Review by Robert Goodman At first blush The English Monster comes across as yet another historical criminal procedural. These are crime genre novels set in a historical era and usually …
Breathing significant life into proceedings: Robert Harris’ An Officer and a Spy
Review by Robert Goodman The blurb for An Officer and a Spy refers to its subject – the Dreyfus Affair – as ‘the most famous miscarriage of justice in history’. …
Illuminating the Dangers of Going Too Far: Dave Eggers’ The Circle
Reviewed by Robert Goodman Imagine if Facebook, Twitter, Apple, Google and Microsoft were all hoovered up into a single social-media driven, tech-savvy organisation. The Circle is Dave Egger’s vision of …
Bloodbaths and Romance: Lenny Bartulin’s Infamy (Robert Goodman)
Review by Robert Goodman The Western is making a comeback. That venerable tradition of horses, six-shooters and life on the frontier is being reimagined in a more visceral form. From …
Back to the (post-apocalyptic) Future 3: Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam
Reviewed by Robert Goodman Margaret Atwood sits comfortably on the literature shelf. Winner of the Booker Prize and numerous other awards particularly in her native Canada, Atwood has been challenging …
Riding the Rails of the New Weird: China Mieville’s Railsea
Review by Robert Goodman You might have to track Railsea down in the Young Adult section of the bookshop – do not be fooled. It just means someone is being …
Getting Caught in the Fundamentalist Machine: Timothy Mo’s Pure
Review by Robert Goodman Timothy Mo had a brilliant early career: three books in a row shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1982, 1986 and 1991 showed a prodigious range. …
Navigating the Mean Streets of post-war Melbourne: Geoffrey McGeachin’s Blackwattle Creek and Peter Twhoig’s The Cartographer
Review by Robert Goodman The crime genre is often used as an accessible vehicle for exploring the past. Two relatively recent Australian novels use the genre in very different ways …
Preaching to the Converted: Garry Disher's Play Abandoned
Review by Robert Goodman Garry Disher has written across a range of genres but is best known for his award-winning crime series – the Wyatt books about a roguish thief, …
Exercises in the Experimental: Ryan O'Neill's The Weight of a Human Heart
Review by Robert Goodman Ryan O’Neill is a lover of words, and he knows how to use them. The Weight of a Human Heart, his new collection of short stories, …
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