We’re celebrating Crime Month here at Booktopia for all of July with a collection of the best in recent crime fiction! Here to help us celebrate is Chris Hammer, author of three magnetic mysteries featuring the hardened investigative journalist Martin Scarsden.
Chris is on the blog today to show us his ultimate crime bookshelf – the books that have become his absolute favourites from the genre. Read on …
The Big Sleep
by Raymond Chandler
A great novel by the master of the hard-boiled detective. Think Humphrey Bogart playing Philip Marlowe. Beautiful writing; reads as well now as it did in 1939.
Buy it here
The Broken Shore and Truth
by Peter Temple
The final two novels by Australia’s most accomplished crime writer, with Truth winning the Miles Franklin prize. Transcends the formulaic to examine the morality of modern Australia.
Buy The Broken Shore here and Truth here
The Ruin, The Scholar and The Good Turn
by Dervla McTiernan
Masterful police procedurals, featuring Irish policeman Cormac Reilly and his colleagues. Crime writing at its best.
Buy The Ruin here, The Scholar here and The Good Turn here
Good Girl, Bad Girl
by Michael Robotham
This is the first book in a new series by Australia’s preeminent crime writer, so now is the time to get on board, with the follow up When She Was Good due this August. The plot is beguiling, but it’s the characters that intrigue: the damaged psychologist Cyrus Haven and the traumatised youth with a remarkable talent, Evie Cormac.
Buy it here
The Nowhere Child and The Wife and The Widow
by Christian White
Self-contained psychological thrillers, that will keep you guessing until the final pages. These have no detective or outside protagonists; the characters tell their own stories. For lovers of books with unreliable narrators and big twists.
Buy The Nowhere Child here and The Wife and the Widow here
Resurrection Bay, And Fire Came Down and Darkness for Light
by Emma Viskic
Featuring the deaf (and damaged) private detective Caleb Zelic, these books are fast-paced and full of twists, at times grim, at times humorous. But it’s the humanity that shines through.
Buy Resurrection Bay here, And Fire Came Down here and Darkness for Light here
Snake Island
by Ben Hobson
A tale infused by a sense of inevitability, where past crimes and wrong-doing return to shape the present in a hard-scrabble town on the Victorian coast. Part western, part Greek tragedy, part morality tale. Highly readable.
Buy it here
Under Your Wings
by Tiffany Tsao
The author is Sydney-based, but the action takes place in Indonesia where the daughter of a wealthy Chinese family poisons her entire family, leaving her sister to work out why. If you liked My Sister, the Serial Killer, you’ll love this.
Buy it here
Chris Hammer
About the Author
Chris Hammer was a journalist for more than thirty years, dividing his career between covering Australian federal politics and international affairs. For many years he was a roving foreign correspondent for SBS TV’s flagship current affairs program Dateline. He has reported from more than thirty countries on six continents. In Canberra, roles included chief political correspondent for The Bulletin, current affairs correspondent for SBS TV and a senior political journalist for The Age.
His first book, The River, published in 2010 to critical acclaim, was the recipient of the ACT Book of the Year Award and was shortlisted for the Walkley Book Award and the Manning Clark House National Cultural Award. Scrublands, his first novel, was published in 2018 and was shortlisted for Best Debut Fiction at the Indie Book Awards, shortlisted for Best General Fiction at the Australian Book Industry Awards, shortlisted for the UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing at the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards and won the UK Crime Writers’ Association John Creasey Debut Dagger Award.
His second novel, Silver, was published in 2019 and was shortlisted for Best General Fiction at the Australian Book Industry Awards, shortlisted for the 2020 ABA Booksellers’ Choice Book of the Year Award, and longlisted for the UK Crime Writers’ Association Gold Dagger Award. His third novel, Trust, will be out on the 13th of October.
Trust
Martin Scarsden's new life seems perfect, right up until the moment it's shattered by a voicemail: a single scream, abruptly cut off, from his partner Mandalay Blonde.
Racing home, he finds an unconscious man sprawled on the floor and Mandy gone. Someone has abducted her. But who, and why? So starts a twisting tale of intrigue and danger, as Martin probes the past of the woman he loves, a woman who has buried her former life so deep she has never mentioned it. And for the first time, Mandy finds denial impossible...
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