One of the most talented and exciting fresh voices to emerge in Australasian fiction in recent years, award-winning Melbourne-based Maori storyteller J P Pomare continues to set the bar high with his latest standalone psychological thriller.

Lina and Cain are a young married couple in Auckland struggling as they deal with past traumas and present secrets. A former SAS soldier, Cain has gone from being elite to feeling lost as a personal trainer with a battered body who can’t get his business going. He turned to gambling to recapture the risk he misses. Lina is a paramedic who has her own secrets. When Cain suggests they rent out Lina’s childhood home on Lake Tarawera to short-stay tourists, she agrees. The extra money coming in could help. What could go wrong? As it turns out, a lot. Strange things, then deadly things.

Pomare conjures a deliciously tense tale that entwines ‘domestic noir’ with explorations of issues including surveillance, technology, voyeurism, and more. Expectations are set, twisted and upturned. This is a rip-snorting read that burbles along on fine prose, from a novelist who while still early in his career has already stamped his mark as a masterful storyteller. An excellent read from a must-read author.

Reveiwed by Craig Sisterson