"Deftly draws readers into character and place" - review of LUCKY THING

LUCKY THING by Tom Baragwanath (Text Publishing, 2025)

Reviewed by Craig Sisterson

When brilliant young student Jessica Mowbrie is left in a coma after being abandoned in a remote patch of New Zealand bush, the local Masterton police don't have a clue what happened. Isolated and under-resourced, the detectives struggle even to begin piecing it together.

Police records clerk Lorraine Henry will not accept that Jessie simply had a lucky escape. She thinks whoever hurt her needs to be hunted down, and worries that her employers are a bit hopeless.

As Jessie's life hangs in the balance, it looks as if Lorraine will do the hunting. She's not getting any younger, of course. But she has all the police records at her fingertips - and as much information about who hates who as anyone in their small town. Plus, she's used to being under-estimated. And you should never under-estimate a middle-aged woman with justice in her sights...

A Barry Award nominee earlier this year for his excellent mystery debut Paper Cage – which was also shortlisted for awards in the UK, Australia, and New Zealand - fresh storytelling talent Tom Baragwanath may live among the urban buzz of Paris, but he ‘returns home’ once again to the rural landscapes of the Wairarapa region of New Zealand’s north island with Lucky Thing. And to intrepid smalltown police station records clerk Lorraine Henry, an unlikely yet highly engaging sleuth.

Lorraine is still feeling the effects of the events in Paper Cage, as are others in Masterton and surrounds, but her days are brightened by regular horse rides, and her niece Sheena expecting baby #2. 

Then some visiting hikers stumble across badly beaten local girl Jessica Mowbrie in a remote patch of the Tararua mountain range. She’s lucky to be alive, a very lucky thing indeed. But how did she get way up there, and with who? The victim can’t tell the police anything; she’s in a coma.

As the under-resourced local police struggle to make any semblance of what happened, whispers fuel long-simmering tensions between locals whose families have lived and worked the fertile region for decades. Loraine knows many of the players, several who are entwined in her own potted family history, and tries to uncover threads that’ll lead to a culprit. Then another teenager goes missing…

Baragwanath deftly draws readers into the lives, connections, and divisions of Lorraine’s neighbours.

Nothing is neat or easy. Investigations, questions; all carry weight and consequences in a place like this. Secrets, desires, half-truths, and lies. Lucky Thing is very well-written crime fiction that goes beyond procedure or standard plotlines. In a growing sea of rural noir, it still stands out. 

I’m really looking forward to more from Baragwanath.

[This review was first published in the Fall 2025 issue of Deadly Pleasures magazine in the USA]

Craig Sisterson is a lawyer turned writer, editor, podcast host, awards judge, and event chair. He's the founder of the Ngaio Marsh Awards, co-founder of Rotorua Noir, author of Macavity and HRF Keating Award-shortlisted non-fiction work SOUTHERN CROSS CRIME, editor of the DARK DEEDS DOWN UNDER anthology series, and writes about books for magazines and newspapers in several countries.