Category Archives: P D Martin (Aus)

Aussie Authors Update #3

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My reviews of Aussie crime fiction are published exclusively at my other blog, Fair Dinkum Crime, which I co-host with fellow Australian blogger and crime fiction fan Kerrie of Mysteries in Paradise. But I like to do an occasional wrap-up of my recent Aussie crime fiction reads here at Reactions to Reading

PRIME CUT by Alan Carter

Synopsis: Philip ‘Cato’ Kwong was once, literally, the poster boy for Western Australia’s police force. Of Chinese descent he represented a new kind of recruit and, for a while, he could do no wrong. But as this book opens he is disgraced, having been involved in a frame-up that was discovered. He has been assigned to one of the worst jobs in the force in hopes he will resign. But when a body, or part of one, washes up on shore in a small mining town six hundred kilometres south east of Perth, Cato has a second chance to prove that he is, or can be, a good cop after all. At the same a cold case that had its origins in northern England more than 30 years ago rears its very ugly head.

Review summary: Prime Cut has an outstanding sense of both its geographical and social setting, taking place in rural Australia amidst the latest mining boom with all that implies. Carter has also created some compelling characters and provided some thoughtful, delicate insight into some topical issues. A brilliant and highly recommended read.

The full review is at Fair Dinkum Crime, My rating 4.5/5 Since I posted this review Prime Cut was awarded the 2011 Ned Kelly Award for Best First Fiction

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KISS OF DEATH by P D Martin

Synopsis: The book opens with Los Angeles based FBI profiler Sophie Anderson being called in on a case involving the death of a young woman in a state park. Normally Sophie’s team would not be called in so early on in an investigation but the woman’s body has two puncture wounds on the neck and appears to have been drained of blood so the lead detective on the case engages the FBI to cover her bases. They soon learn that the woman, an acting student called Sherry Taylor, had recently become interested in the local vampire sub culture which, given the nature of her death, opens up an avenue of investigation that takes the team into a possible cult-like group in the midst of the city.

Review Summary: I really liked the way the book delved into the subject of cults/new religious movements without being sensationalist or judgemental and enjoyed the balance of investigative procedure and personal life. I did think the ‘woo woo’ element was a little more over the top than usual in this series though.

The full review is at Fair Dinkum Crime 3/5 stars.

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BEREFT by Chris Womersley (audio)

Synopsis: One stormy day in 1909 in the (fictional) former gold-rush town of Flint, New South Wales, Quinn Walker is found by his father and uncle standing beside the body of his 12 year-old sister; a bloody knife in his hand. Quinn runs away and is not seen or heard from again until his mother receives a telegram seven years later reporting that he has died, on the battlefields of WWI. However after the war is over Quinn, now 26, is de-mobbed in Sydney and makes his way back to Flint, having been compelled by a spooky encounter while in London. He arrives to find the town in the grip of a world-wide flu epidemic, his own mother among those dying, and everyone so convinced he is guilty his sister’s murder that he will be killed on sight if he is recognised. He hides out in the hills surrounding his old home where he is befriended by a young orphan girl named Sadie while he struggles to find a course of action to prove his claim of innocence.

Review Summary: I found this a difficult read. On the one had there is the writing which is nothing short of brilliant In stark, sparse prose and using superb imagery Womersley has depicted the state of being bereft with such nuance and depth that even a reader who has never experienced such an all-consuming loss will feel like they have by the end of this novel. But is unrelentingly bleak, having only a single tone and was a struggle to keep reading for that reason.

The full review is at Fair Dinkum Crime and I never did give this one a rating.

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DEAD MAN’S CHEST by Kerry Greenwood (audio)

Synopsis: In the 18th instalment of the Phryne (pronounced Fry-knee) Fisher series set in 1920′s Australia, Phryne and her entourage have left Melbourne for a summer holiday in the seaside town of Queenscliff. They are to occupy the home of an anthropologist acquaintance of Phryne’s but when they arrive they find the Johnstons, a servant couple who were to look after the holidaymakers, appear to have left in a hurry and taken all the supplies with them. Once their household management is under control Phryne and company soon turn to considerations of the Johnston’s disappearance and the alarming matter that has occupied the town’s gossips: who is cutting of the plaits of all the young ladies?

Review summary: This is an intelligent cosy mystery with a sense of humour and the well-depicted atmosphere of the roaring 20′s. The audio book is delightfully narrated too

The full review is at Fair Dinkum Crime 3.5/5 stars

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THE HALF-CHILD by Angela Savage

Synopsis: In the mid 1990′s Australian Jayne Keeney has been living in Thailand for a number of years and works as a private detective. As this book opens she is hired by an Australian man Jim Delbeck to investigate the death of his daughter Maryanne. The girl was volunteering at an orphanage run by a Christian group in Pattaya, a seedy coastal town south of Bangkok, when she apparently committed suicide some months earlier. Her father fervently believes that she would not have killed herself and he wants Jayne to find out the truth.

Review Summary: A real treat of a novel offering engaging and believable characters, a thoughtful and intelligent plot and a subtle, complex insight into the culture in which it is set. There is also some delightful humour.

The full review is at Fair Dinkum Crime 4/5 stars

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Aussie Authors Update #1
Aussie Authors Update #2

Crime Fiction Alphabet: Q is for Quantico

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For this instalment of the crime fiction alphabet we’re heading to a location in America that has become well-known to readers (and watchers) of crime fiction. Quantico is actually a small town (population 561) in Prince William County, Virginia but for crime fiction readers the name generally conjures up images of one of the military or law enforcement facilities that surround the town. It is the site of US Marine Corps’ largest bases and contains within it (among other things) the Marine Corps Officer Candidates School, the Marine Corps Research Center, the Marine Corps Brig (a military prison), the FBI Training Academy (incorporating the much-featured-in-crime-fiction Behavioural Analysis Unit) and a training facility for the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). Collectively these facilities and the people who work in them have become familiar to crime fiction fans.

One of the first books to feature Quantico in any detail was Thomas Harris’ Silence of the Lambs (published in 1988 though set five-years earlier) in which a young FBI trainee, Clarice Starling, is asked by Jack Crawford, head of the psychological profiling unit, to present a profiling questionnaire to Hannibal Lecter, a sociopath serving life in prison for a series of brutal murders he committed. As well as being in charge of building up profilers of all the worst killers in custody, Crawford is also on the trail of a serial killer who has been nicknamed Buffalo Bill who has killed several women in a particularly gruesome way. It becomes clear that Lecter knows something about the killer and a battle of wits begins.

Given that several characters in her long-running Kay Scarpetta series work for the FBI in one way or another, it’s no surprise that more than one of Patricia Cornwell‘s books features Quantico in some way. In the fifth book of the series, The Body Farm (1994), Scarpetta is investigating the murder of a young girl which has similar elements to earlier murders which were carried out by someone who has eluded the FBI. Kay is helped by her niece, Lucy Farinelli, who is now an intern at the FBI and looks set for a career at Quantico’s computer engineering facility before she engages in a disastrous relationship with a fellow Quantico employee.

Gene Riehl’s Quantico Rules (2003) is a bit of a departure from the serial killer hunts that tend to be the focus of novels in which the Quantico facilities are featured. Puller Monk is an FBI agent along with being a compulsive gambler and jolly good liar (he actually practices defeating lie detectors). He heads up the Special Inquiries (SPIN) unit and as the book opens is undertaking a routine (but thorough) background check of Judge Brenda Thompson who is the first African American woman nominated as a candidate for the Supreme Court. He learns that she has lied about what she was doing during a 3 week period over 30 years earlier and when he follows that lead a very nasty secret starts to unravel.

It’s also worth re-mentioning the book I featured for the letter Q the last time this meme was in play. Greg Bear’s Quantico (2007) is a cross between science and crime fiction. It is set in the near future when a massive terrorist attack has occurred in the US and the book follows the stories of two Quantico-based FBI agents, one a Muslim of Arabic heritage and one a man trying to live up to the legendary status of his father.

P.D. Martin‘s series featuring Australian-born FBI Profiler Sophie Anderson starts out with Body Count (2007). Sophie has left her job with the Australian police to join the FBI and when this book opens she has undertaken her training and is working at the Quantico-based Behavioural Analysis Unit. She starts experiencing nightmares of crime scenes. This would be fairly normal for a law enforcement officer except these are detailed images of real scenes that Sophie has not been anywhere near. Is she going mad or does she really have a capacity to see things from a killer’s point of view.

Many crime other crime fighters, such Leighton Gage‘s creation Chief Inspector Mario Silva of the Brazilian Federal Police who features in five books so far starting with Blood of the Wicked, spend time training at Quantico either as part of the narratives in which they appear or via their back-stories so the facilities really are an almost ubiquitous feature of crime fiction. Is this a feature of crime novels you have noticed? Have I missed your favourite Quantico-based book?

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Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise is hosting the crime fiction alphabet meme which requires the posting of an article relating to the letter of the week. Do join in the fun by reading the posts and/or contributing one of your own. You don’t have to write every week.

Aussie Authors Aced

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I know the title doesn’t mean much but I had a yen for alliteration. What it means is that I have finished the highest possible level of the Aussie Author Challenge (8 books by Aussie Authors during 2010). And it’s only July.

These are the titles I read counted for the challenge

I have a swag more books by Aussies sitting very close to the top of the TBR pile so this is by no means the end of my aussie reading for the year. Stay tuned.

Review: The Killing Hands by P D Martin

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It wasn’t until I toddled home from the bookstore with the newest Sophie Anderson book in my hot little hands this week that I realised I had hadn’t read last year’s release yet. Such are the woes of having a ludicrously large pile of unread books lying about the house.

So I embarked hurriedly on The Killing Hands, the fourth book to feature FBI profiler Sophie Anderson. She’s called in to work up a profile of the killer of an unidentified body who appears to have had his throat ripped out. Even before he’s identified the body is linked to Asian organised crime in Los Angeles which requires Sophie to work with a myriad of gang-related government agencies who form a task force. Eventually Sophie identifies that the man, and possibly other victims as well, might have been killed using a specialist form of martial arts training and the task force focus their attention on the Yakuza both in LA, Japan and China.

One of the things that I like most about this series is that there’s always a change in Sophie’s work environment so it doesn’t ever feel stale. Here her work with gangs is a completely new arena for Sophie and, aside from Sophie’s parents and her potential love interest, all the characters are new and interesting to meet. Sophie herself continues to grow and is harnessing her unique psychic ability with greater skill in this book. If you’re like me and a little skeptical of ‘woo woo’ in your books don’t let that last sentence turn you off because it’s a relatively minor element of the plot and it really is handled very intelligently.

The plot of this one builds well towards the end though I have to admit I found some of the earlier parts a little hard going. Martin does meticulous research and incorporated this well into the book in terms of providing enough information on relatively obscure topics like martial arts moves and organised crime but it did lead to a little slower pace than usual at the beginning. It probably doesn’t help that I have a personal bias against books where organised crime features heavily (I simply can’t get terribly interested when criminals start killing each other but given the ratings of TV shows like Underbelly and The Sopranos I realise I’m in the minority). However there were enough other threads including protecting an undercover agent, the exposing of a dangerous leak from the task force and more emphasis than usual on Sophie’s private life to maintain my interest.

I enjoy this series as it does seem to occupy a fairly unique slot in the genre. It is a procedural of course but having Sophie move around so much allows new characters and completely different types of cases to be featured which keeps the books fresher than many series of this type. And Sophie herself is not your run-of-the-mill investigator either, being able to harness a special gift over and above her more traditional skills. The Killing Hands is another credible and engaging outing in the series and I’m looking forward to catching up with Sophie again soon.

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My rating 4/5

Publisher: Pan MacMillan [2009]; ISBN: 978-1-4050-3902-4 Length: 392 pages; Setting Los Angeles, United States, present day

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I have reviewed book two (The Murderer’s Club) and book 3 (Fan Mail) in this series already (I read book 1, Body Count in my pre-blog days).

The Killing Hands has also been reviewed at Aust Crime Fiction and Books and Musings from Down Under

P D Martin is busy writing her sixth Sophie Anderson book, Coming Home, as an ebook in which new chapters are being released as they’re written (following voting by fans on the plot lines which should be taken). I’m not entirely convinced this is how I want my fiction developed but it’s an interesting experiment to watch (if the above link doesn’t work it’s not my fault or yours, the technology does seem to be a bit ‘flaky’)

I’ll never understand publishing. This is the American cover of the book, I don’t think it’s nearly as interesting or relevant as our version.

This is my first book by an Australian author this year and so my first book in the 2010 Aussie Author challenge.

Review: Fan Mail by P D Martin

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Title: Fan Mailfan mail

Author: P D Martin

Publisher: Pan Australia [2008]

ISBN: 978-0-330-42402-8

Length: 497 pages

In the third thriller to feature FBI profiler Sophie Anderson we’re taken to Los Angeles where best-selling crime writer Loretta Black is killed in a manner reflecting her newest book. Sophie, having just moved from the FBI’s Behavioural Science Unit to the LA field office, teams up with LA Police Detective Dave Sorrell to track down the killer. Realising that Black has received some rather nasty fan mail they concentrate on that angle quite early on. At the same time as this is playing out one of Sophie’s earlier cases is proceeding to its court phase in another state and there are some dramatic developments that take her attention from the present case at times.

This is probably one of the most realistic books I’ve read in terms of the way in which this kind of investigation might unfold. Unlike one of those TV crime shows, where each fingerprint or speck of dust leads speedily and miraculously to one of only two people on the planet who could possibly have ‘done it’, there are many dead ends, false leads and old fashioned follow-up here. It’s a really fine example of a modern procedural investigation and shows just how much painstaking work from dozens of experts is required for success. I will admit though that people who’ve read a lot of crime fiction might find the explanations of all the evidence collection theories and techniques a little repetitive (there can’t be too many fans of this genre that don’t know what Locard’s principle is for example) but it must be tough for an author to know how much prior knowledge of specialist subjects to include. The bonus side effect of focusing on the myriad of investigative approaches is that it allows the inclusion of lots of credible red herrings and plot twists in the story so you never quite know how it’s going to end.

Martin also does a solid job with her characters. Sophie has some psychic ability (normally a turn off for me) but it doesn’t take over her character and it’s quite fascinating to see how she is learning to accept and use her unique talent. Aside from that she and Dave Sorrell develop a decent working relationship over the course of this story and, again, it has a very realistic feel to its growth as the two feel each other out. The minor characters, including early suspects and the various crime lab experts are also nicely depicted.

My slight criticism of this book is the continuing thread that began in The Murderer’s Club. Apart from relying quite heavily on information from that book for at least one thread of this one, if you haven’t read The Murderer’s Club before Fan Mail you won’t be able to go back and read it because lots of the plot twists and information about the culprits are given away here. And the hint at the end of this book that we’ll hear from a key person behind The Murderer’s Club in future made my heart a little heavy. I think the idea of criminal mastermind being obsessed with a single investigator has been done to death (It’s one of the main things that prompted me to give up both Patricia Cornwell’s  Kay Scarpetta series and James Patterson’s Alex Cross novels) and I’d be annoyed if this series takes that kind of turn. However I’ll cross my fingers and will definitely read the next one in this series some time soon (it’s already sitting in Mt TBR).

My rating 3.5/5

Other stuff

Fan Mail has also been reviewed at Mysteries in Paradise, Crime Down Under, It’s Criminal and Aust Crime Fiction

The other books in this series are, in order, Body Count, The Murderer’s Club and Killing Hands which is book 4 in the series and was released this year.

Review: The Murderers’ Club by P.D. Martin

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Title: The Murderers’ Club

Author: P D Martin

Publisher: Mira Books (2008)

ISBN: 978-0-7783-0238-4

FBI profiler Sophie Anderson is visiting a police officer friend on holidays in Arizona when an unidentified body is discovered.  As has happened once before in her career Sophie experiences a psychic vision of the victim before his death when she goes to the crime scene with Detective Darren Carter. At the same time as this case progresses readers are treated to transcripts of the discussions of an online club who talk about victim selection and killing techniques in the same off-hand way that a knitting club might chat about wool selection.

This is brilliantly constructed novel. So good in fact I can think of some authors I’d like to send copies to with a pithy “this is how you build suspense” post-it stuck to the cover for their edification. The premise and characters are established well and the scene setting is followed by a genuinely edge-of-your-seat  ride to an unpredictable climax. There are no extraneous scenes and no frustrating loose ends and the fact that readers know things that the police don’t know is handled deftly.

I’m rather surprised that I like Sophie as much as I do because I’m a bit of a skeptic when it comes to psychic powers but Martin has developed a credible premise and I find myself curious about this element of Sophie’s character. The fact that she struggles to accept and use her ability seems very natural and fits in well with the rest of her personality. Also, as she’s a solidly trained expert who relies on evidence and all the other traditional methods for catching criminals, I find it much easier to accept the psychic element to crime solving than I do in other fictional cases (such as TV’s Medium). The other key characters here are also well developed and have a very natural feel. Darren’s support for Sophie developing her gift is particularly well handled. It’s interesting (and more than a little creepy) to watch the individual characters of the group of villains be seen via their increasingly evil online chats.

Another point worth mentioning about this book is that it explains relevant investigative techniques and police jargon in a useful and somewhat refreshing way. Many books either assume readers know what all the acronyms and other language mean or prattle on endlessly with an unnecessary level of detail but Martin seems to have got the level of explanation just right with this book.

I was a poor New Years’ Eve host last night as I’m sure I gave off ‘please get out of my house’ vibes because I needed to get back to this book and find out what happened next. What a great way to start my new reading year.

My rating 4.5/5

Earlier books in this series

  • Body Count

Other reviews of The Murderers’ Club

Bloodstained Book Reviews

Crime Down Under

Aust Crime Fiction