About

What we do

Fair dinkum is an Australian colloquial phrase which means genuine or true. As in,

“Is that a fake Rolex you’re wearing?”

“Na, it’s fair dinkum, mate”.

Its first recorded use in Australian writing was in 1888’s Robbery Under Arms, a novel in which a bushranger on death row recounts his life experiences including his life of crime which, we think makes it perfect for a site dedicated to Australian crime fiction.

The aim of the site is to celebrate Australian crime fiction with reviews, news, interviews and anything else we think is relevant. Our definition of Australian crime fiction is pretty broad so we try to cover all the sub genres of books written by Aussie authors (set anywhere) and books set in Australia (written by anyone). We reserve the right to designate Aussie-ness liberally.

Who we are

Fair Dinkum Crime is hosted by two Adelaide-based crime fiction fans Kerrie Smith and Bernadette Bean. Kerrie’s main book blog is Mysteries in Paradise while Bernadette’s is Reactions to Reading. 

Guest reviewers include

• Bill who blogs at Mysteries and More from Saskatchewan
• Josh who blogs at Just a Guy That Likes To Read
• Maxine who blogged at Petrona

Review Policy

Most of the books reviewed at Fair Dinkum are purchased by us or borrowed from Adelaide’s excellent public libraries.

We do accept books from publishers or authors however before you ask for a review you need to know

• This site is run as a hobby by individuals with no affiliation with anyone or any company remotely connected to the publishing industry
• We only review what we decide is Australian crime fiction.
• We will not automatically accept your offer of a book even if it does fit our definition of Australian crime fiction (sometimes we just have too many books to read or a book is of a sub genre that we don’t particularly enjoy and we don’t know anyone who we can cajole into reviewing it for us)
• If your book is self/vanity published we are highly unlikely to accept it for review. There are exceptions to this rule but they are very, very rare and are likely to involve the back catalogue of an established author rather than a self-published novel by a début author
• If we accept a book for review we won’t provide you with an advance copy of the text of that review and we won’t give you any refusal rights
• If we accept a book for review we don’t guarantee to publish a review of it (though we really try to which is why we want you to make a pitch first rather than just sending a book as we generally know if things can be squeezed into our reading schedules or not)
• If we accept a book for review and we decide to publish a review of it, we don’t guarantee that review will be positive (though we do promise not to make negative personal comments about the author)
• All posts at Fair Dinkum Crime have comments enabled (comments are published without moderation but we do reserve the right to remove offensive comments)
• We don’t sell ARCs provided to us for review but we are likely to give them away

If you’ve read all of that and still want us to consider your book then please contact us. We can accept eBooks (either ePubs or formatted for the kindle) or are happy to read old-fashioned paper ones too.

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Bernadette’s rating scale

Around the end of 2012 I stopped using a rating scale for reviews for several reasons, not least of which some people seemed never to be happy with anything less than 5 stars. However I leave this here as it does apply to those books reviewed and rated prior to this time,

0     Did Not Finish
1     They killed trees for this?
2     It passes the time but is fairly forgettable
2.5  Average, middle of the pack book
3     A good, solid, entertaining read
3.5  A good, solid entertaining read with a spark of something special
4    Wow, I feel lucky to have discovered this book
4.5 Wow, I feel lucky to have discovered this book and will badger you to read it too so we can talk about it
5    Wow, I feel lucky to have discovered this book, will badger you to read it too and would want it with me if I were stranded on a desert island

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Kerrie’s rating scale

I rate all the books I read.

I have a rating scale of 0-5 and it is possible to score anything in that range.

My general benchmarks are

5.0   Excellent

4.0   Very Good

3.0   Average

2.0   Poor

1.0   Did Not Like

0      Did Not Finish