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An utterly compelling read that drags the reader through the dangers of invasive information-gathering, the “erratic, unstable, passion-ruled soul of man”, and the determination of a wronged woman. The ride starts with the beta testing of a state-of-the-art surveillance system, where ten subjects are instructed by Fusion, the agency that will search for them, to ‘go zero’ – to completely disappear for thirty days.

The ten participants are a mix of five professionals and “five representatives of ordinary, uninformed credulous America” – at stake is a US$ three million reward. Thus, Going Zero starts with a familiar, straight-forward plot illustrating the weaknesses of various evasion tactics and the invasiveness of surveillance systems. Fusion is planned to be a “fusing of government intelligence with free market ingenuity” – there are plenty of opportunities to point out the dangers that that combination may pose.

The government agencies involved see buddying with Cy Baxter – the brains behind Fusion – as a way to become active on U.S. soil in ways that their government mandates forbid. Baxter just wants access to the vast swathes of government surveillance data. Neither side are honest with, or trusting of, the other – both believing there are “the abiding benefits of keeping whatever the hell you actually do way, way, way under the radar”.

As the participants are found one by one, another theme starts to emerge; another level of complexity enters the story turning this straight-forward plot into an extraordinary read. Going Zero has some out-of-left-field twists, which have the reader and Baxter flummoxed, and a flummoxed genius is not a good thing. Baxter’s descent into megalomania is both frightening and believable. The reader also must cope with continual information reveals regarding the “book person, an antiquarian”: Zero 10, Kaitlyn Day.

Baxter insists his system can prevent tragedies such as September 11, or the never-ending mass shootings in the U.S. He believes innocent citizens would be happy to sacrifice their privacy for “greater security, peace, law, and order”, suggesting “we aren’t as complicated as we thought we were. We were just pretending to be complex. Really, we’re a herd”. Going Zero argues both sides of this proposition.

The Zeros are captured due to simple mistakes and common flaws. Those vagaries and urges of the human psyche are also what tips the project into chaos, and yet allow hope to enter a bleak scenario, with “the unseen shift by the state from monitoring to control”. The story at one point becomes almost farcical, with the rapid manipulation of data, the size of which would “make Wikileaks look like the midweek gossip column in the Fuck Knuckle Times.”  

The characterisations in the novel are solid, with some being purposefully stereotypical yet believable – the garage geek turned IT powerbroker, the menacing government official … Others are unpredictable and intriguing; the chameleon-like Kaitlyn, and those within the system who have hidden agendas. And then there are those who drive the story without making an appearance – or if appearing are “Systematically ruined”.

“What chance could an algorithm have against all that inner chaos?” asks Going Zero – and a final twist in the novel has the reader routing for chaos. An excellent read!

Mami Suzuki is moonlighting as a private eye in Kobe, Japan. She is doing so unbeknownst to the management of the Orient Hotel where she works – she needs the money to support herself, her mother, and her daughter. Four stories, each linked by the word of mouth of a client, present Mami Suzuki as shrewd, empathetic, and sensible – although possibly with a bit of a drinking problem.

Suzuki’s four cases take us to wonderfully described destinations; you can smell hear and taste the locations. One story is set in Kobe, with the president of a major pearl business concerned about theft in the organisation. The second takes us to the small port town of Mihonoseki near Matsue, with Suzuki trying to locate a sushi master who has left his family. Suzuki then takes her mum and daughter to Ishigaki Island, Okinawa Prefecture, to determine the truth behind the death of a retired executive. Finally, we start a mystery at the Ikuta Shrine in Kobe and end up on the island of Manabeshima, populated by 83 people and 166 cats.

A common thread in each story is the charming and handsome fisherman, Teizo, whose backstory equips him with knowledge of the sea, and connections in various places, which help Suzuki with her cases. The stories are in a minor key – Suzuki gently piecing together the stories of desperation, heartbreak, superstition, longing, and human frailty. They are compelling stories, and Suzuki is quite funny, gets angry, has a strong sense of justice that doesn’t always agree with the law, and finds the “greatest unsolved mystery” to be how she is managing to hold down a day job while working as a private investigator.

Mami Suzuki: Private Eye, written by an outsider who has spent a lot of time in Japan, gives a tantalising look at another way of thinking about things, while always keeping the distance of an onlooker; the result is atmospheric and beguiling. I really look forward to reading more of Mami Suzuki’s adventures.

Hana Westerman is back staking out houses, interviewing suspects, filming crimes in progress, and piecing together scraps of information. The only problem is, she’s no longer a detective: “Hana had walked away from the cops because she couldn’t live with the darkness anymore. But the darkness had followed her. And it had followed her family.”

Hana has returned to where she grew up; Tātā Beach on the west coast of the North Island. Her rapper daughter Addison and Addison’s best friend PLUS1, are living in Hana’s house in Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland, about two hours away. Hana is renting just down from her dad Eru’s place. She runs every morning, and she and Eru are helping the local kids get their driving licences.

Hana is welcomed back to her community by some, but held at a distance by others. There are those who think she has come back feeling superior, looking down on them. Eyes is one of the latter, and Hana is struggling with Eyes’ son Tīmoti, whose attitude is getting in the way of his licence lessons. Hana fears he might be being drawn into the ambit of local thug Erwin Rendall.

All is manageable for Hana until Addison, visiting her mum, finds human remains in the sand dunes. The remains are those of a young woman, and the location is exactly where another young woman, Paige Meadows, was discovered 20 years previously. The man found guilty of Paige’s murder, Tama Hall, has since died in prison – but Eru is adamant Tama was innocent: “Tama didn’t kill that girl. He didn’t do it.” And then a woman approaches Hana to provide information regarding who Paige’s real killer might be.

Hana finds herself investigating both murders. The skeleton Addison finds is that of Kiri Thomas. Hana had only met Kiri once, at a Youth at Risk programme – she had told Hana “You look like photos of my real mum”. The detectives on the search for Kiri’s murderer are Jaye Hamilton, Hana’s ex-husband and Addison’s dad, and Lorraine Delaney, a colleague of Hana’s who has taken on Hana’s role of Detective Senior Sergeant in the department, and who had been piloting the Youth at Risk programme Kiri, and her friend Dax attended.

Treading a fine line with what she has the powers to do, and ensuring she passes all information on the police, Hana makes progress. Her ex-junior colleague Stan Riordan is still on the force, sitting on a desk job, eager to get back into action – well-placed to help Hana. And another ex-cop, Sebastian Kang, has started up a PI business – he gives Hana the odd bits of work, and he has her back in her investigations.

Return to Blood follow a standard crime novel pattern of finding clues, considering possibilities, falling for mis-directions – all culminating in a tense and scary denouement. But what makes it a superb novel are the characterisations and the juxtaposition of opposing ideas of what constitutes justice. Bennett describes the traditional Māori concept of muru, natural law, as opposed to the British common law system; “institutionalized, laid out in leather-bound tomes, enforced and adjudicated upon by police and lawyers and judges, people with absolutely no knowledge of or relationship to those who were actually affected.”

Is it justice when one man accepts another’s sacrifice and the responsibility of turning his life around? Is it justice when someone sets another up for their accidental crime, when the victim would be paying the price anyway? Is it justice when a crime is ignored because, if discovered, it wouldn’t be the real culprit who is punished? And making these questions vivid are the rich characters in Return to Blood.

Hana is still her staunch self, and so brave when approaching difficult situations – like humbling herself to Jaye’s new wife after a mis-judgement, or battling on with Eyes regarding fighting for Tīmoti’s future. Addison and PLUS1 are complex and fragile, especially when Addison decides to do a bit of investigating herself: “There’s what you say. There’s what you sing. And there’s what you actually feel.” Each character is conflicted and nuanced. And then there’s Eru.

“I was just a Māori boy from a small town who liked to go fishing.” Eru is accepting, kind, non-judgemental and loyal. He sees no difference between a soldier’s stress from battlefield orders, and a person’s stress from gang orders. He is knowingly naïve: “‘We’re pescatarian, Grandpa’, ‘That’s different to non-binary?’” The reader longs for Eru and his wisdom to be OK.

And poignantly, Kiri’s voice weaves through the book, and she is present in Addison’s dreams. She was 17. She fell in love with the genderless visceral Māori gods. She loved the weightlessness of the dip in a loop-de-loop. She lost her parents young, and she pushed her adoptive parents away by testing boundaries; “I wasn’t their blood”. She lost her way due to a misunderstanding. And the novel never lets us forget, regardless of the worries, mistakes, and triumphs of those left behind, Kiri has had everything taken from her – her chance to love or harm, her chance to make amends, her chance to live.

Return to Blood is a great book, a great piece of #YeahNoir, a great second book in the Hana Westerman series, and I eagerly await number three.

Lou Galloway has given up his Hollywood dream and taken off for Mexico – where he falls into a whirlwind adventure, acting out the role of a lifetime. With a magic realism start, a Narcos middle, and a [no spoilers] ending, El Flamingo is a joyous ride.

From a deserted beachside bar in “Playa del something-or-other” to the jungles outside of Cali, Colombia, El Flamingo keeps the reader in what will be, for many, territory familiar from American movies and TV shows. And Lou’s lines in part coming from scripts makes the reader even more at home.

“Who would’ve thought acting was a superpower?” This book is a tribute to the noble profession of acting, of getting into a role and effectively selling yourself – in Lou’s case as El Flamingo, an enigmatic hitman. As you read El Flamingo you question whether everyone around Lou is also just playing a role – and whose side each is on: “Had I shaken hands with God? Or done a deal with the Devil?”

There is a nice meta level to Lou’s narration advising the reader at one point that they are reading “A mystery, a thriller, and now, a romance. At least for tonight”. But due to Lou not being sure what’s happening, the reader keeps guessing what the next twist will be – and this reader at least was continually surprised by the plot twists.

References to Don Quixote abound – was Quixote a fool or a hero? And which is Lou? “Somehow, I’d become an utterly unreadable man, all down to the fact that no one was more confused about the whole thing than me.” This self-deprecation is what keeps the reader engaged, and also rooting for Lou in his newfound mission to decidedly be a hero – yet concerned about his confidence to follow through – “As it always does, the coffee began to raise my over-all level of intelligence.”

There are some fabulous scenes in the novel, a novel that would make a great movie – there is the dance in a salsa bar in a rainforest, Maria-Carla singing in the El Jaguar Cantante, the demonstration of what can be done with a single playing card or a bottle of expensive bubbles, and that surreal moment early in the piece when Lou enters a lavish party out in the middle of nowhere – “a gringo idiot in a cheap Hawaiian shirt.”

The plotting of El Flamingo is superb apart from one major coincidence the plot hinges on, requiring a regular influx of failed actors into Mexico. Aside from this, all is neatly explained, and after all “Sometimes, even in Mexico, an extra sombrero is too much to ask”. I just loved reading this book!

Dif is a rough sleeper, for good reasons he is lying low, keeping clear of the law. However, when he witnesses a woman’s body being dumped in a quarry, he knows he must do something to get justice for the victim – but that he also must keep himself safe. He gathers scraps of evidence from the body before the next day’s quarry work obliterates it, and he tries for long-distance communication with his foster sister, NSW Park Ranger Cal Nyx, leaving her clues to follow.

Cal is taking a break from her job, trying, but failing, to face the death of her Aunt Zin. Zin took Cal in when she was at school and her life fell apart in Aotearoa / New Zealand, and soon after Dif joined the family. When Cal gets the first text message from Dif, she plunges into helping him, in part to distract herself from Zin’s death, in part through feeling bad for Dif, who “was a kind of magnet for shite at times”.

Cal takes off on a crazy trip up and down the NSW coast, north and south of Sydney – up and down so many times, she started to “feel like a frickin yo-yo”. At the same time, Dif is doing what he can to find out what sequence of events led to the incident at the quarry, and Cal is “sending messages into the ether and hoping Dif was at the other end”. Cal calls on her network to help with her investigating – she knows the best people for the job would be the cops, but also knows that could end up with the worst outcome for Dif.

Cal includes her friend/partner Detective Inspector Liz Scobie in her efforts, along with hackers, car mechanics, performers – all gifted women she knows. Things are tricky for Scobie for two reasons, there is Dif’s reticence to have anything to do with the police, and the fact that an ex-lover of hers is in command of the probably bent cop who is causing most of Dif’s grief. The reader picks up the different threads of the case from the various investigations.

Cal keeps racing around, sleeping in her car, wondering about life, getting pissed-off, and generally being a great character. She mucks up relationships, feels guilty about not being with Zin when she died, wonders what to do about a squatter who seems to have moved into her aunt’s house, worries about her injured dog, Banjo – and one time, after a cramped night sleeping in the car, she stretched her muscles on playground equipment: “To her surprise she found it exhilarating and fun.”

The Quarry is a great depiction of how people on the margins live dangerous lives, how hard it is to participate in society once society decides you don’t fit. Dif, is a transgender male, he has more than the usual fear of the cops, and of going to jail. Whenever he has tried to do good, his actions have been misunderstood, he is frail and frightened. He is terrified in the bush to see torchlight: “He’s come for me” – only to realise he is looking at the moon.

It is when Cal and Dif finally get to spend time together that the reader sees the young petrol heads who used to love hanging out together. The writing of The Quarry is atmospheric and moving, as well as pacey with plenty of action – Cal putting herself, or in one case flinging herself, into great danger on numerous occasions. The Quarry is the second Cal Nyx Mystery and I loved reading it. I look forward to reading more of Cal, her circle of friends, and their exploits.

Four teenage boys accused of sexual offending, three teenage girls under the spotlight of public opinion and speculation. We read their stories through trial testimonies, memories, and from the point of view of the twelve jurors tasked with judging the boys.

Dice is not just the story of the young people, the trial, and the jurors; it is the story of how widespread and intractable sexual predation is. For this reason, I advise that the novel is graphic and disturbing, and anyone who has been the victim of sexual coercion needs to be aware of this before reading.

Allowing us to get to know the jurors is a great literary device; the reader becomes very aware of how thoroughly human, damaged, and distracted the jurors are while trying to pass judgement on others. It makes the reader a bit numbed by the judicial system. How so many bad actions don’t end up in court, and how many societal prejudices do.

The jury is comprised of a cross section of society, a range of socio-economic situations, ages, and levels of confidence. The youngest is also Māori, so he is often asked his opinion – not as his opinion, but as that of all young men, or of all Māori. There are automatic alliances of like people. There are superficial friendships. There are snap judgements of others. And there are the white men assuming they are the only ones who ‘get it’.

The boys have devised a game of dice to determine their actions regarding the girls. There is reference made to The Dice Man; the 1970s novel where a man’s daily actions are determined by dice roll. This ‘abandoning of autonomy’ is just the sanctioning of bad acts, as the players determine the parameters of the game. And there is a parallel with society, where the privileged get to make the rules – and then behave badly.

Throughout Dice is the wearying, endless, infuriating, disregard of women. The effect of the jury’s judgements on the boys’ futures is deemed important, the effect on the girls’ lives of the judgements, or a mistrial, is deemed not relevant to their decisions. The boys’ ‘lesser’ actions are deemed “Boys mucking around”, “Boys being boys”, with no regard to that ‘play’ embedding in the boys a culture of disrespecting women being acceptable. Some of the men even fail to grasp the seriousness of some of the boys’ ‘more serious’ actions.

Dice gives us lots of information about the lives of the jurors – their back stories, their current challenges. Cleverly we read at the beginning of the book about one specific incident in the life of one male juror. He then almost becomes a background character – the reader knowing the questions he would be asking himself as the trial progresses.

Dice is a heartbreaking read. It’s not just the horrible triviality of the Dice Game; it all becomes a game – the performative nature of the court, the anxiety some jurors feel in not understanding the rules, the bargaining and compromising in the jury room. Baylis ends the novel in a harrowing way, clearly showing how far from justice and management of harm the whole process is.

Dice is a stunning debut novel. It is not an enjoyable read, but it is one that really makes you consider how things could be done better. How women’s voices might be heard and not dismissed as hailing from “the MeToo bandwagon”, how as well as young women being told not to behave in certain ways, boys should be required not to abuse young women!