sister to suicide. Now young adults, they have grown inseparable – until one of them meets and falls in love with someone else.
There is a lot in here about youngsters trying to find their way in life, moving beyond childhood trauma, and also toxic relationships and coercion that can take many forms.
There is a twist that I truly did not see coming – and I’m still not entirely sure how I feel about it.
For all these reasons, Girl Falling is a crime novel that stayed with me well after I had read the final page.
Girl Falling was published by Pan Macmillan Australia in July 2024.
Familiar place, familiar crime: ‘Pheasant’s Nest’ by Louise Milligan
Louise Milligan will be known to many Australians as an award winning investigative journalist and author of non-fiction books; Pheasant’s Nest is her debut novel. It opens on a stretch of road very familiar to me, and I’m sure to others who have driven the Hume Highway from Sydney to Canberra, or further south to Melbourne.
In this opening scene, the protagonist Kate Delaney is tied up on the back seat of a man’s car heading north from Melbourne. The man has committed a violent sexual assault and kidnapping and is now on the run with his victim.
The rest of the novel plays out as the clock ticks down: will it end with Kate’s murder or with rescue?
The narrative zips between Kate’s thoughts as she lies helpless and afraid in the car, to the panic and fear of her devoted boyfriend Liam and her best friend Sylvia, and to the two detectives in charge of the investigation.
I appreciated this aspect of the novel very much. Hearing what is in Kate’s head allows readers to see her as a person with a career (journalism, unsuprisingly), friends, family and a full, largely happy life. Of course she is terrified, too, because having covered plenty of crime cases as a journalist, she knows there is limited time for police to track down her assailant. Her fear feels very real.
What we also hear are her less serious thoughts: her reflections on her past, her career and colleagues, her lover and her friends. Some of these are actually very funny – unexpectedly in a crime novel like this. I particularly enjoyed the quite pointed but hilarious descriptions of the evangelical church ‘JoyChurch’ located in Sydney’s northwest ‘aspirational affluence belt,’ and the completely fake and probably corrupt couple at its centre.
The PTSD suffered by the NSW detective who has seen too many crimes and too many acts of self destruction also ring very true. He has held onto his compassion despite it all, but at great personal cost. His character speaks to the hard job we give police officers and their need for greater resourcing and personal support.
The other characters are also quite special; Liam and Sylvia as they head north to NSW to be closer to Kate (even though no one is sure exactly where she is) are beautifully drawn, as are some of the minor characters.
It’s a well paced and unfortunately very believable novel. We see too many headlines about women being attacked either by an intimate partner, a casual date, or a random person, to think that the crime at the centre of this story is not all-too-familiar in real life.
The author describes the stretch of road through the Southern Highlands of NSW in all its creepy detail. Anyone who followed the Ivan Milat serial killing cases in the Belanglo Forest there, or is aware of how many suicides have occured at the eponymous Pheasant’s Nest Bridge, will recognise the sensation of vague threat that driving through here can evoke.
Pheasant’s Nest is crime fiction with something important to say. It will be enjoyed by readers who don’t like too much gruesome detail but who appreciate familiar and believable characters and places in their fiction. It is published by Allen & Unwin in 2024.
Taut: ’17 Years Later’ by J.P. Pomare
J.P.Pomare – Kiwi-born Australian author – writes taut, twisty crime thrillers. 17 Years Later is definitely that, imbued with a sense of darkness and with questions about the mystery at its heart: who really killed the Primrose family seventeen years ago?
Set in a small town on New Zealand’s North Island, the narrative is told from several different perspectives and voices.
There is Bill Kareama, the Primrose’s live-in private chef, delighted to be offered this amazing chance to kick-start his career and make good money while cooking for the wealthy family. When the shocking murders of Simon Primrose, his wife Gwen, daughter Elle and son Chester are discovered, Bill is the prime suspect – in large part due to the fact that the murder weapon is one of his chef’s knives. We hear Bill’s own account of the events leading up to his arrest, the trial and his imprisonment.
Into the town of Cambridge arrives Sloane Abbott, a successful journalist with a popular true-crime podcast. She is determined to investigate the crime because she has heard stories about how the original investigation failed to seriously consider any other suspects and overlooked evidence. Did Bill and the Primrose family receive justice? If not, seventeen years is a long time for the wrong man to be imprisoned. And troublingly, is it possible that here a killer still at large?
We hear from Fleur, the French au pair, who shares a cottage on the Primrose estate with Bill. What is her role in the family and why does she stay with them, given that the children no longer really need a nanny?
TK was Bill’s psychologist who devoted years of his life to finding the truth about what happened. He is dragged unwillingly back into the mystery by Sloane’s dogged persistence.
All of these characters are well drawn, as is the setting of a regional New Zealand town where many of the locals just want to forget the whole thing. There are plenty of twists and an action-packed ending; the story unravelling between the various players, keeping me guessing to the end.
I was engrossed by 17 Years Later and gobbled it up quickly. A very satisfying read.
17 Years Later is published by Hachette Australia in July 2024.
My thanks to the publishers and to NetGalley for a copy to read and review.
Searing: ‘Prima Facie’ by Suzie Miller
Prima Facie reads like the best kind of courtroom drama, where as readers we are invested in the characters and the outcome. Fans of the British series Silks starring the wonderful Maxine Peake will no doubt enjoy this novel by English-Australian author Suzie Miller. In fact, the character at the centre of the book, Tessa, is reminiscent of Silks’ Martha Costello: a scholarship student from England’s north and a working class background, who has had to fight to achieve her goal of a career in the law.
However, the crime at the centre of the Prima Facie case is one that is all-too-familiar to women and girls – one in three, in fact – that of sexual assault.
Tessa loves her career, her flat in London and the life she has carved out there. Despite always feeling like an outsider among her colleagues with impeccable family backgrounds in law and legal studies, she is ambitious and passionate about her chosen profession as a criminal defence barrister.
Indeed, the law is something she strongly believes in and she also believes it has a role protecting those who can too easily (and at times unfairly) become targets of police and prosecutors.
She is very good at her job. She has refined her techniques of cross-examination with the belief that her role is to ‘test the case, just test it, and test it over and over. Find the inconsistencies. And when the police leave themselves wide open, it is all instinct and practice that lets you bring it home, lets you land that plane.’ p63
Then the unthinkable happens and she is raped. Now she must decide if she wants to test the system, to see if it will work for her, knowing full well the dismal statistics on the number of sexual assaults that occur, compared to those that are reported, prosecuted, and – most dismal of all – actually result in a conviction.
Legal instinct tells me that this is a losing case. But I must do something. I can’t not. I have to believe that the system I have given my life to will do the right thing. The legal system gave me the life I have, gave me a chance to rise to the top. I have to rely on it.
Prima Facie p172The novel is written is first-person present-tense, and as sometimes happens for me, I found the present-tense occasionally jarring. On the upside it allows the reader to feel we are inside Tessa’s head and privy to her thoughts and emotions, and it’s possibly one of the most searing reflections of the experiences of a survivor of sexual assault that I’ve ever read. It feels very real.
The other aspect that is believable is the description of the world of a London barrister. The author’s own training and work in the legal profession allows her to open the door to readers for us to step inside.
There is so much that this book highlights: the risks taken by a victim of sexual assault when deciding whether to report the crime; the ongoing trauma of investigation and court hearings; the impact on family, friends and colleagues; how ‘consent’ is defined and tested; the way the law has traditionally dealt with such cases in the courts.
The law of sexual assault spins on the wrong axis. A woman’s experience of sexual assault does not fit the male-defined system of truth, so it cannot be truth, and therefore there can be no justice.
Prima Facie p332Because of its subject matter, this is not an easy book to read, nor is it ‘enjoyable’ in the usual sense. It is a gripping, dramatic and engrossing story that had me turning pages compulsively, and left me with much to think about.
Prima Facie was published by Picador, an imprint of Pan Macmillan Australia, in September 2023.
