Reconstructing Amelia is a mystery thriller by new author, Kimberly McCreight. It opens with tragedy. High achiever, Amelia Baron, has thrown herself off the roof of her elite Brooklyn private school, Grace Hall, after being accused of plagiarising an assignment. Her mother, though, is convinced that Amelia did not take her own life (and didn’t…
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A Fatal Debt is a murder mystery novel, centring on the business elite of New York City, in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. The protagonist is Ben Cowper, attending psychiatrist at New York’s Episcopal hospital. When major donor Harry Shapiro is brought in by his wife, Cowper is caught between professional opinion and…
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Assume the rules do not apply to you and they don’t – Phryne Fisher in Unnatural Habits Phryne Fisher is an art-deco nymph, a lady detective and a rich socialite who gallivants around late 1920s Melbourne in illustrious dresses. She keeps a pearl-handled pistol tucked in her garter, can fly a Tiger Moth, drove an…
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I’m always suspicious of overly thick books. I pick them up with caution, wondering if the author really needed so many words to tell the story. I wonder if the writer simply wished to indulge themselves by constructing a five-hundred page tome, filling it every little detail, and leaving nothing for the reader to discover…
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I’ve never felt so cheated by a book before in my life. Maybe it was my imagination, but I thought Caroline Overington’s Sisters of Mercy promised crime, mystery and intrigue. To be fair, this book offers all these things, and plenty more. It is a compelling, captivating story. But what it gave me and what…
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