Excellent first novel from Victorian author Ellie Marney. A thriller with an outcome I couldn't predict, great local context. Looking forward to the second in the series. ( )

Whywhywhy on earth did I have this book sitting on my shelf unread for a year?!

( )

Almost 3 stars... it was alright, but felt a bit over-descriptive to me. Half a page about driving down streets in Coburg or Brunswick or somewhere - really irrelevant for people that don't know the area naming every single street all the time. (Although I write like that too, but still, didn't really work for me in this book). It is entirely possible that I may read the next in the series but will have to wait and see. ( )

Almost 3 stars... it was alright, but felt a bit over-descriptive to me. Half a page about driving down streets in Coburg or Brunswick or somewhere - really irrelevant for people that don't know the area naming every single street all the time. (Although I write like that too, but still, didn't really work for me in this book). It is entirely possible that I may read the next in the series but will have to wait and see. ( )

Rachel’s family have left their farm and are still adjusting to life in the city, but Rachel is only two doors down from her new friend, James Mycroft, a troubled eccentric genius. When they discover a homeless friend has been murdered, Mycroft worries that the police won’t take the murder seriously and is determined to investigate.

I was expecting something more tightly paced and tense, but there are a lot of Sherlock Holmes-inspired stories out there, and “teenagers catch trams and solve murder in the shadow of Melbourne Zoo” certainly hasn’t been done before. So points for that. I liked it enough that I’ve requested the sequel from the library.

Riding the trams and trains still has a lot of novelty value for me. It’s one of the few city things I actually enjoy, especially riding at night, like now. [...] There’s Harley City motorbikes, car yards with all the coloured flags reduced to dust tones, bridal shops, clearance sales. Even ALDI has a glow-in-the-dark seedy radiance. My breath mists the tram window and I’m in a bubble, one of those deep-ocean submarines that studies life at a thousand metres below.
The city is still a mystery to me -- cold, unfriendly, alien. Only when I’m viewing it like this, at a removed distance, does it seem as if there’s any beauty, or recognisable pattern. If I could keep the city at arm’s length all the time, I’d be happy. ( )