Ripper
by Shelley Burr
(Hachette, $37.99)
Fresh from winning a Ned Kelly Award for her outstanding first novel, Wake, which meshed true-crime obsession with Outback noir, Canberra author Shelley Burr plunges readers into another twisting small-town mystery with Ripper. Lifelong Rainier resident Gemma Guillory once stared down a serial killer, but 17 years on, a tourism company, backed by some desperate locals, wants to cash in. Residents are split on digging up the town’s past notoriety, but is it their only chance of survival? When the tour operator is the victim of a copycat-style slaying near Gemma’s store, she must battle past and present fears. Could someone she loves have committed murder? Gemma is drawn into the investigation and so too is Lane Holland, a private eye whose sleuthing must take a different tack, given he’s now a prisoner incarcerated alongside the original Rainier Ripper (following the events of Wake). Burr proves she’s no one-hit wonder with a terrific second effort that delivers tension and humanity, and blends crime story with explorations of people, place and trauma.
The Girl in the Eagle’s Talons
by Karin Smirnoff, translated by Sarah Death
(Quercus, $37.99)
Undoubtedly one of the most compelling fictional characters to emerge since the millennium is androgynous goth hacker Lisbeth Salander, sexual assault survivor turned sleuth, victim turned vengeful force. Forget girls who are gone or on trains; Salander is the Girl. Like 007, she’s now a global franchise; hundreds of millions of books sold, multiple authors, several films where she’s varyingly portrayed by Noomi Rapace, Rooney Mara and Claire Foy. After the late Stieg Larsson’s original trilogy and David Lagercrantz’s underrated continuations, Swedish thriller writer Karin Smirnoff takes the helm, if with mixed results. For long-time fans, it’s great in concept to have more Salander stories, and the storyline entwines green energy, corporate greed, misogyny and violence, all likely Larsson topics. Salander’s genius niece, Svala, echoes the hacker’s troubles with authorities and ruthless villains, and ageing journo Mikael Blomkvist faces his own family issues as worrisome rumours, then violence, swirl around his daughter’s fiancée. Bond-esque villains and patchy pacing may trouble some fans, but Smirnoff lays intriguing seeds for future instalments. Best to (re)read the first few books before diving into this, to better understand Lisbeth Salander.
The Last Goodbye
by Tim Weaver
(Michael Joseph, $37.99)
Murder mysteries, with their dead victim hook and cast of suspects, have been a core tenet of detective fiction since its inception but British bestseller Tim Weaver veers from that well-trodden path in his long-running series. David Raker specialises in missing people, and this 12th instalment involves puzzling disappearances separated by nearly 40 years. In the present, a father and his 9-year-old son enter a ghost house ride at a theme park but never exit. Meanwhile, Raker is hired by a US-based woman to dig into the disappearance of her mother in 1985 – an old wound reopened by recent letters – and the reappearance of once-dead cop Colm Healy may upturn Raker’s own life. But his latest investigations prove more dangerous than even he could envisage, as his path unwittingly begins to entwine with perhaps his most vicious foe, a relic of a monstrous regime. Weaver lures readers into an intriguing tale that ratchets up the tension and thrusts his hero and others into dire jeopardy. Very good.
