Jeff Popple reviews three new crime novels for a lazy summer weekend read. More of Jeff’s reviews can be found on his blog: murdermayhemandlongdogs.com
Wild Card by Simon Rowell
Text, $32.99
Simon Rowell’s The Long Game was one of my favourite reads of 2021, and he has now followed it up with the equally good Wild Card. Once more featuring Detective Sergeant Zoe Mayer of the Victorian Police Force, Wild Card is a smoothly told tale about modern crime and old secrets. When the executed body of a bikie is found on the Victorian side of the Murray River, Zoe and her team are quickly dispatched and soon find themselves caught in the middle of a power struggle between competing criminal elements. Very well written with great characters and a nice sense of place.
Dead Tide by Fiona McIntosh
Michael Joseph, $32.99
Fiona McIntosh has enjoyed good success with her novels about London detective Jack Hawksworth, and now with Dead Tide she brings the charismatic policeman down under to her home state of South Australia. Following the death of a young woman in London, Jack is on the trail of a cynical international crime consortium, which is exploiting the desire of couples to have babies, no matter what the cost. Mixing family drama with police detection, Dead Tide is a solidly paced novel with a wealth of detail and rich descriptions of the Yorke Peninsula. It is sure to appeal to McIntosh’s many fans.
In The Blink of an Eye by Jo Callaghan
Simon & Schuster, $32.99
Jo Callaghan’s slightly futuristic crime novel pairs a recently widowed, London police officer, Kat Frank, with an experimental artificial intelligence entity known as Lock. Together, the pair, and Kat’s team, investigate a series of missing persons cases involving young men. This is a well-crafted and engaging crime novel. The mild science fiction elements are lightly handled, and at the core of the book is a good police thriller plot that moves swiftly in its second half to a tense and unexpected ending. Callaghan shows good maturity with this promising debut, which I suspect will be the start of a popular series.
