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Amy is a new mum, still coming to terms with having a ‘family’, her husband has moved from a job where he smelt of coffee all the time to one where he stinks of petrol, they have problems with the neighbours, her mother is ailing and her elder sisters judgemental – but all in all things are OK.  Amy is also surrounded by crime, she is a store detective at Cutty’s, a large Wellington department store, she was an animal rights activist in her youth, and from experience knows that most people have infringed at some point in their lives.  And Amy is being interviewed by the Police, and the interview has something to do with an incident during the disturbing last few weeks, the weeks since the announcement of the closure of Cutty’s.  Lifting drifts through these few weeks, and through Amy’s memories as she becomes quite disengaged from her life, observing her child, her husband, herself much as she observes the shoppers in the store.  She wonders about moving away from ‘security’ work, thinking that it puts her in constant proximity to low-level criminals, but then again maybe that’s exactly where she wants to be?  Amy uses her power of ‘discretion’ with the ‘persons of interest’ she spots as she pretends to be a fellow shopper, thinking she has a moral compass, but isn’t she just random with her grace and with her decisions to act?  The closure of the store becomes a metaphor for the disintegration of an era – with its sexist doormen, the sensual face-to-face rather than face-to-screen shopping experience, the tea and cream buns after the first bra fitting, and the various methods of shoplifting; brazen to furtive, but all on an individual, human level – not the horrific violent gang raids on dairies and service stations we see on TV, not the impersonal mass cyber robberies we read about.  “It was tempting to believe that venturing outside the crumbling world of Cutty’s would bring you even closer to the apocalypse and that gangs of wild children carrying improvised weapons wandered the streets … “.  And there is Gerty Cutty, the last surviving member of the founding family, an embodiment of the store’s long and shady past, Amy is intrigued by her and wonders if her sad farewells to the store aren’t also a good riddance, she watches her driven away “A small hand waved at the window as the car pulled away”.  As the staff of Cutty’s work through the final weeks, some getting jobs, some still hoping for a final reprieve, no one really has a handle on the situation – large items go missing, is it theft or part of the wind-down of the store?  And the staff start eyeing up items themselves, to buy or …  And interspersed in the narrative is the Police interview – which crime great or small is being investigated?  Is Amy a suspect or helping with the investigation?  As the store at once winds down and also starts preparing for a final sale – they are flying people down on a special flight from Auckland for it – there is a sense that something has gone very, very wrong.  Lifting is inconclusive and ambiguous, even the title can refer to petty crime or to triumphant moments, it harkens to a time of clarity and certainty that probably never existed on an individual level, not even in youth, and definitely not in any previous era.  It is a lovely read about the passing of time and how every now and again that passage leaves you unmoored for a while.

Claire Hardcastle is a twenty-something pilot working for a small aviation outfit on the Kapiti Coast.  Her new, still finding out about each other, partner is a cop – and currently off in the Solomon’s on secondment – leaving their relationship at the Skype level.  She loves flying and is studying for more qualifications, she is swearing off alcohol for a good cause, and enjoying the mix of work, friends and living alone with her cat, Nelson.  But not far into the novel Claire starts meeting a range of intriguing characters, getting odd flying assignments, and being in the vicinity where bodies are being found.  Claire doesn’t end up unravelling the mystery so much as getting swept along into it – her piloting skills being of great interest to both the good guys and the bad guys.  She is a great character, a mix of pizazz and composure – and very human, she gets a rumbling tum at a very tense moment, and fleetingly thinks she didn’t really need to have changed the sheets during a torrid sex scene.  It is great to have the males the ones who are agonising over relationships, and eliciting “Magnificence in a man can be so transitory” comments about their physiques.  The plot involves drugs, gangs, rich people, Maori sovereignty and a very whacky attempt at bio-terrorism, but somehow it all hangs together.  And there are a few red herrings along the way.  The settings are great – the beautiful Kapiti Coast, the Marlborough Sounds and the misty Uruweras, are all described to great effect, often from the air.  The technical information about flying is absorbing – on more than one occasion I thought of taking lessons!  This is the second Claire Hardcastle outing and a third is on the way.  Well worth a read.

Cassy has a typical love/hate relationship with her parents, especially her ex-army Dad, and she is well on the way to completing a Law Degree when she and her ambitious boyfriend Hamish decide to go off on a short trip to New Zealand, to fill the gap between a friend’s wedding and heading back to varsity.  At Heathrow, she promises her family she will see them in September.  But a fall out with Hamish and an offer of a lift from a friendly band of ‘hippies’ sees Cassy spend years in Gethsemane, a commune/cult not far from Rotorua.  The novel is structured with two and bit streams – one from Cassy’s POV, the second that of her devastated family, and there are some quotes from The Cult Leader’s Manual, written by an anthropologist specialising in destructive cults.  Although this book tells a predictable tale, it does so in a very suspenseful and ambiguous way – and there were a number of times when I was ready to pack my bags and head off to Gethsemane!  I was sure I knew what lay ahead for Cassy (or the woman formally known as Cassy – renaming being part of the package) but her story is so carefully told that I became totally enmeshed in her ‘present’, and I was kept guessing throughout the book whether Gethsemane and its leader, Justin Calvin, were really that bad compared to the ghastly events unfolding ‘outside’.  The depiction of the destruction of her family back in England is appalling, especially the effect of her choices on her younger sister – but isn’t that because her family just refused to believe all the wonderful things they are told about Cassy’s new home?  Even by the Private Detective they hire?  We are told we are living at the most peaceful time in human history, but it is kind of hard to believe with all the bad news bombarding us every day – and there have been a lot of earthquakes lately …  I don’t want to give too much away, as I was still questioning right up to the end of the book, but Charity Norman does a great job of making bizarre human behaviour seem perfectly reasonable.  I really enjoyed this book.

What makes a great thriller great is nerve-wracking plotting, rich atmospheric settings, and complex characters – Marlborough Man has the lot – and it treats the ‘Top of the South’ as Paul Cleave has been treating Christchurch for years – describing a heightened scuzzy substrate that tourists, and many residents, will never glimpse: “In rural New Zealand, calling police out at the sound of shots fired is like calling them out for the sound of cows mooing”.  Nick Chester, a Geordie cop, has been relocated to the Wakamarina Valley, near Havelock in the Marlborough Sounds, after an undercover job back home went South.  Chester makes fun of the Zild accent, double takes at the literary references to The Hobbit, and settles in to continue his class-based grudges, and to get to know Latifa Rapata, his new partner.  Rapata is 24 and is often the voice of reason; for Chester is a rebel; happy to toe the line when his duties only stretch to bad drivers and petty theft, but when it emerges there is a sexual predator preying on young boys in the area he just wants “… to catch the prick who’s been murdering the kids” – and he starts playing by his own rules.  He builds a case with the help of Rapata and her whanau.  And his interest is galvanized when he starts suspecting that the press-named “Pied Piper” may be one of the local arrogant-ocracy – those people that “… never get looked at …” – and to make matters worse one of them starts a logging operation in the valley that is ruining his view!  In Marlborough Man Carter breaks all the rules about not hurting animals, and he pulls no punches in showing the many sides of Chester – who makes some very bad choices.  Chester’s shaky marriage and his concern for their special needs son back-drop the story, as does the fact that comeuppance for the botched undercover job back in Geordie-land is stalking “the feral hills of the Wakamarina”.  The wild weather and visual beauty of the valley give you a sense of place in sand-fly-filled spades, and the mud and slips from the frequent downpours nicely echo Chester’s roller coaster ride.  A trip back to the old country triggers a new look at the Wakamarina, and Chester’s reentry into “A magic roundabout of people who won’t let go.”  It also gives Vanessa, Chester’s wife, a chance to become a more interesting character, and another foil to Chester’s excitability.  The crime plotting keeps you guessing the whole way, and the cliff hanger ending comforts me that there will be more.  Read this book!

Stray is a glimpse into the wasteland created by drug culture from a south of the border perspective.   “The dark secret of every American suburb is that every blunt, joint or bowl, line or pill, every Charlie-fed frat party, cranking rave or huddled knot of office stoners is washed in Mexican blood” – and in Stray the effect of the cartels and corruption on a small Yucatan fishing village isn’t unveiled by a gung-ho ex-marine or a naïve but true blue FDA agent – but by Tom Mullinger, a 20 something New Zealander fleeing his own drug based disaster back home.  When things go very very wrong in Auckland, Tom heads for the Yucatan – for a small seaside village recommended by his mate Dog as a haven, and far from the violence of the cartels.  But Tom arrives in Ria Lagartos at the same time as three headless corpses; in the year since Dog’s stay, the capture of El Chapo and the unravelling of his Sinaloa drug cartel have allowed other cartels to make deals and spread – and the Los Zetas cartel now has a hold on Ria Lagartos.  And along with the cartel, government corruption and a local armed citizens’ militia complete the trifecta of terror for the local community.  Tom gets involved with a local environmental protection group, in large part due to his fascination with Lorena, a researcher who has moved to Ria Lagartos to work on her thesis, and who has taken the cause of the local Maya fishermen as her own.  In her sights is Miguel Sabas, the local rich guy whose short-term profit monopoly on the local industry is proving disastrous for the environment as well as for the locals.  As the intimidation of the cartel increases, their narcomensaje threatening messages going up around town and their blatant disregard of the local law enforcement being made apparent, it becomes increasingly difficult to work out who is loyal to whom.  And Tom gets totally embroiled when he agrees to help Lorena get evidence of Sabas’ illegal activities.  There are some terrifically tense moments and lots of action.  But what I loved most about this book was the feel of Mexico; you can smell it and taste it as Lang describes the village and the jungle, and the slow flying pelicans cruising over the Mayan ‘endless apocalypse’.  At times the historical narrative gets a little adrift of the story, and almost all of the characters are extremely insightful and erudite, but sections such as Lorena relating the story of her forebears, are totally engrossing.  Tom’s story in Ria Lagartos is interspersed with the events in New Zealand that led up to his flight from Auckland, depicting a New Zealand drug sub-culture where the authorities are similarly powerless: “People are gonna do what people are gonna do”.  Tom didn’t want to be a tourist, he was “an outsider who likes the company of others” and wanted to find a place just to exist.  But Stray is a great example of character arc!  I really enjoyed this book.