This is an Aussie crime novel with a difference. There are no grisly Outback serial killers, city gang shoot-outs or corrupt cops – too often the standard fare of the Australian crime genre.

Detective Grant Johnson from the town of Fresh Well has a suspicious fire to investigate and a lot of shenanigans to negotiate.

In the rural village of Stony Creek, someone has burnt down the tiny school. The culprit is likely to be someone indulging in an illicit cigarette shortly before a meeting of the school’s Parents and Citizens association. Naturally, there is a main cast of characters with something to hide.

Sarah accidently sees P & C chairwoman Jennifer having it off with the Principal, Brock.

Shocked, she then returns home to spring her husband Ian having it off with the babysitter, Madison, Jennifer and Andy’s teenage daughter.

Andy is secretly conducting an internet relationship with old flame Abi but forgets to delete his computer's History.

From his verandah, Madison’s elderly grandfather Mack watches the comings and goings of white utes set about mysterious liaisons involving cigarettes and comes to his own conclusions.

Shades of the English bedroom farce but Aussie-style, this is a most refreshing change of pace from grim or intense crime fiction. You know everyone will end up with egg on their faces as things unravel, but the journey is a light-hearted ride that will have you grinning and even laughing out loud in places.

Oh, what a tangled web is woven and in one word - Delightful!
 
Four stars

Booktopia

Amazon.com.au

​This is the second novel by Alison Stuart set during the 1870s and to feature the gold-mining town of Maiden’s Creek in the Gippsland area of Australia. (Although not essential to have read the first, The Postmistress, it does help to set the scene and the background of some of the secondary characters.)
 
Eliza Penrose arrives from England, expecting to be met by her brother, Will. However, he is not there and she soon learns from her uncle, mine-owner Charles Cowper, that he is dead, having fallen accidentally from a tailings heap late at night, presumably being drunk. Eliza is devastated.

When it seems that there had been a falling-out between uncle and nephew shortly before his death, Eliza is determined to get to the truth of the matter.
 
Meanwhile, after a disastrous early encounter with him, Eliza is increasingly drawn to widowed mining engineer, Alec McLeod, and their relationship slowly blossoms. However, all is put at risk by discoveries of underhanded greedy practices in the operation of the mines and danger from those who would stop at nothing, not even murder, to protect their evil schemes.
 
This is a really entertaining page-turner, as well-crafted as the earlier novel and with plenty of gold-mining history (some of it based on real events) woven beautifully throughout.
 
(Click here for my review of The Postmistress.)
 
Four stars.
 
Booktopia
 
Amazon.com

Amazon.co.uk