Donna Malane's Diane Rowe returns soon!

Earlier this year I revealed the terrific news that HarperCollins had picked up Donna Malane's NZSA Pindar Publishing Prize-winning debut thriller, SURRENDER, and that it was also going to publish the second book in Malane's series starring missing person's expert Diane Rowe.

Malane is an acclaimed New Zealand TV screenwriter and producer, with a long string of credits across genres. Her film-length drama Until Proven Innocent, based on the true story of David Dougherty (who was wrongly convicted of rape), won Best Drama at the Qantas Film and Television Awards.

I am very pleased to now be able to share more details about the second Diane Rowe book, MY BROTHER'S KEEPER, which will be published in New Zealand on 1 February 2013. Here is the official blurb from the publisher, and the book cover (right):

Diane Rowe, our missing persons expert, will once again take us on a dark ride through the underbelly of a city not prepared to give up its secrets easily.

Ex-con Karen needs Diane's help to track down her fourteen-year-old daughter, Sunny, who she's lost contact with while she's been in prison. To Diane, this appears at first glance to be a simple case of a mother wanting to reunite with a beloved daughter. But she soon learns that while Sunny miraculously survived her mother's attempt to kill her, little brother Falcon was not so lucky. Tracking the girl down is easy. However, convincing her to meet the woman who tried to kill her is no easy task. And at the back of Diane's mind is a nagging thought - that guilt and innocence aren't straightforward and nothing is quite what it seems. Does Karen really want to fix the wrongs of the past or is there something darker at play here that will take all of Diane's skills to uncover?

I was impressed by, and really enjoyed, SURRENDER, when I originally read it back in 2010. In a review for the Weekend Herald, I said:

Told in first-person through Diane’s eyes, SURRENDER is an impressive debut powered by a vivid and captivating ‘narrative voice’. While you’d perhaps expect great action, setting and description from someone used to the ‘sight and sound’ world of television, Malane also does a terrific job in terms of what separates a novel from a screenplay; the internal world inside her main character’s head. Diane is an intriguing heroine: at times frustrating; at times engaging; at times humorous; always compelling. Readers get a very real sense of how she sees the world, and it’s impossible not to ‘feel’ for her as she gets herself into all sorts of strife trying to do the right thing, if in an unconventional way

You can read the full review here. I am looking forward to the return of Diane Rowe, who was a character who really grew on me throughout the course of SURRENDER.  

Further reading about Donna Malane:

• 9mm interview with Donna Malane
• "Gritty crime thriller earns literary prize" - feature article by Linda Herrick in the Weekend Herald
• Review of SURRENDER by Mira Bradshaw for TVNZ
• Review of SURRENDER by Sarah Gumbley in NZLawyer
• My review of Until Proven Innocent (available on DVD) in NZLawyer

Are you looking forward to MY BROTHER'S KEEPER? Have you read SURRENDER? Do you like the sound of Wellington-set crime fiction?