Reviewed by Craig Sisterson
This dream doesn’t feel like a dream.
He tries to lift his head. Can’t do it.
There is a doorway to his left, and beyond it a brightly lit corridor.
Somebody walks past – a nurse …
James Garrett was critically injured when he was shot following his parents’ murder, and no one expected him to waken from a deep, traumatic coma. When he does, nine years later, Detective Inspector Rebecca Kent is tasked with closing the case.
But between that, and hunting for a murderer on a spree, she’s going to need help … especially when they learn that James has lived out another life in his nine-year coma, and there are things he couldn’t possibly know.
More than fifteen years after its first publication, internationally bestselling Kiwi author Paul Cleave’s powerful debut THE CLEANER will hit screens around the world next year, having been adapted into a six-part screen drama Dark City - The Cleaner, which start filming in Canterbury soon.
Before then, however, readers can soak into the brilliant darkness of Cleave’s world with this page-chewing new tale. One of many enticing aspects of THE PAIN TOURIST, the thirteenth novel from the Crown Prince of Antipodean Noir (who’s a three-time Ngaio Marsh Award winner who’s also been shortlisted for major prizes in the United States) is the much-awaited return of troubled investigator Theo Tate, last seen in 2014’s award-winning FIVE MINUTES ALONE. Though Tate, who’s now left the police, is really a co-star here to James Garrett, a young man who emerges from a coma nine years after he was shot the night his parents were killed in a botched home invasion. Tate investigated the original crime; the culprits never found. Now DI Rebecca Kent - familiar to readers from Cleave's excellent 2021 novel THE QUIET PEOPLE - is charged with closing the very cold case, while also hunting a dangerous killer, ‘Copy Joe’, mimicking the infamous Christchurch Carver.
One of many things I love about Cleave's storytelling is the way his series and Christchurch-set standalone novels (ie 12 of his 13 novels so far, the exception being the excellent US-set small-town thriller WHATEVER IT TAKES) all overlap in time and place, even if the central characters change. He's created an entire, evocative word, a tainted version of his home city as seen through the eyes of characters trying to be good, or awfully bad, and many shades in between.
In THE PAIN TOURIST, matters are further complicated by a recovering James’ eidetic recollection of an entire life he ‘lived out’ during his long coma, which seems to crossover with real events. Did he also overhear a real-life killer’s confession and blend it into his dream life? And what about the original crooks who put him in the coma in the first place - what will they do now he's woken up, years later?
Cleave delivers a superb tale, masterfully balancing multiple viewpoints, investigations, and ongoing threats – all building to a thrilling crescendo. While THE PAIN TOURIST has plenty of the Cleave trademarks – prose that crackles like a campfire, tension and twists aplenty, memorable characters pushed to their limits, and an evocative if stained version of Christchurch – it also has a few new flourishes. Shorter punchy chapters that crank the tension even higher (while still delivering in character depth and arcs), and third-person narration told from three viewpoints (Cleave usually writes in first-person, placing readers into narrator's heads, seeing the world directly through their eyes).
An excellent read from a masterful storyteller.
Craig Sisterson is a lawyer turned writer, editor, podcast host, and event chair. He's the founder of the Ngaio Marsh Awards, author of Macavity Award-shortlisted non-fiction work SOUTHERN CROSS CRIME, series editor of the DARK DEEDS DOWN UNDER anthology, and writes about books for magazines and newspapers in several countries.
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