This week, I’m travelling the globe, reading books by an Australian, a Canadian and an Irishwoman. All have been published in the last four months and they’re all by authors who I’ve read and enjoyed before. Each author has a distinctive storytelling style that sets them apart in the crowded field of thriller novels.
I’m hoping for memorable characters, good mysteries and a strong sense of place from all three of them.
‘The Good Girl’ (2024) by Michelle Dunne
I’m really looking forward to Michelle Dunne’s third book.
I loved the honesty of her first book While Nobody is Watching which was a realistic thriller that got in the head of a main character coping with PTSD. Her second book, The Invisible, kept the honesty but cranked up the tension. The first ten per cent of the book banged me, face-first, into a wall of unpleasant reality and promised that there’d be much worse to come. It was a well-crafted, edge-of-the-seat thriller that engaged unblinkingly with the ugly realities of modern slavery.
The Good Girl breaks new ground. It’s a standalone novel and the main character is fierce and merciless. I’ve read the first chapter. It was original, brutal, disturbing and impossible to look away from. I think this is going to be quite a ride.
Michelle Dunne is a crime and thriller writer from Cork.
The Good Girl is her latest novel. In July 2024, The Hotel Maid, the story of a maid who finds the body of a murdered woman in her hotel room, just as a child is reported missing on hotel grounds, will be released
Michelle also wrote While Nobody is Watching and The Invisible, thrillers following former soldier and UN Peacekeeper Lindsey Ryan as she tries to adapt to her new life in the clutches of PTSD. The series is currently in development for television and is inspired by Michelle’s own experiences as an infantry soldier and UN Peacekeeper.
‘Murder Road’ (2024) by Simone St. James
I was very impressed with Simone St. James’ The Sun Down Motel. It mananged to be thought/anger-provoking, driven by strong female characters and delivers a thriller/supernatural mystery that is tense and exciting.
For me, a strong part of her appeal is that the supernatural elements in her novels amplify the human relationships and conflicts rather than dominating the story.
I’m hoping that Murder Road will have a compelling Big Bad in it but that the story will be powered by the personalities of the characters confronting it.
Simone St. James is a Canadian writer who spent twenty years behind the scenes in the television business before leaving to write full-time.
She is best known for The Book Of Cold Cases, The Sun Down Motel, and The Broken Girls.
Her debut novel, The Haunting of Maddy Clare, won two RITA Awards from Romance Writers of America and an Arthur Ellis Award from Crime Writers of Canada.
An Inquiry Into Love and Death was nominated for another Arthur Ellis Award.
‘Murder Town’ (2023) by Shelley Burr
I ordered Murder Town as soon as I finished Wake, the first P.I. Lane Holland novel. Wake held my attention because although it was a story about a cold case, it didn’t feel like a solve-the-puzzle mystery or like a dramatised True Crime. It felt more like real life, where things are never neat and tidy, misunderstandings are common and things never quite turn out the way you thought they would.
At the heart of the story were two damaged people who needed to find a way of looking forward and not backwards. Lane Holland was one of those people and I’m curious to see what he does next.
Murder Town is narrated by Jacquie Brennan. She did an excellent job with Wake, greatly increasing my enjoyment of the novel, I’m looking forward to hearing her perform again.
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.
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