This week, I’ll be reading three award-winning Australian crime novels All of them are written by women. Two of them are debut novels. One is the second book in a trilogy that I’ve already started. One is a road trip story, one is a mystery in rural Australia and one is about an unconventional Sydney Metro detective going undercover.
‘No Country For Girls‘ by Emma Styles (2023)
Why am I reading ‘No Country For Girls‘? I’d like to say that it was because of the prizes that it won and the endorsements that it received but really it was because I loved the title and the cover and was intrigued at the idea of an Australian Road-Trip novel with two women taking on the patriarchy like a modern-day version of Thelma And Louise.
Emma Styles writes contemporary Australian noir about young women taking on the patriarchy. No Country for Girls is her debut novel. It won the 2020 Little, Brown UEA Crime Fiction Award, was a Val McDermid New Blood pick at the 2022 Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival, and has been longlisted for the 2023 Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award and the CWA New Blood Dagger.
Emma grew up on Whadjuk Noongar Country in Perth, Western Australia and now lives in London where she was born. She has an MA in crime fiction from the University of East Anglia and has worked as a veterinarian in country and coastal Australia and the UK. She spent her teens and twenties learning to ski, snowboard, ride horses and motorcycles, and fly small aeroplanes. She loves a road trip and once sat out a cyclone on the north west coast of WA in a LandCruiser Troop Carrier.
‘Wake‘ by Shelley Burr (2022)
‘Wake‘ called to me because it won the CWA Debut Dagger award, it’s set in rural Australia and written by someone who knows the area well and it’s the start of a new series.
My wife got to this book before I did and sang its praises as a book that grabbed her attention and kept it until the end so I’m looking forward to an engaging read and I hope I’ve found a new author to follow.
Shelley Burr is an alumnus of the ACT Writer’s Centre Hardcopy program (2018) and a Varuna fellow. Her debut novel Wake (2022), featuring Private Investigator Lane Holland, won the CWA Debut Dagger award. The second Lane Holland book, Murder Town (A.K.A Ripper) was published in August 2023. ,
When not writing she works at the Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment. She lives in Canberra, but grew up splitting her time between Newcastle and Glenrowan, where her father’s family are all sheep farmers.
‘Eden’ by Candice Fox (2014)
I bought ‘Eden’ as soon as I finished ‘Hades‘, the first book in this peculiar trilogy. ‘Hades’ won the Ned Kelly Award for Best First Fiction (2014). The second book in a trilogy can often be the trickiest, you’ve lost the novelty of the first book but you can’t give the closure of the final book but Candice Fox’s second book ‘Eden‘ won the Ned Kelly Award for Best Fiction (2015)
I’m looking forward to diving in and finding out what Eden Archer does next and how she gets away with it.
Candice Fox is the author of nine solo novels, three of which have won Australia’s prestigious Ned Kelly Award. All of her novels have been shortlisted for the award. In 2022, her novel ‘Crimson Lake‘ was made into the TV series ‘Troppo‘ starring Thomas Jane and Nicole Chamoun. She has multiple tv and film adaptations currently in production,
In 2015, Candice began collaborating with James Patterson. Each of their seven novels together have been New York Times best sellers.
Candice lives in Sydney with her family and is a volunteer rescuer of injured wildlife.
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