No happy endings: ‘Mercy’ by Emma Woodhouse.
A Newton takes their own life, or that of another.
So says the curse of the Newtons.If you have read some of my other blog posts, you may have realised that I am a bit of a sucker for historical fiction that is inspired by, based on, or closely follows real-life people, places and events. Mercy is one such story, narrating in fictional form the true-crime saga of a working-class English woman who, in the 1840s, was charged with murder.
Her case became the talk of folk in inns and on streets across the land. Did she commit the terrible crime she was accused of? Did she deserve to hang? Or was she a victim of the brutal environment in which she was raised and the inequality between rich and poor?
The notoriety of her name grew as not one, but two juries were unable to deliver a verdict. This was unheard of. It was up to a third and final jury to pass judgement on a woman accused of a most heinous crime imaginable. Would she be found guilty? And what would become of her young daughter, raised in the same harsh milieu as Mercy herself?
The other reason I was drawn to this story? The protagonist’s family name, which I share. While not believing for a moment that my name holds within it a curse as Mercy’s seems to have done (and honestly, given how events played out in her family you can understand how that idea came about), a novel centred around a cursed family name is always a little intruiging…
The author has used historical documents from the archives and old British newspaper reports to skillfully weave a story told from three main points of view: Mercy herself; her daughter Maria; and the local justice of the peace who prosecutes the initial murder case against Mercy. This gives rich detail of the events as they were reported at the time, while also painting a vivid backdrop of the grim environment in which they occurred.
And it is grim. There is little or nothing held back. The story opens with an earlier murder, this one perpetrated by another Newton, Mercy’s cousin John, who beats his pregnant wife to death one stormy evening. It sets the scene and as readers we know that despite an occasional glimmer of hope on the horizon, the future for Mercy and her family is, in reality, nothing but bleak.
For me this bleakness became a little too much and I found the novel hard going because of it, while still admiring the detail and story-telling skill involved. As a tale that paints a realistic picture of how things were for working-class folk in Victorian times, it’s to be commended. Just not an easy read. And don’t expect a happy ending in the usual sense, because for these people they were few and far between.
Mercy is published by Cranthorpe Millner Publishers in July 2025.
My thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for a review copy.
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
He’s back: ‘We Solve Murders’ by Richard Osman
I’ve missed the gang from Richard Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club series so much: Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim, and Ron, and their associated buddies. I wasn’t sure I would warm to Osman’s new series as much. I mean, how could any new characters be as wonderful as those four?
I needn’t have worried. While We Solve Murders features new characters, new crimes, and definitely a much more multinational setting, the charm and trademark humour is there, the quirkiness of many of the characters, the twisty plot guaranteeing a page-turning absorption.
As always for me, the crimes and plot are incidental. It’s the characters and their emotional arcs, and Osman’s dry humour, that grab me and keep me reading.
In this new series we meet three main protagonists. Steve is a retired cop, settled now in a small village in England’s New Forest. While he still grieves the death of his beloved wife Debbie, he’s become a part of this community: the pub quiz on Wednesday nights, the group of friends he meets there for lunches, his cat Trouble. He likes his routine and the predictable life he’s created here.
His daughter-in-law Amy, on the other hand, thrives on adrenaline and adventure as a private security officer who crisscrosses the world on the job. At the novel’s opening Amy is on a private island, tasked with keeping Rosie D’Antonia, famous author of thriller and crime novels, safe.
That’s where the novel starts but it doesn’t stay there long. Amy and Rosie begin a chase to find a killer before he or she can get to them, and Steve is – very reluctantly – dragged in to help.
It’s a complicated and at times madcap series of events from here that lead to the final showdown. In the process we get to know the threesome well and – speaking for myself at least – I was reluctant to part with them at the final page.
It is a measure of the author’s skill that he can leave the reader breathless on one page and then on the very next, have a scene between a father and son that is both incredibly moving and very funny, so that you don’t know if your tears are from sadness or from laughter.
I’m already looking forward to We Solve Murders #2
We Solve Murders was published by Penguin Random House in 2024.
2024: My year in books (and what’s in store for 2025)
In 2024 I participated in three reading challenges again, always a fun way to keep variety in my reading diet. Sometimes the results at the end of a year can be surprising; this is one of those times.
In the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge I undertook to read 15 books of historical fiction – I came in right on target. It is easily my favourite genre of fiction.
For 2025, I will choose that same target in this challenge.
In the Cloak and Dagger Reading Challenge, I chose the ‘Amateur Sleuth’ target of 5-15 books, and hit 14 books, so that’s a giveaway that crime fiction is another favourite of my genres. I’ll go for around that many again this year.The surprise result for me this year was the Non-Fiction Reading Challenge, where I chose a conservative target of ‘nibbler’, aiming for 6 books. Instead I read a whopping 16 non-fiction books in 2024! I’m not sure what that means, but perhaps I should choose a higher target for 2025? Well, I’ll probably aim for ‘nibbler’ again and see how I go.
I have a private challenge of my own, to read more books by First Nations authors, in any genre. In 2024 my reading included 10 works by Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander writers: encompassing fiction, non-fiction, and children’s books. In 2025 I hope to equal or better that number.
As always, I am indebted to publishers, especially HarperCollins, and to NetGalley, for sending advanced copies of books for review. I also thank authors who have approached me asking if I would read and review their work.
I know it can be a scary thing to put your writing out into the world and ask for feedback. I never approach the task of reviewing a book lightly. Someone has put months (usually years) of work into research, drafting, rewriting, redrafting, editing, rewriting, editing again, and again, and again…until the finished product is finally put into their hands. For this reason I treat each and every book with the respect it deserves. And I thank each author and publisher for allowing me the opportunity to read and review their work.
So, on to 2025. I wish all my fellow readers a wonderful bookish year ahead.
Photo by Sumit Mathur at pexels A jolly Christmas…murder! ‘Everyone this Christmas has a secret’ by Benjamin Stevenson
I so thoroughly enjoyed Benjamin Stevenson’s first two mystery novels featuring Ernest Cunningham that I leapt at the chance to review this one, in time for Christmas.
In keeping with the catchy naming pattern of the first two books: Everyone in my Family has Killed Someone and Everyone on this Train is a Suspect, readers are advised straight up that everyone in this new story should likewise be regarded as a suspect.
Ernest is an amateur detective who writes ‘how to write detective’ books – which is sort of funny in itself when you think about it. Stevenson is a comedian as well as an author, so the comedy is a big part of these novels along with the mystery. Ernest’s schtick is that he writes rules for what he calls ‘fair play mysteries’: like those written in what is sometimes called the golden age of crime fiction.
I loved two things about this one, on top of the main character – Ern is endearing and doesn’t take himself too seriously, though he is very serious about solving the crimes that he inevitably stumbles upon in the novels.
Firstly, the Christmas theme. The motif of a Christmas advent calendar is used so cleverly throughout, each chapter giving a clue as a new window on the calendar opens. It’s done so well, blending the narrative of the crime and the various characters’ motives and movements, with the Christmas setting.
Secondly, the novel is set in Katoomba in the Blue Mountains, just up the road from where I live. The second crime novel set in the Blue Mountains I have read this year! While I would not want people to think that my little part of the world is more prone to murder than any other, it is a beautiful and evocative setting for a novel and I am pleased to see it getting its share of the limelight.
If you haven’t yet met Ernest and his family, I would heartily recommend beginning with the first two of Stevenson’s books and then reading this one. The audio versions are also excellent. They are light-hearted reads, while keeping you thinking as the complexities of the twisty plots are revealed. And give plenty of chuckles along the way.
Everyone this Christmas has a Secret is published by Penguin Books Australia in October 2024.
My thanks to the publishers and to NetGalley for a review copy.
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.
