Here are 40 books that Justice in Kelly Country fans have personally recommended if you like
Justice in Kelly Country.
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As a professional counselor by trade, I’m fascinated by the machinations of the human mind, what drives us, and how our primeval urges can overcome our learned and acceptable behaviors. Accordingly, I enjoy both reading and writing books that expose and explore the dark side of our psyche and the dichotomy of human nature. I particularly appreciate stories that balance evil with redemption, rescue, or retribution.
I adore anything Australian crime noir. Throw in the Outback as well, and I’m there!
This book is a compelling mystery. Slow burn and character-driven, it sucked me in and had me imagining the characters even whilst I wasn’t reading. An award-winning debut, I’ll definitely be adding this author’s future work to my TBR piles.
"Politically savvy, cleverly plotted...the kind of book that invites the ravenous language of binge reading: compulsive, propulsive, addictive."--New York Times Book Review
For fans of Jane Harper’s The Dry or Gillian Flynn’s Sharp Objects, a searing debut crime novel set in the Australian outback, where the grief and guilt surrounding an unsolved disappearance still haunt a small farming community…and will ultimately lead to a reckoning.
The tiny outback town of Nannine lies in the harsh red interior of Australia. Once a thriving center of stockyards and sheep stations, years of punishing drought have petrified the land and Nannine has been…
The dragons of Yuro have been hunted to extinction.
On a small, isolated island, in a reclusive forest, lives bandit leader Marani and her brother Jacks. With their outlaw band they rob from the rich to feed themselves, raiding carriages and dodging the occasional vindictive…
I learned from a young age to question everything. The law always interested me, but I was an impatient high school graduate who instead completed a journalism cadetship in Sydney, Australia. I always loved police reporting and the ability to get inside the ‘real’ story where few others could. There is a certain pleasure observing the lives of (witting or unwitting) criminals and an element of “there by the grace…” too! I’ve always empathised with the underdog and the Drug Grannies were indeed just that. I believed there was more to their story. Earning their trust was important. I threw myself into their fight – more an activist than a journalist!
This is an outstanding inside look that goes well, well beyond the typical “whistleblower”-type tomes.
Keith Banks was a copper for 20 years in one of Australia’s most corrupt police organisations – the Queensland Police Force. During the 1980s, he let his hair grow, then down, and went undercover as a drug cop. As Banks says: “Undercover was like guerrilla warfare; to understand your enemy, you had to walk amongst them, to become them.”
Some of the decisions he had to make about allowing drugs – including heroin – get onto the street, and into the arms of kids barely into their teens in order to track down the major suppliers, are heartbreaking. This has to be one of the best Australian true crime/memoirs in many decades.
'Banks has told his story in a raw and honest autobiography. It is the best true crime book published in Australia in a decade.' -John Silvester, Crime Reporter for The Age
Undercover was like guerrilla warfare; to understand your enemy, you had to walk amongst them, to become them. The trick was to keep an eye on that important line between who you were and who you were pretending to be.
This is the true story of Keith Banks, one of Queensland's most decorated police officers, and his journey into the world of drugs as an undercover operative in the…
I learned from a young age to question everything. The law always interested me, but I was an impatient high school graduate who instead completed a journalism cadetship in Sydney, Australia. I always loved police reporting and the ability to get inside the ‘real’ story where few others could. There is a certain pleasure observing the lives of (witting or unwitting) criminals and an element of “there by the grace…” too! I’ve always empathised with the underdog and the Drug Grannies were indeed just that. I believed there was more to their story. Earning their trust was important. I threw myself into their fight – more an activist than a journalist!
This is a memoir by a former narcotics agent who writes about a major drug importation masterminded by a combination of crooks and cops (though it is hard sometimes to work out who was who!).
On a broader scale, Operation Jungle also details the high-level corruption which existed in Queensland under disgraced senior police and politicians in league with each other. Shobbrook – as a brave, serving narcotics agent who transferred into the Australian Federal Police – “ratted” on the corrupt police and politicians before the Australian Royal Commission of Inquiry into Drugs, and so sealed his fate.
Australia was not ready for the truth. Instead of treating his evidence with respect, the author was forced out of the Australian Federal Police in 1980. It’s a gripping, thrilling true story.
A gripping blend of memoir, true crime, and corruption in the tropics. In the late 1970s, criminal mastermind John Milligan and his associates conspired to import heroin into Far North Queensland via a remote mountain-top airdrop. In a story that is stranger than fiction, it took them three trips through dense jungle to locate the heroin, but they only recovered one of the two packages. When narcotics agent John Shobbrook took on the investigation of this audacious crime, codenamed ‘Operation Jungle,’ his career was on the rise within the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. What he discovered unwittingly set in motion…
When Annie Thornton, midwife and apprentice witch, falls through time to a 15th-century Yorkshire village with her telepathic cat, Rosamund, she befriends Will and Jack, two soldiers returning from the French Wars. Mistress Meg, Annie’s ancestral aunt living in the 15th century, is…
I learned from a young age to question everything. The law always interested me, but I was an impatient high school graduate who instead completed a journalism cadetship in Sydney, Australia. I always loved police reporting and the ability to get inside the ‘real’ story where few others could. There is a certain pleasure observing the lives of (witting or unwitting) criminals and an element of “there by the grace…” too! I’ve always empathised with the underdog and the Drug Grannies were indeed just that. I believed there was more to their story. Earning their trust was important. I threw myself into their fight – more an activist than a journalist!
Discovery of a mysterious blues harp/harmonica by Seaford's Kananook Creek takes Chris Hunter on a wild, musical odyssey through the Australian outback to Perth, India, Bangkok, Borneo, and Rio.
Richard Andrews’ debut novel is an exciting mixture of sci-fi, mysticism, and adventure notwithstanding the book’s lead character is a cynical journalist who pursues Canberra's suppressed esoteric secret in a fight against the Alt Right.
On the journey to self-discovery, Hunter’s reality morphs with mythological gods, heroes, and villains, manifested as bikers, prophets, gun runners, shady businessmen, neo-Nazis, and miners. Key to the Highway is in a way a “hero’s journey. Get your leathers on for this exciting motorcycle odyssey towards self-discovery; it’s certainly a wild ride!
A cosmic motorbike fantasy and a magical blues harp take Chris Hunter on a wild, Orphic odyssey through the Australian Outback to Indonesia, India, Bangkok, Borneo and Rio. His reality morphs into a mythological world of gods and demons, manifested as bikers, prophets, gun runners, drug smugglers, shady businessmen and neo-Nazis. Empowered by an ancient esoteric secret, his journey to self-discovery climaxes in a battle with Alt-Right forces.
I fell in love with Australian history on a school camp to Beechworth, which was also my first introduction to Ned Kelly. As I got older, after having already tried to establish a career trajectory as an English teacher, I realised my passion for writing and history could help me create the books and media that I wished I could access, as well as be a place to store all those decades of research sitting in my head. My fascination with psychology, true crime, and Australian colonial history naturally reached a meeting point with the Australian bushrangers: the bandits that terrorised Australia for over a hundred years, the most infamous of whom was Ned Kelly.
This is treated like a Bible by “Nedheads” (Ned Kelly buffs) for its detail as much as Jones’ compelling writing style. This was the culmination of decades of Jones’ own research into the Kelly saga that involved sifting through the many disorganised archives and even interviewing people who knew the key players personally. It is the book that set many people off on a journey to find out as much as they could about this incredible period of Australian history and helped revitalise the Kelly legend.
Every nation has a lovable bandit/rebel/folk hero in the mould of Robin Hood and Rob Roy. But Ned Kelly is an uncomfortable hero - he killed policemen, robbed banks, stole horses from squatters...But he became a champion of the rural underclass and an enemy of arrogant officialdom. Ned Kelly was of Irish stock - to some, he embodied the splendid rebel spirit of the Irish, to others he was the awful example of what the Irish Australian was capable of in opposition to British law. Ned Kelly became increasingly prominent in Australia's artistic life - in paintings, literature, poetry, drama,…
I fell in love with Australian history on a school camp to Beechworth, which was also my first introduction to Ned Kelly. As I got older, after having already tried to establish a career trajectory as an English teacher, I realised my passion for writing and history could help me create the books and media that I wished I could access, as well as be a place to store all those decades of research sitting in my head. My fascination with psychology, true crime, and Australian colonial history naturally reached a meeting point with the Australian bushrangers: the bandits that terrorised Australia for over a hundred years, the most infamous of whom was Ned Kelly.
A controversial pick, but I believe this is the finest fictionalised version of Ned's life story written so far. Carey captures a very authentic sense of Ned’s voice and character by basing the book heavily on Ian Jones’ work and the Jerilderie Letter that Ned wrote with gang member Joe Byrne. It retains enough of the truth to craft a realistic world for his creations to exist in, and blends so well with his inventions, that someone unaware that the book is fiction will have a hard time working out some of the fact from the fiction. It is lyrical, powerful, and helped turbo-boost interest in the Kelly legend at a time when it had begun to taper off somewhat.
THE BOOK THAT INSPIRED THE MAJOR MOTION PICTURE, TO BE RELEASED IN CINEMAS 28TH FEBRUARY 2020
'Extraordinary . . . So mesmerising and moving.' Mail on Sunday
'Vastly entertaining.' New York Times
To the authorities in pursuit of him, Ned Kelly is a horse thief, bank robber and police-killer. But to his fellow Australians, Kelly is their own Robin Hood. In a dazzling act of ventriloquism, Peter Carey's Booker Prize-winning novel of adventure and heroism brings the famous bushranger wildly and passionately to life.
Chasing Light is a lyrical meditation on grief, memory, and the fragile beauty of everyday life. At its core, it is a story of resilience, forgiveness, and the transformational power of human connection. It sheds light on the overlooked realities of homelessness and addiction, while emphasizing the importance of compassion…
I fell in love with Australian history on a school camp to Beechworth, which was also my first introduction to Ned Kelly. As I got older, after having already tried to establish a career trajectory as an English teacher, I realised my passion for writing and history could help me create the books and media that I wished I could access, as well as be a place to store all those decades of research sitting in my head. My fascination with psychology, true crime, and Australian colonial history naturally reached a meeting point with the Australian bushrangers: the bandits that terrorised Australia for over a hundred years, the most infamous of whom was Ned Kelly.
This book was revelatory for me as it was the first book about Ned Kelly I read that was neutral about Ned himself. Every other book I had come across to that point was focused on either lionising Ned or demonising him, while this was more concerned with the legal processes which put him on the gallows. It really highlighted for me the way that, in many ways, Ned was his own worst enemy but the cards were well and truly attacked against him by the end.
Ned Kelly - Australia's beloved national icon - was once just a bushranger who had to be punished for his crimes. In 1880, everyone wanted him dead. There are many stories that form the Kelly myth. But the side of the story rarely told is what really happened in the 137 days between Ned's last stand at Glenrowan and the day the hangman's noose was placed around his neck. Who was with him in his last hours, and why did he have so many powerful enemies? Ned Kelly's Last Days exposes the blatant cover-ups, the corruption and the rampant press…
I came to writing crime late after reading a P.D. James novel on my honeymoon. Previously a travel and ghostwriter, I became fascinated by the challenge of creating a whodunnit plot that fools the reader while simultaneously playing fair by giving them plenty of juicy clues. Agatha Christie said you should get to the end of your book and then choose the least likely person as the murderer. Quite often, I don’t know who the killer is myself until the end. If I’m kept guessing, hopefully my readers are too. I love the fact that whodunnits are a way of writing about all sorts of worlds within a compelling structure.
This was the book that turned me on to crime fiction, a genre I had always previously spurned. Why should anyone want to read about crime, I’d thought. Isn’t there enough of it in real life anyway?
Then, on my honeymoon in St Lucia, I was staying with my new wife in a magical villa full of books I’d never read. I picked this one up because it was about a publishing house, which reminded me of several I knew as an author. Right from the off, I was drawn in by James’s superb characters and wonderful descriptions. Then the plot kicked in, and I was hooked. When I’d finished it, I moved on to another of her books and was soon reading crime voraciously.
The Peverell Press, a two-hundred-year-old publishing firm housed in a dramatic mock-Venetian palace on the Thames, is certainly ripe for change. But the proposals of its ruthlessly ambitious new managing director, Gerard Etienne, have made him dangerous enemies - a discarded mistress, a neglected and humiliated author, and rebellious colleagues and staff. When Gerard's body is discovered bizarrely desecrated, there is no shortage of suspects and Adam Dalgliesh and his team are confronted with a puzzle of extraordinary complexity and a murderer who is prepared to strike…
I am a Northern Irish crime writer. I worship storytellers, no matter if the stories are relayed on the page, the screen, or in songs. As long as the stories come across as real, then I am happy.
I, as a storyteller, endeavor to be more of a "camera" than a “writer.” I believe it’s all there waiting for me, and as a “camera,” I am allowed to go deep into myself and record all that my imagination is producing. I believe all the books I have selected have helped me in some small way understand why some of us can commit crimes while others can’t.
Colin Dexter immediately pulls me into what reads as a real world.
The writing is so beautiful, I’m not aware of anything but the story. The chapters are delightfully short and tight, so much so that the pages absolutely flow past.
I prefer reading books that, even though they are clearly fiction, read as true crime stories. When I read a Colin Dexter Morse mystery, I am unaware of pages, chapters, sentences, punctuation. I am allowed to be totally immersed in the story. The casts of perfectly drawn characters in each story always intrigue me.
Morse is flawed, a quality he shares with the camera. He doesn’t mind being wrong, a rare quality in a human.
Last Bus to Woodstock is the novel that began Colin Dexter's phenomenally successful Inspector Morse series.
'Do you think I'm wasting your time, Lewis?' Lewis was nobody's fool and was a man of some honesty and integrity. 'Yes, sir.' An engaging smile crept across Morse's mouth. He thought they could get on well together . . .
The death of Sylvia Kaye figured dramatically in Thursday afternoon's edition of the Oxford Mail. By Friday evening Inspector Morse had informed the nation that the police were looking for a dangerous man - facing charges of wilful murder, sexual assault and rape.…
Portrait of an Artist as a Young Woman
by
Alexis Krasilovsky,
Kate from Jules et Jim meets I Love Dick.
A young woman filmmaker’s journey of self-discovery, set against a backdrop of the sexual liberation movement of the 1970s and 1980s. In Portrait of an Artist as a Young Woman, we follow Ana Fried as she faces the ultimate…
I’ve been lucky enough to have a happy childhood and enjoy a fulfilling life. Nevertheless, I’ve always been drawn to the darkness… the macabre, the sinister, and the bizarre. My selection of books has, in one way or another, helped to shape me as a writer. I’m constantly fascinated by the process of creating truly disturbed, twisted, or hideous characters. I enjoy the process of working out what makes them tick; shedding my own moral compass and experiencing the world through their eyes… wherever that ends up taking me.
This one is in my top ten books because of its “wow” factor, and its influence on me as a writer. It’s the first in the late, great Mo Hayder’s series featuring D.I. Jack Caffrey. He’s a character who is haunted by grief and guilt but driven to find out what happened to his brother, who went missing as a child, and to track down a present-day killer known as ‘Birdman’. How this maniac gets his nickname still makes my stomach churn.
This dark and disturbingly compelling thriller from bestselling and prize-winning author Mo Hayder is not for the faint-hearted. Perfect for fans of Stephen King, Stuart MacBride and Karin Slaughter, it is one read you won't be able to forget easily...
'A first-class shocker . . . a frightening mix of forensics, thrills, analytical police work and poetic images.' -- Guardian 'Wickedly constructed . . . The detail, if you can stomach it, is fascinating.' -- Daily Telegraph 'Hayder's vibrant narrative and crunchy characterisation propel the book along to its denouement with fearsome velocity' -- The Times 'WOW! This is one…
