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Invisible Touch

27/11/2020

 
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Christoffer Petersen: Aarluuk Press $6.99 ebook
 
WITH the nightmarish killing sprees of the previous Christmas and New Year now behind her, Police Commissioner Petra ‘Piitalaat’ Jensen is looking forward to spending this festive season unwinding quietly at home in Nuuk.
In the year 2043 Petra’s Greenland is finally independent of Denmark thanks to the successful referendum of almost 12 months earlier and starting to make its own way in the world. Nuuk is a peaceful, well-balanced, multicultural city with its distinct Dutch, Chinese and US quarters living in harmony to forge a prosperous and progressive future for the country.
There’s cause for much celebration for members of the Greenlandic police in particular, operating for the first time as a fully self-determining force answerable to no-one beyond its own borders.
Petra’s assistant Aron is recovering from injuries suffered in the course of intercepting a former colleague bent on disrupting Greenland’s self-government vote and Petra is once more contemplating the possibility of taking early retirement. Since the death of her long-time partner Constable David Maratse she hasn’t had her usual passion for enforcing the law. A low-key December is exactly what she needs as she weighs up her options.
Someone has other plans, however. Someone – it will be up to Petra’s officers to discover who – sees Advent not as a time of preparation, anticipation and relaxation but as an opportunity to settle old scores.
As the long dark nights envelop Nuuk, suddenly the run-up to Christmas starts to seem eerily familiar for Petra and her team.
Invisible Touch is the third in Christoffer Petersen’s series of Dark Advent literary ‘calendars’: stories written in distinct parts designed to be enjoyed one chapter at a time over in this case the first 24 days of December, allowing the reader to experience the action as it unfolds in Nuuk in real time.

City of Spies

20/11/2020

 
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Mara Timon: Zaffre $29.99
 
NATHALIE Lafontaine’s luck has just run out. A neighbour in Paris, offended by her rebuffing of his unwanted advances, has made a complaint against her to the occupying Germans and now she is being hunted by the dreaded Gestapo.
After a desperate flight south through the countryside she is fortunate to escape onto a fishing boat that delivers her to Spain. There she is received by the British Consul-General in Madrid as Elizabeth de Mornay, codename ‘Cécile’, a highly trained member of the Special Operations Executive who has been working behind enemy lines in France.
Rather than send her home to London, however, her superiors assign Elizabeth yet another alias and divert her to theoretically neutral Portugal. The Portuguese ruler, António de Oliveira Salazar, is maintaining a delicate balancing act, welcoming refugees from both sides of the war and maintaining regular contact with the Allied countries while hedging his bets by turning a blind eye to Axis actions within his own border.
In Lisbon Elizabeth emerges with a new identity: that of Solange Verin, a French widow in need of safe shelter far from the dangers of the Nazi occupation of her homeland. Her brief is to meld into the expat German community – a relatively easy assignment for an attractive 20-something woman guaranteed to catch the attention of any number of German intelligence officers.
Lisbon, she quickly finds, is a city in which watching one’s neighbours is an everyday obsession. People appear – and, all too often, disappear – suddenly and without explanation.
Everywhere she goes brunette Solange is being observed – so much so that with the help of a wig she disguises herself as blonde Veronica Sinclair on occasion in order to evade the bufos who constantly monitor her movements on behalf of various parties, some more or less friendly, some definitely not.
Under such close scrutiny, can she actually achieve anything worthwhile?

Deadly Waters

13/11/2020

 
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Dot Hutchison: Amazon Publishing $29.99
 
DEATH by alligator is rare in Florida – so rare that when a college student’s mauled remains are discovered decomposing in a lake in the centre of Gainesville, the news creates a tidal wave of panic on the local university campus.
At first it is assumed to have been a case of misadventure: the result of stumbling drunkenly off the footpath into dangerous territory at the height of the reptiles’ breeding season.
When a second young man dies in similar circumstances, however, and then two more, it starts to look like more than simple bad luck. Is a pattern emerging and, if so, what is the link between the victims?
Flatmates Rebecca, Ellie, Delia, Hafsah, Susanna, Keiko and Luz share accommodation but are decidedly individual in character.
Conscientious Rebecca is a journalism major, intent on making a career for herself reporting on legal issues.
Ellie, on the other hand, seems to be far more focused on self-destruction. Under-age drinking and brawling in bars are her two priorities – that and kneeing her male counterparts in the groin. Ellie has zero tolerance for the type of brazen, boorish misbehaviour that has left dozens – perhaps hundreds – of girls in Gainesville emotionally and physically scarred by sexual assault. The more Ellie stands up for the sisterhood, the more worried her friends become that one day soon she will destroy not only someone else’s life but also her own.
Detective Patrick Corby – ‘Det Corby’ to the group – is an ever-present knight-in-shining-armour – or shining police department badge in this case: a trustworthy law enforcer whose steady presence and gentlemanly manners ensure they have a safe escort home at night and a level head to turn to for support and advice as the tally of attacks by both male students and alligators continues to build.

The Survivors

6/11/2020

 
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Jane Harper: Macmillan Australia $32.99
 
KIERAN Elliott’s return to Evelyn Bay is confronting, challenging and confusing.
After years of living happily in Sydney – most recently with his girlfriend Mia and their baby daughter Audrey – Kieran is back in Tasmania to help his mother finish packing up a lifetime’s worth of everything that made the family’s house a home. Kieran’s father has advanced dementia and has been booked into a care facility, leaving Verity to prepare to face the future on her own.
Kieran’s reality is vastly different from that of his former schoolmates, almost all of whom have stayed in the area and feel absolutely no desire to leave. For most, little has changed in the time he’s spent away.
His best mate from childhood, Ash, is now dating their old friend Olivia, and the same neighbours stand chatting in the main street and cooing over “the Elliott boy’s” little Audrey.
The one exception is a new arrival, Bronte: a fine-art university student from Canberra who’s spending the holidays adding to her savings by working as a waitress in the bistro of the local pub. Bronte shares a cottage with Olivia – or, at least, she did.
Now her body has been found on the beach.
Even more distressingly, it appears she didn’t drown. Rather, the police are investigating an assumed homicide.
As their questioning escalates the case opens up wounds that are far from healed, causing Kieran, Ash and Olivia to revisit a hot and stormy summer an eternity ago that was both the best and the worst for all three then-teenagers and whose events have left permanent scars on the small community.
Regrets are replayed and recriminations swirl.
As more and more confidences are shattered, the group members starts to realise that their beliefs about the darkest period of their lives are not at all accurate.

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