Hall, Clare Leslie (2025) Broken Country. J.Murray.
Gabriel was Beth’s first love. She was seventeen when she met him but when he left it was Frank she married. Frank with whom she built a home and had a son. When Gabriel returns Beth’s life is already in turmoil. Is this their second chance? Although recognising that her family will be hurt her attraction to Gabriel is still potent. If she could have foreseen the consequences would she have made the choices she made? This is an epic tale with Hardyesque qualities, part love story, part mystery, with a court case thrown in. Passionate melodrama.
Rating: 4/5
McCluskey, Laura (2025) The Wolf Tree. Hemlock Press.
DIs Georgina Lennox and Richard Stewart are sent to Eilean Eadar, a windswept small island off the coast of Scotland, to investigate the apparent suicide of eighteen year old Alan Fergusson. What they find is an island full of secrets and suspects. The inhabitants are buried in a past of murderous superstitious practices. And, mainlanders are not welcome. George and Richie bravely seek to unravel the mystery in a wild threatening landscape. A dark, but predictable, outsiders versus islanders procedural.
Rating: 3/5
Jenkins, Joanna (2025) The Bluff. Allen & Unwin.
Former high-flying lawyer Ruth Dawson (How to Kill a Client) is locuming at a friend’s legal practice in the rural east coast town of Myddle, when a mother calls upon her to help find her missing seventeen old daughter. Why is the local policeman reluctant to act? Then a popular farmer is found murdered. Has it anything to do with the tourist eco-retreat planned for the Bluff? This is a complex tale of community loyalties, deception and intrigue; full of memorable characters. Another compelling Aussie read that will keep you guessing till the end.
Rating: 4/5
Applebaum, Anne (2024) Autocracy, Inc: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World. Penguin.
A timely treatise on the new age of authoritarianism now operating across multiple regimes. These autocracies are networked across borders, supported by corruption in government, kleptocratic financial structures, corporate collusion, sophisticated propaganda, the mastering of surveillance and other technologies, and the rise of populism. Although it feels that the world has moved on, a year after the publication of this book, it however clearly elucidates the catalysts and how autocracies are working together to undermine the democratic world (and the evils of America). Whilst members of Autocracy, Inc, are not linked by a unifying ideology, like communism or isolationism, they do have a common sense of purpose in their need for power, wealth and impunity. Applebaum argues that democracies need to shift their policies to fight this threat as history has shown autocracies can be destroyed from inside as well as out. In the meantime nobody’s democracy is safe. Disturbing and powerful.
Rating: 5/5
McTiernan, Dervla (2025) The Unquiet Grave. HarperCollins.
Cormac Reilly puts his super-sleuthing skills to work again. A mutilated corpse is found in a bog near Galway. Initially the body is assumed to be a historical ritual killing, but is quickly found to be that of a missing school principal. As Cormac and his team start to close in on the murderer he is distracted by plea from his former girlfriend to help find her missing husband, and then two other mutilated bodies are found. Is there a serial killer at work? A taunt thriller. Another riveting read from Dervla McTiernan.
Rating: 4/5
Hardy, Fiona (2025) Unbury the Dead. Affirm Press.
Teddy and Alice are feisty ‘underground’ PIs and besties. They are fixers for hire. Operating in a morally grey space where the boundaries are fluid. Alice’s current job is to transport one of Australia’s wealthiest men to his final resting place before anyone discovers he is dead, while Teddy is searching for a missing teenager. Soon, after heaps of twists and turns, their cases collide. Slow and dull – lost interest early on.
Rating: 2/5
7:30 Bookclub 