"A character centric ride through modern America" - review of GUIDE ME HOME

GUIDE ME HOME by Attica Locke (Viper, 2024)

Reviewed by Craig Sisterson

Texas Ranger Darren Mathews has handed in his badge. A choice made three years before, which served justice if not the law, means that he may now stand trial. And his mother - an intermittent and destructive force in his life - is the cause of his fall from grace.

And yet it is his mother's reappearance that may also be his salvation. A black girl at an all-white sorority at a nearby college is missing, her belongings tossed in a dumpster. Her sorority sisters, the college police, even the girl's own family, deny that she has disappeared, but Sera Fuller is nowhere to be found. A bloodstained shirt discovered in a woodland clearing may be the last trace of her. And Darren's mother wants her son to work the case.

Disillusioned by an America forever changed by the presidency of Donald Trump, Darren reluctantly agrees. Yet as he sets out to find a girl whose family don't want her found, it is his own family's history that may be brought painfully into the light. And a reckoning with his past may finally show Darren the future he can build.

For me, Texas-born Attica Locke's superb 2017 thriller Bluebird, Bluebird, the first in her series starring black Texas Ranger Darren Mathews, may be one of the best novels of the past decade, with its rich storytelling and incisive observations about dangerous rhetoric emboldening a white supremacist underbelly desperately clinging on in America.

Five years after its excellent sequel, Heaven My Home, we now have a fitting finale to an outstanding ‘Highway 59’ trilogy. With the legal consequences of past choices still hanging over him like a sword of Damocles, a bourbon-soaked Mathews hands in his badge. Then his mother, who’s played a key role in his many troubles, reappears. Apparently sober, wanting his help to find what’s happened to a black girl missing from the all-white sorority where Darren’s mother now works.

Disillusioned by how law and justice are being twisted in Trump’s America, Mathews reluctantly agrees, only to uncover a snake’s den of deceit, and discover far more about his own family history.

Locke once again soaks readers in the East Texas setting, and the humanity and frustrations of good people trying to live and operate in an unjust world. Mathews is confronted not only by the mystery of a missing girl who everyone – even her family – seems to insist is okay, but the mystery of his mother, and his accepted narrative of his own past. 

Locke takes readers on an emotional, character-centric ride through a slice of modern America, where the prejudices and divisions of the past are stirred up and shaken out in various ways in the present.

While it's a little disappointing Locke has said that Guide Me Home will be the final Darren Mathews tale, for the foreseeable future at least - after originally planning a longer running series - overall it is an excellent read and a fitting finale to a terrific trilogy that captures, all to scarily, some of the simmering realities of a nation changed, or perhaps just revealed, by Trump's 'MAGA' inciting runs for President. 

Top shelf. 

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.

Ngā mihi o te tau hau (Happy New Year)

volunteering with homelessness charity Crisis in London on New Year's Day, wearing my Michael Connelly charity t-shirt, which was also to raise funds for a LA homelessness charity

Ngā mihi o te tau hau (Happy New Year), everyone! 

I hope as we turn the calendar from 2024 to 2025 that you have been having a good festive season and are looking forward to a new year full of joys, adventure, and love... and lots of good and great books!

Kia ora 2025. Man, time flies. I remember being a wee kid, working out how old we'd be in the year 2000! Now we're a quarter century past that. Calendar changes are often cause for reflection, eh? Whether we consciously mean to, in terms of making some resolutions etc, or not. 

As I was walking to the tube in the pre-dawn London darkness yesterday, it struck me that I was spending the last day of 2024 doing pretty much the same thing I was doing on the first day of 2024, volunteering with a great group of people at Crisis, a homelessness charity that operates throughout the UK. And today I kicked off my new year by doing the same, somewhat appropriately with a nod to my love of crime fiction by wearing one of my 'Harry Bosch' t-shirts, which has a great message on it. 

"Everybody Counts, or Nobody Counts," is Harry's credo throughout Connelly's fantastic series. 

Michael Connelly wearing one
of the special charity t-shirts

Not bad words to live by. My t-shirt got several positive comments from our guests (rough sleepers) at Crisis today. Perhaps fittingly, I'd actually bought it a few years back when Michael put them up for sale to raise funds for a homelessness charity in Los Angeles. It's a growing issue in many places. 

It's my sixth 'Christmas' volunteering with Crisis. If I couldn't be back 'home' in New Zealand for the holidays, I was very grateful to be ending my year and starting a new one by spending my time doing something to help others, with some great people - fellow volunteers and our guests, once more. 

You can read more about Crisis and the work they do, and how my own eyes were opened by my time volunteering there over the years, in a post I did to start the year, for the Murder is Everywhere website. 

Last night and early this morning before I went on shift I was thinking about all the different kinds of 'New Year's Eves/New Year's Days' I've had throughout my life. 

For more than 20 years, from when I was a new entrant at primary school, my New Years' were always in the Top of the South Island of New Zealand, whether camping by the beach in Kaiteriteri or hanging out with family and friends. Throughout school, university, being a young lawyer, and even my first years of travels, I'd always be home or return home to the Nelson-Tasman region for the holidays. Looking back, as Fred Dagg used to sing, "We don't know how lucky we are". It's a pretty great part of the world to get to call home. 

My first overseas New Year's Eve and New Year's Day was, funnily enough, still a summery one, in Colonia (Uruguay) with my girlfriend and a couple of law school pals, who were randomly passing through Buenos Aires at the same time as us, as 2007 ended and 2008 began. We took the ferry to another country for some fun beachside celebrations and shenanigans. 

Summery New Year's Eve celebrations in Uruguay

Since then it's been a real mix of home and away, from an Egyptian feast with snakes and table dancing in Luxor on New Year's Eve, to US summer camp reunions when I'm just off the plane from a Christmas in Lapland, to 1 January sunrise walks with my daughter around New Zealand rivers and vineyards or quiet parks in COVID-era London or through Kauri forests in Northland.... 

On the first day of 2025, as I unwind from another Crisis shift, I'm grateful for it all. Even the bumps and bruises along the way, in among many joyful moments. 

To all my pals reading this, I hope that however 2024 went for you, that 2025 brings you plenty of joy, adventure, and love. Time flies, and life changes, but it can be full of lots of good things along the way. In the small moments as much as the bigger ones. Here's to a great year of crime and thriller reading, and many other good things for us all. 

Hugs and aroha - Craig S

"Storytelling mastery and a fitting finale" - review of CITY IN RUINS

CITY IN RUINS by Don Winslow (HarperCollins, 2024)

Reviewed by Craig Sisterson

Sometimes you have to become what you hate to protect what you love. Danny Ryan is rich. Beyond his wildest dreams rich.

The former dock worker, Irish mob soldier and fugitive from the law is now a respected businessman – a Las Vegas casino mogul and billionaire silent partner in a group that owns two lavish hotels. Finally, Danny has it all: a beautiful house, a child he adores, a woman he might even fall in love with.

Life is good. But then Danny reaches too far. When he tries to buy an old hotel on a prime piece of real estate with plans to build his dream resort, he triggers a war against Las Vegas power brokers, a powerful FBI agent bent on revenge and a rival casino owner with dark connections of his own.

Danny thought he had buried his past, but now it reaches up to him from the grave to pull him down. Old enemies surface, and when they come for Danny they vow to take everything – not only his empire, not just his life, but all that he holds dear, including his son.

One of the modern greats of crime writing has bowed out in style, as City in Ruins again showcases the storytelling mastery and talents of Don Winslow. His latest not only caps his terrific ‘City’ trilogy about Irish American tragic hero Danny Ryan, but his writing career, as Winslow turns his talents to real-life political battles in the USA. 

Following the events of City on Fire, where Danny Ryan barely survived a New England turf war between Irish and Italian crime families, and City of Dreams, where his attempts to go legit in Hollywood brought further pain and loss, City of Ruins starts with him entwined in the casino industry in Las Vegas. 

He’s settled and happy, raising his son, but Ryan's ambitions bring his past into play, and once again threaten all he loves.

Inspired by Virgil’s poem about a soldier who fled the fall of Troy and became ancestor to the Romans, there’s certainly something timeless, epic, and sweeping about Ryan’s odyssey through turbulent times, cut-throat industries, and deadly feuds. 

City in Ruins is as ambitious as its hero; superior crime writing full of tension and depth. An outstanding novel in of itself, it offers even more to readers who’ve devoured the first two books.

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.

Jack Reacher, PG Wodehouse, and Mumbai slums: an interview with Ajay Chowdhury

Kia ora and haere mai, welcome to the 240th instalment of author interview series, 9mm. Thanks for reading and sharing the 9mm series, and Crime Watch in general (and my work elsewhere) over many years. I've had a lot of fun talking to lots of amazing crime and thriller writers and bringing their thoughts and stories to you.

You can check out the full list of of past 9mm interviewees here. What a line-up! With lots more fun to come. Thanks everyone. If you've got a favourite crime or thriller writer who hasn't yet been part of the 9mm series, please let me know, and now I'm back on deck more fully, I'll look to make that happen for you. We've got several interviews with cool crime and thriller writers from several different countries 'already in the can' that will be published soon, so lots to look forward to in the coming weeks and months.

Today I'm very pleased to welcome to 9mm an exciting newer voice in crime writing, Ajay Chowdhury, a tech entrepreneur and theatre director who was born in India and now lives in London where he builds digital businesses, cooks experimental dishes for his wife and daughters and writes through the night.

Chowdhury won the first Harvill Secker-Bloody Scotland prize (effectively a search for new, underrepresented voices in British crime writing), for the beginnings of what became The Waiter. Disgraced former Kolkata detective Kamil Rahman is waiting tables at a Brick Lane restaurant owned by family friends. When a birthday party for his boss’s friend ends in murder, Kamil is arm-twisted into an unofficial investigation alongside Anjoli, his boss’s precocious daughter. 

The series, which is in development for television, continued with The Cook, which delved into homelessness, The Detective, entwined with government surveillance and AI, and most recently The Spy. But for now, Ajay Chowdhury becomes the latest author to stare down the barrel of 9mm. 

9MM INTERVIEW WITH AJAY CHOWDHURY

Who is your favourite recurring crime fiction hero/detective?

Probably Bernie Gunther, from the Philip Kerr series. I just think following his life from mid 1930s Germany to the 1950s how he changes, everything he's been through, it's absolutely fantastic. And that was kind of my inspiration for when I knew I was going to get to do a second or third Kamil Rahman book, is, you know, I'd love to be able to follow the guy's life. 

What was the very first book you remember reading and really loving, and why?

I read a huge amount when I was a kid, and certainly the Enid Blyton books are the ones that absolutely grabbed me, the Famous Five. But the one that really showed me good writing was PG Woodhouse. I mean his language, I'd read nothing like it. Anyone who can write a line like "he wasn't disgruntled, but neither was he gruntled", that is really good, right?

Before your debut crime novel, what else had you written (if anything) unpublished manuscripts, short stories, articles?

I was very lucky to have written a children's novel which got published in 2016, Ayesha and the Firefish. I'd been telling my kids that little story at bedtime, and I wrote it, then a friend of mine said, I know a publisher, an editor at Penguin. I just got lucky there as well. They sent it, and this was Penguin India, and they said, Yeah, we'll publish it. Then later it got adapted to become a musical in LA and San Francisco - though I didn't write the musical. 

Outside of writing and writing-related activities (book events, publicity), what do you really like to do, leisure and activity-wise?

I'm a huge bridge player. So I play bridge three times a week online. Weekends I'm normally playing a competition online. So I absolutely love playing bridge and then the usual other stuff, you know, travel, eating, cooking. 

What is one thing that visitors to your hometown should do, that isn't in the tourist brochures, or perhaps they wouldn’t initially consider?

I would count Calcutta [now Kolkata] and Bombay [Mumbai] as my hometowns, as I lived in both places. But if I take Bombay, where I have some great memories, this is going to sound a weird thing to say, but visit Dharavi, the biggest slum in the world. My next book is about it, but I went for the first time in January with my wife, and it's an extraordinary place. It's a million people, in pretty much one square mile. And it's factories, it's people living there. It's a complete ecosystem. And it's an extraordinary place to visit, and they do tours of it, which make me feel a little bit bad, because it feels slightly like poverty tourism, but it's an extraordinary place. And the tour guide we took, all the money goes back into the community. 

If your life was a movie, which actor could you see playing you?

I'm a five foot, two inch Indian guy from Mumbai, so I think it would have to be the guy who plays Jack Reacher in the Netflix show [Alan Ritchson]. It'd be pure wish fulfilment. Not Tom Cruise though, that'd be too easy for him to do. But it would be cool to be played by someone six foot six with arms like potato sacks. That's my dream.

Of your writings, which is your favourite or a bit special to you for some particular reason, and why?

Well, it would have to be The Waiter, because it's completely changed the direction of my life. So,  winning the competition and then having them say that, listen, we want more of these books, completely changed my life. I mean, I would not be sitting here next to you at this crime writing festival, Chiltern Kills, if I hadn't won that competition. So yeah, it would have to be that. 

What was your initial reaction, and how did you celebrate, when you were first accepted for publication? Or when you first saw your debut story in book form on a bookseller’s shelf?

So, seeing in a bookshop for the first time. We didn't celebrate it as such, but my wife and I were in Daunt Books in Hampstead, and The Waiter was sitting not on the shelf, they actually had it displayed on a table. And so my wife photographed me in front of it, and then she sneakily took it to the window and put it in the window, photographed me in front of the window, then put it back. So that was very special. The one thing that's never happened so far, and hopefully will sometime, is I have seen someone reading any of my books in the wild, yeah, that would be cool, I'm still waiting for that.

What is the strangest or most unusual experience you have had at a book signing, author event, or literary festival?

Well, I mean, a guy came up to me today in the book signing after our panel saying he just finished reading The Detective and how much he absolutely hated the female character [ed note: Kamil's ex-fiancé Maliha, not Anjoli] ... he told me how much he hated her, how he felt she was completely unnecessary, and didn't understand why I put her in the book. So that was a bit controversial, and a story that quickly comes to mind! 

Kia ora, Ajay, we appreciate you having a chat with Crime Watch. 

"Dark issues and delicious writing" - review of THE SPY

THE SPY by Ajay Chowdhury (Harvill Secker, 2024)

Reviewed by Craig Sisterson

Kamil Rahman is working for the Metropolitan Police when he gets the call from MI5. They've received intelligence of a terrorist plot, and it's Kamil they need. Posing as a disaffected cop, and working once again in Anjoli's beloved restaurant, Kamil infiltrates the cell. From London he is sent to Kashmir, a place he visited with his parents when he was younger. But his allegiance becomes blurred when he finds himself face to face with an old nemesis... 

I’ve been an unabashed fan of tech founder and CEO turned crime writer Ajay Chowdhury’s moreish mystery series starring disgraced Kolkata detective Kamil Rahman since the first outing, The Waiter (2021), which as an unpublished novel won the Bloody Scotland-Harvill Secker Prize for new voices. In that first book, Kamil was eking out a new life as a waiter at Tandoori Knights, a friend’s Indian restaurant in London’s Brick Lane, before murder intervened, and he was arm-twisted into undertaking an unofficial investigation alongside Anjoli, his new boss’s precocious daughter.

My only trouble with Chowdhury’s books is that, in among the dark deeds leavened with plenty of humour and heart, every time I read one I’d become so damned hungry, due to the food references!

As the more-ish series has grown, Kamil has returned to official policing with London’s famed Met Police. Although he perhaps got more respect even as berated waiter in Tandoori Knights. In The Spy he’s recruited by MI5 to try to infiltrate a dangerous terrorist cell. Playing the role of a disenchanted copper, exiled back to the Indian restaurant. Meanwhile some things haven’t changed, including Kamil’s complicated, stuttering, friends or maybe more relationship Anjoli, who once again gets drawn into amateur sleuthing as she starts to investigate the kidnapping of a teenage boy. 

As Kamil’s discoveries lead abroad, into the brutality and suffering of the long-running Kashmir conflict, he and Anjoli both face grave danger. Stakes are high, personally and politically. 

Once again, Chowdhury deftly crafts an engrossing, highly readable tale that delves into some of the darkest issues facing society, while providing plenty of light through the humour and heart of the characters, and some of the events. It's a tricky balance, but Chowdhury deftly pulls it off, delivering another cracking tale in what's become a really wonderful series, and a great addition to the genre. 

The Spy is delicious crime and thriller fiction, on all fronts. 

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.

"Underlines Billingham's status as one of modern crime fiction's greats" - review of THE WRONG HANDS

THE WRONG HANDS by Mark Billingham (HarperCollins, 2024)

Reviewed by Craig Sisterson

Unconventional Detective Declan Miller has a problem. Well, two problems. First, there's his dead wife and her yet-to-be-solved murder. He really should stop talking to her ghosts...

Second, and most pressing, a young man has just appeared on his doorstep with a briefcase . . . containing a pair of severed hands. Miller knows this case is proof of a contract killing commissioned by local ne'er do well Wayne Cutler—a man he suspects might also be responsible for his wife's death. Now Miller has leverage, but unfortunately, he also has something that both Cutler and a villainous fast-food kingpin are desperate to get hold of.

Sprinkle in a Midsomer Murders-obsessed hitman, a psychotic welder, and a woman driven over the edge by a wayward Crème Egg, and Miller is in a mess that even he might not be able to dance his way out of. 

When I look back on my reading days before I began reviewing crime and thriller fiction for various publications and judging crime writing prizes in several countries over the past fifteen or so years, my favourite crime series were probably Michael Connelly’s Bosch books, James Lee Burke’s Robicheaux, and the gritty Tom Thorne series by Mark Billingham (after loving Sherlock Holmes, the Hardy Boys and Agaton Sax as a kid, Poirot as an adolescent, and Alex Cross and Kay Scarpetta as a teen). 

Last year, Birmingham-born storyteller Billingham tossed readers a bit of a googly (or a change-up, to put it in US sporting terms), with The Last Dance, which introduced his first new series protagonist in more than two decades. Despite also being a British police detective, the rat-loving, ballroom dancing widower DS Declan Miller is very different to Tom Thorne. And the series has a very different tone, as Billingham returns to his stand-up comic roots. The Last Dance was brilliant, a hilarious and heartfelt novel with a one-of-a-kind sleuth. So how does the sequel fare? 

In short, The Wrong Hands underlines Billingham’s status as one of modern crime fiction’s greats. 

Fumbling foxtrots, irreverent humour, and policing slapstick and serious are all on the menu again in this superb sequel that may have readers laughing out loud in some passages and emotionally engrossed in others. The cops in Blackpool, a crumbling place recently voted (in real life) as the UK’s worst seaside town, think they finally have crime boss Wayne Cutler bang to rights, only for a sting operation to be upturned by a couple of local larrikins. Cue the Keystone Cops music. When a young man turns up on DS Declan Miller’s doorstep with a briefcase containing severed appendages, Miller realises he may finally have the upper hand – pun intended – to catch those behind the murder of his wife, dance partner, and fellow detective Alex. Not that he trusts the official police investigation. 

So with heavy metal-loving, motorbike riding Detective ‘Posh’ Xiu, alongside a menagerie of pals and contacts, Miller tries to follow some tricky steps and not put his foot in it for investigations professional and private, while hoping not to get voted off life’s dancefloor, permanently.

In The Wrong Hands, Billingham expertly delivers another fantastic read, full of grin-inducing characters on both sides of the law. Where there were touches of gallows humour in his earlier books, the DS Miller series offers guffaws and belly laughs. It could translate brilliantly to the screen, and in whatever form, we’ll have to hope there’s lots more to come from dancing detective Miller.

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.

"A cracking read that also engages emotionally" - review of NO ONE WILL KNOW

NO ONE WILL KNOW by Rose Carlyle (Text Publishing, 2024)

Reviewed by Craig Sisterson

Eve Sylvester is young and broke and needs a job fast. After years of foster homes, backpacking and a sailing trip across the Pacific Ocean, she has lost contact with friends and family. She is alone, desperate—and pregnant.

Then she meets Julia and Christopher Hygate, a charming and glamorous couple, who seem to have the perfect loads of money and a breathtakingly beautiful mansion on a remote Tasmanian island. They make her a lucrative offer. Eve can move into their empty summerhouse and take up a very easy job.

Eve thinks she’s fallen on her feet—she has found a home, and her child will grow up in the aptly named Paradise Bay. But some things about the job don’t add up. Why must Eve stay out of sight? Why have the Hygates employed an ex-con to run their yacht-charter business? And what about the mysterious boats sailing in and out of the Hygates’ private marina? Eve is already in far too deep.

Four years ago, adventure-loving Auckland lawyer Rose Carlyle grabbed global attention with her #1 internationally bestselling debut, The Girl in the Mirror. Now she’s back with another cracking thriller that shows no let-up or ‘difficult second novel’ wobbles.  

Fans of Carlyle’s smash hit debut and new readers alike will find plenty to enjoy in No One Will Know, a twisting, propulsive tale centred on Eve Sylvester, a young woman scrabbling to survive after her life is upturned by fate and circumstance. After a car crash rips away the future Eve was hoping for on her return to Sydney from adventures sailing across the South Pacific, the former foster kid is left broke, desperate, and pregnant. 

No living relatives, no good friends, no one to help. Acutely aware of the impact of growing up in tough circumstances, Eve can’t resist a lucrative offer to live-in nanny for glamorous couple on their mansion estate in Paradise Bay on a remote island off the southern coast. But has Eve made a deal with the devil, out of love for her unborn child? 

Carlyle shows great mastery of pace and narrative drive in No One Will Know, luring readers into Eve’s story and keeping pages whirring with harrowing events and danger. The read hurtles along like a record-breaking Sydney to Hobart maxi yacht. 

A cracking ‘beach read’ that also engages emotionally with character and underlying themes. 

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.

"Deliciously tense" - review of THE LAST GUESTS

THE LAST GUESTS by JP Pomare (Mulholland, 2021)

Reviewed by Craig Sisterson

Newlyweds Lina and Cain don’t make it out to their property on gorgeous Lake Tarawera as often as they’d like, so when Cain suggests they rent the house out to vacationers, Lina reluctantly agrees. While the home has been in her family for generations, they could use the extra money. And at first, Lina is amazed at how quickly guests line up, and at how much they’re willing to pay.

 

But both Lina and Cain have been keeping secrets, secrets that won’t be put off by fresh paint or a new alarm system. And someone has been watching them—their mundane tasks, their intimate moments. When a visit takes a deadly turn, Lina realizes someone out there knows something they shouldn’t…and that welcoming strangers into your home is playing a dangerous game.

For me, indigenous storyteller JP Pomare (Ngā Puhi) is one of the most exciting new voices to emerge in Australasian thriller writing – and beyond – over the past several years. From his terrific first outing, the psychological thriller Call Me Evie (2019), the Melbourne-based Māori novelist has made a mark with readers, critics, and awards judges thanks to his adroit blend of quality prose with keen psychological insights, fascinating protagonists (often heroines), and a rich sense of people and place. 

He continued his ascent with his fourth novel, The Last Guests, a tense and terrifying tale of an AirBNB-style rental situation gone horribly, horribly wrong. Lina and Cain are a young married couple who are struggling to deal with past traumas and present secrets. Former Special Forces soldier Cain is feeling lost after leaving the army, having to overcome injuries to body and mind and unable to get traction for his new fitness training business. Lina is a paramedic taking dangerous steps to fulfil her deepest desires.

When an SAS buddy of Cain’s suggest they list Lina’s childhood home on the beautiful Lake Tarawera for short-stay rentals, the couple are conflicted. It could ease some financial woes. But does Lina want strangers living even in short-term in the house where her grandparents raised her, that means so much? The potential for ‘easy money’ outbids the risk, so Cain and Lina dive in. What could go wrong?

As it turns out, a lot. Strange things, then deadly things. Someone has been watching Lina, and her life at home and work is upturned. What can she salvage, and how far will she go?

Pomare conjures a deliciously tense tale that entwines ‘domestic noir’ with issues of technology, voyeurism, and the coping mechanisms people may use to deal with trauma and the stresses of life. This is a ripsnorting read that hums along on fine prose, from a writer who is like a magician with his literary sleight-of-hand. 

When Pomare wrote The Last Guests he may have been early in his career (which has continued to flourish with further books, including 2024's outstanding 17 Years Later), but he’s already stamping his mark as a masterful storyteller. Definitely a writer to watch, and to read. Terrific. 

Note: this is a lightly edited (updated) version of a review first published in Mystery Scene magazine in the United States in 2021. 

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.