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I was looking forward to reading Swimming in the dark – having read rave reviews of Richardson’s latest ‘psychological thriller’.  And the premise is great: Alexandra’s troublesome Freeman family is the victim of physical and systemic abuse due to their low socio-economic status and their drinking and partying solo Mum, and also due to a more sinister influence first on elder daughter Lynnie and then on the promising youngest, Selena.  We first discover the Freemans from Selena’s point of view, and one of Selena’s teachers is ‘Miss’ – Ilse Klein.  Ilse is a German immigrant, and we learn the Klein’s history in Stasi-terrorised Leipzig from the point of view of her mother Gerda.  Ilse and Gerda live in relative seclusion in Alexandra, where they purposefully keep a low profile and avoid the authorities as second nature.  But the Klein’s are drawn into young Selena’s plight when Ilse discovers her by the local river in the process of giving birth, and they decide to take her in.  When Selena’s Mum finally phones Lynnie in Wellington to tell her Selena is missing, Lynnie returns to Alexandra and takes up part of the narrative.  The parallel tales show how victimisation and a culture of fear can occur at both a state and an individual level; and how easy it is to end up living in terror and not knowing who you can trust, especially amongst the ‘authorities’.  So a great premise, but I found most of Richardson’s characters one dimensional – and her device of passing backwards and forwards from Alexandra to Leipzig more disruptive than tension-building.  I thought township New Zealand was well captured – “… what else can people do when they know a most precious loved one has gone than try to fill the deep chasm left with macaroni cheese, cakes made with carrots, and shepherd’s pies?”, but less so Leipzig, where as I read I was reminded of those movies with annoying voice-overs where you just want the action and dialogue to tell the story.  I also found some of the plotting quite clunky, like the arrival of Else’s friend Anja.  And I was as unconvinced by the vigilantism as I had been in her previous Hunting blind.  I really wished I had been more engaged by this novel – but maybe you will be, so give it a go!

I had feared that this eighth installment in Cleave’s Christchurch Noir series might be the beginning of a decline – but I actually think it is the best so far.  Pushing the boundaries of his thesis of what is good / bad, who is villain / hero, Cleave takes us on a roller coaster ride of vigilante killings gone bad.  The characters we have seen get battered and damaged through the series are back – Theodore Tate is back on the Force after being in a coma, his wife Bridget is home again but has lapses during which she thinks their dead daughter is still alive, and his ex- partner Carl Schroder has survived a bullet to the brain – sort of.  Even Tate’s new partner has been severely injured in an explosion where Schroder saved her life.  The tale starts when the man who stabbed and raped a young woman, Kelly Summers, five years previously is released from prison.  Schroder, now isolated through his injury, finds out about the release and begins to think of all the times the loved ones of victims of violent crime have asked: “When you find the man who did this, give me five minutes alone with him” – and then goes on to think that maybe granting that wish would achieve fairer punishment than that offered by the Justice System.  And things fall apart from there.  The fulcrum of the plot is the friendship between Tate and Schroder – both of whom at various times through the series have been either the voice of ‘the law’ or the one who takes the law into their own hands.  The plotting is thrilling – I was taken by surprise a number of times – and the pace relentless.  It builds to a tragic denouement – and I really hope this isn’t the end of the series!

I didn’t read the original Tito Ihaka books, written in the 90s – but did read his comeback title Death on Demand in 2012.  Fallout is the next installment and finds Detective Sergeant Ihaka working two cases, one very personal and one a cold case that has haunted his boss Finbar McGrail for 25 years.  Ihaka is given information suggesting his father, a trade unionist, might not have died of natural causes, and McGrail gets a possible breakthrough in the solving of the murder of a 17 year old girl at a 1987 election night party.  Both cases end up having threads in common, as does a private job the disgraced ex colleague of Ihaka’s Johan Van Roon is given, chasing down a political power-broker who disappeared the same year as the election party.  The plot is clever and includes political machinations around New Zealand’s nuclear free stance and resulting exclusion of US warships, as well as the connections between the Soviet Union and the New Zealand Trade Union Movement at the time.  I am warming to Ihaka as a character and will certainly read more of his crusade against pomposity and bureaucracy.  I did find the resolution of the mystery a little unsatisfying, but really enjoyed the setting of  New Zealand times and places.

Once again Paul Cleave takes us to ‘hell-on-wheels’ Christchurch – a city well on its way into moral and physical chaos.  Characters from previous novels appear – mainly Joe Middleton, a serial killer in prison awaiting trial, and Carl Schroder, now an ex-detective and working for a TV psychic.  Although there are continuations of previous story lines, this book can stand alone, as Cleave cleverly fills you in along the way.  Joe is awaiting trial as ‘the Christchurch Carver’ – trying to shore up a ‘slow’ persona and an ‘I don’t remember anything’ defence.  Tension is added by Schroder’s angsting over doing a deal with Joe for his TV show, Joe’s girlfriend “Melsissa” planning to break him out of jail, and the whole of Christchurch debating whether or not to bring back the death penalty.  What I enjoyed about the book was its complex plotting – keeping you guessing and surprised all the way along.  It is bleak and bloodthirsty – but then it is part of Cleave’s “Christchurch noir” series.