The novel is in part a feminist historical snapshot, but there's too much melodrama in Death before Wicket. If the title is somewhat misleading it should at least attract cricket fans who will no doubt enjoy the way Greenwood brings sporting history into fictional life. There are shades of Michael Innes and Dorothy Sayers in Greenwood's academic setting and the dilettantish detective. But it is Agatha Christie who comes to mind when Phryne gathers the suspects together at the faculty office one evening to have them re-enact the crime, and to point her finger at the culprits. The sex crimes in Gabrielle Lord's Feeding the Demons make you squirm.
Terrible things happen to women living alone who leave their doors or windows unlocked.
This is Lord's seventh novel since 1980 when the riveting Fortress was published. The suffering of children and the weight of the past have been her particular focus. In this thriller the lives of two adult sisters are dominated by the brutal murder of their mother 30 years ago, when Kit was 12 and Gemma five. Their father, the renowned Sydney psychiatrist Dr Archie Chisholm, while pleading innocence, was jailed for the murder and has finally been released. Gemma, an ex-homicide cop now running her own security and surveillance company, has always believed in his innocence.