Pile by the Bed reviews and recommends Birnam Wood by Booker Prize winning New Zealand author Eleanor Catton a deep, satiric and insightful exploration of power, idealism and environmentalism.
Pile by the Bed reviews Dark Deeds Down Under a collection of Australian and New Zealand crime fiction short stories edited by Craig Sisterson and featuring some big names on the genre along side newer voices.
Pile by the Bed reviews Better the Blood the debut fiction novel by screenwriter and true crime author Michael Bennett dealing directlt with the ongoing impacts of New Zealand’s violent colonial past.
Pile by the Bed reviews Paper Cage by Tom Baragwanath, debut New Zealand crime fiction that deals with the legacy of colonialism through the eyes of a unique protagonist.
Pile by the Bed reviews The Wrong Woman by JP Pomare, a well placed, well plotted twisty stand-alone thriller.
Pile by the Bed reviews Remember Me by Charity Norman a New Zealand set mystery wrapped around a family drama.
Pile by the Bed reviews Our Violent Ends by Chloe Gong, conclusion to her 1920s Shanghai set, Shakespeare inspired These Violent Delights.
Pile byt the Bed reviews A Good Winter by Gigi Fenster – “a derk descent into a troubled mind” and winner of the 2020 Michael Gifkins Prize.
Pile by the Bed reviews Chloe Gong’s fantasy debut These Violent Delights – a riff on Romeo and Juliet set in an alternative 1920s Shanghai.
Pile by the Bed reviews The Devils You Know the new ex-special forces lone-gun hero thriller from New Zealand author Ben Sanders
Pile by the Bed reviews The Secrets of Strangers by Charity Norman a character-based thriller based around a London cafe siege.
A few years ago, Adam Christopher had a fantastic idea based on a dare from a long dead author. Raymond Chandler, one of the greats of noir fiction derided science fiction. Out of his comment “they pay brisk money for this?” came Christopher’s short story Brisk Money, which itself morphed into the science fiction noir detective mashup novel Made to Kill. Made to Kill was set in the 1950s and centred on Ray Electromatic, the last robot in America, plying his trade as a private detective, only not. Ray’s handler, a computer called Ada, had reasoned logically that assassinations paid more money and so while Ray’s cover was as a detective his day job was an efficient killer. Killing is My Business is a the second in a projected trilogy about Ray Electromatic. Early on, Ray’s first couple of hits go wrong, the first through apparent suicide and the second because his target has done a runner. So Ray takes on another job, getting close to a mafia boss in order to find out his secrets before killing him. There is lot of set up here and then a huge leap of faith that the mafia boss would take Ray…
Ben Sanders is a New Zealander but you would not know it from his all American gun-fest that is the Marshall Grade series. These books steeped in the American super hard-boiled tradition, usually anchored by a violently proficient loner, popularised by authors like Lee Child. Marshall’s Law opens months after the events in American Blood. There is still a contract out on Marshall, Sander’s Jack Reacher style loner and former cop who went into witness protection after an undercover operation gone wrong. Unable to find him, they go after his US Marshal contact Lucas Cohen in Santa Fe. Cohen survives a kidnapping attempt and alerts Marshall who then leaves his hiding spot in LA to travel to the East Coast to try and get some information. For no real reason, Cohen also heads to New York with a view to helping Marshall out. Meanwhile, a violent crime boss called Dexter Vine is looking to capture or kill Marshall for the bounty which he needs to pay off debts to a bigger crime boss. Much of the narrative focusses on the cat and mouse games between Vine’s goons and Marshall with Cohen providing some related back-up as he puts things together….
LA, 1965, a beautiful female movie star walks into a seedy detective’s office and makes him an offer he can’t refuse. Only the detective is a robot. One of the greatest exponents of pulp genre noir detective fiction, Raymond Chandler, reputedly turned his nose up at one of the other popular pulp genres of the time – science fiction. The two trod very different paths – one on the seedy side of reality with hard drinking, smoking, wise talking gumshoes and the other full of chrome flying saucers, ray guns and bug eyed aliens. But even at the time there was a little crossover, Isaac Asimov’s Caves of Steel and its sequels featured a robot detective, although one constrained from violence by Asimov’s Laws of Robotics. Made to Kill, a perfect mash-up of noir detective fiction and raygun gothic scifi, came out of a question to New Zealand author Adam Christopher about a novel he would like to find. Knowing of Chandler’s dislike of science-fiction, he imagined a science fiction book written by Chandler. But not content with imagining this chimera, he went out and wrote it, first as the short story “Brisk Money” (which can be found here) and…
