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Outback: A stunning new crime thriller

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The novel opens with a horrific home invasion involving two parents and their eight-year-old daughter, Gabby, in Gold Coast, Queensland. Walker remains convinced there is more at play. Working in the organised crime unit has opened his eyes to the growing drug trade in Australia's remote interior. Could this be connected to that dark and violent world? During her time as a journalist, she regularly contributed to prestigious magazines that include “The Telegraph,” “The Guardian,” “The Independent,” and the “Financial Times” among many others. I liked the fact there are basically two threads to this story. I enjoyed guessing how the stories converge. Dual plots can be hit and miss, but in this case I thought it worked really well, also it ensures that ‘all important’ suspense and tension never waivers. Paradise is an evocative novel that excels in its characterisations and depictions of the seedier and violent side of the Gold Coast. Highly recommend. P.S. If you're curious about the author (I always am), she is journalist Trish Lorenz who has lived and worked in many countries. Here's a funny Guardian article about dating to which she contributed her experiences in Berlin, where she lives now.

The book opens with a couple of German tourists, Berndt and Rita, in a small rented car, headed for the property where they’re expected to work a while to keep their visas active. Air con isn’t working. It’s hard to imagine conditions like this if you’ve never experienced the kind of heat that makes you desperately thirsty. Lucas Walker is a capable protagonist, level headed and very likable. He teams up with the missing woman's sister Barbara, also a detective from Berlin. This woman has a good sense of what is going on. She was an excellent character, inserting herself into this arid countryside well. Unsurprisingly her idea of Australia was much different to what she found in the north of Queensland, sweltering and almost unbearable.Lucas is also unaware that his presence in Surfers Paradise has been noted, and a bounty exists for his elimination, something that leads to a poor judgement call and quite a lot of pain later on. This deeply atmospheric thriller is the gripping opening of a new crime series for fans of Cara Hunter and Chris Whitaker. At the opening of the novel. Detective Sergeant Lucas Walker is in northwest Queensland at the home of his grandmother.

During her time there, she coved all manner of subjects from politics, design, culture, art, human interest, and political pieces from all over the world. Paradise is recommended to those that enjoy police procedurals with humanly developed characters and the novels of writers like Garry Disher. Paradise was provided by Embala Books through Netgalley upon the promise of a fair review and is set to be published on May 17, 2023.

Customer reviews

Several characters who appeared in the first book appear in the second, including members of the motorcycle gang that was producing drugs, but that story still remains unfinished. Most of the villains from the first instalment played minor roles in this book, and we received no further insight into the leak at the top—the person who is manipulating both the police and the drug dealers. Patricia Wolf does a good job here of building tension & the chapters written form the villains perspective are particularly strong & have a rather punchy tone to them. Let down only by perhaps some poorly written parts, where the prose & language becomes a little too rushed and familiar, losing the tonality set by the rest of the novel. The language was real, and having a foreign character gave the opportunity to explain a few Aussie terms. The only real flaw I found was two references to Pepto-Bismol.

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