86 Books Like Key to the Highway

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. 

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.

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.

There would be few Australians who didn’t know the name Ned Kelly, but there are likely many Australians who are uncertain whether Kelly was a good guy (a la Robin Hood) or a down-and-out bushranger scoundrel (i.e., bad guy).

The research that has gone into this wonderful story is breathtaking, and the fact the author is a distant relative of one of the policemen who hunted Ned Kelly is all the more remarkable. It’s about the law, justice, payback, character, and, importantly, values. The book brings a bygone rural era back to life, with real page-turning impetus lacing the suspense and drama in a way few history books offer.

Read this if you love real-life stories and want to learn more about Australia’s most notorious criminal.

This is the first book in Valerie Goldsilk’s extensive ‘Reliable man’ series about former Royal Hong Kong Police inspector-turned assassin Bill Jedburgh, who plies his trade across Asia – and beyond, and who is known to those who use his services only as (you would have guessed it), “the reliable man”.

This thriller is set in Pattaya, Thailand, and involves a high-octane chase between Jedburgh, triad devotees, and European mafiosos, amid the exotic scenery of Southeast Asia. Nothing is missing, including bar girls, massage parlours, and sophisticated shoot outs.

Goldsilk herself has lived in Hong Kong for more than 30 years and is married to a former Hong Kong policeman. The story feels authentic (if not politically correct!) and is well written, as are the other books in the series.

Highly recommended!

Along with Le Carre Adam Hall was my magical touchstone to understanding what being an exceptional thriller writer meant.

This book, the second in a long distinguished series, continued the crises dealt with by the British spy named Quiller. Hall had an idiosyncratic way of writing that taught me that style was as important as plot in a thriller – perhaps even more. For me, style is what grabs my attention as a reader.

Today, style is what draws me along, both as a reader and as a writer of thrillers. Style is the thread on which is built both plot and characters. It is also imperative when setting scenes in faraway places.

Always eloquent, insightful and at times, funny...such as how a mispronounced word in the tonal languages of the region might end in shared hilarity or bloodshed, Janet Brown describes her travels in Thailand and other SE Asian countries with warmth and joy. Her slow pace exudes sympathy, understanding, and enjoyment of the people and their lifestyles.

She said she learned from great travel writers that 'curiosity and observation can make a walk around the block become a journey', and I felt I was right by her side, enjoying the mood, the people, and especially, the food.

I lived in Bangkok for six years. This is the rare novel that captures the sounds, the smells, the spirit, and spirituality of the place. Bangkok in fact is the main character, with supporting roles by humans who make their lives there, from the nineteenth century to the present and into the not-so-distant future, when water lays permanent claim to a city built more or less at sea level. You can expect lyrical writing and engaging characters, whether human or urban. 

Nexus explores the idea of collective consciousness via technology in a way that has similarities to my own writing and ideas. For one, people use drugs to modify their brains, which I find is the most likely way to get people to accept biotech. Surgery is fraught with perils, but pills are easy to swallow.

The plot features plenty of action, geeks, and technology, all of which I love, and the story incorporates elements of Eastern philosophy that crop up in my own work, as well.

This is only Patrick Hoffman’s second book, but it is a wonderful model of how to write a complex and controlled work without leaving loose ends, lingering too long in one phase, or letting the reader lose interest. The novel presents us with a drug cartel that stretches around the world like a giant organism. A single disturbance in one location causes violent and self-protective reactions in each of the other locations, like reflexes of the giant organism’s body. The novel is a brilliant study of cause and effect. Hoffman portrays a world that is dangerous and dark, but every bit of it makes sense.