Out of the big smoke: crime fiction in 2013

Oddly enough and against trend – all those Scandinavian crime novels bobbing up in translation – I spent most of the year travelling Australia in crime fiction. From East (Peter Cotton’s Canberra in Dead Cat Bounce) to West (Alan Carter’s Perth in Getting Warmer) with many intriguing side trips in between; a trip to Thailand with Angela Savage (The Dying Beach), and a retreat to rural South East New South Wales with Stuart Littlemore (Harry Curry: Rats and Mice). Reviewing the route taken simply confirms my suspicion that Australian crime fiction has become emphatically “regional”. The city is no longer the most compelling crime beat, if it ever really was.