Earlier this year it was revealed that Hawai’ian actress Maggie Q would play Detective Renée Ballard, first introduced in Michael Connelly’s excellent 2017 novel The Late Show, in a new spin-off of Amazon Prime’s two hit dramas about Detective Harry Bosch.
On the page Ballard returns to the fore in The Waiting, Michael Connelly’s riveting new novel that sees the head of the Open-Unsolved Unit juggling three career-threatening cases. When surf-loving Ballard’s personal items (including her gun and badge) are stolen, she must conduct an off-the-books investigation to retrieve them, leading her and Bosch into harm’s way. Meanwhile, Ballard’s volunteer-based unit gets a familial hit on a long-dormant killer, the Pillowcase Rapist, which points to a high-ranking judge. Harry’s daughter Maddie, an LAPD patrol cop, offers to volunteer for Ballard’s unit, having uncovered startling new evidence relating to one of LA’s most infamous unsolved crimes, the Black Dahlia case. While the three cases provide plenty of page-turning intrigue, along the way the novel also deepens readers’ understanding of Ballard: her family history, what drives her, the cracks in her armour.
Sydney author Candice Fox doesn’t yet have Connelly’s lengthy resumé but she, too, has crafted a string of excellent tales across multiple series, scooped several awards and seen some of her creations come to further life on screen (Troppo, based on her superb Crimson Lake trilogy). Fox’s new novel is a fierce tale of desperate people in an unforgiving landscape. Ex-soldier Harvey Buck is racing along the “Wire”, a notorious unmarked track through Outback Australia, to be with his dying girlfriend. He picks up Clare Holland, an abused woman whose car has broken down. The duo are ambushed, strapped into bomb vests and forced to commit violent missions as part of a deadly game.
Senior Sergeant Edna Norris, meanwhile, is dealing with a teen runaway and an unfolding crime spree.
Fox crafts a thrill ride of a book that has plenty of substance beneath its speed and style. Fox ensures her characters are more than moving parts on a game board. This excellent thriller offers action plus emotion and a great setting.
Cowboy lawyers, conmen, bullion thieves and grave robbers – detectives Nell Buchanan and Ivan Lucic must almost feel as if they’re up against villains and foes from centuries past when investigating the murder of a controversial entrepreneur in Chris Hammer’s compelling new novel. While he’s a new star of “outback noir”, Hammer has soaked readers in a diverse array of Aussie landscapes across his multi-layered mysteries, from a church shooting in drought-stricken farmlands in Scrublands (now a TV series on ThreeNow) to the corrupt underbelly of privileged Sydney.
In The Valley Hammer takes his heroes into a mountain valley he brings to vivid life while nodding to the idea that rural noir is akin to modern westerns. A tense tale entwining past and present narratives, political scandal and police corruption, and unexpected familial connections for Nell Buchanan, it shows a storyteller at the top of his considerable game.
