Detective Constable Craig Watson a very young cop, arrives in Gloster having been exiled from Sydney. The area is being deluged by rain and it’s clear the town is going to flood very soon. A distraught mother arrives at the police station to report her teenage daughter missing. So begins the spiderweb of deceit, corruption and crime. The waters rise around the town and DC Watson and his two female colleagues are trapped in Gloster. They are not alone.

The core crime story in Headland is actually quite enjoyable with a good plot however it is almost as if the author wrote two overlapping books and they don’t mesh. Tthe significant sections of erotica feel out of place. They give insight as to why DC Watson abuses drugs and alcohol almost hourly but don’t enhance the plot . This combined with child pornography and underage sex as part of the main story just tip the story into an uncomfortable space.

If the story were more accurately portrayed in the book as it was on the blurb on the back of the book, this would have been a totally different read. The main plot of this book could have stood up well alone but I felt the author was overly ambitious with too many ideas and hooks which left found me questioning the believability of parts of the story throughout.

Reviewed by Nicola Skinstad

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Born in Sydney, John moved to Mid North Coast of New South Wales with his wife and three children in 2012. He has a broad range of life experience having spent time in the Australian Army, worked fishing trawlers out of Darwin, worked bars and doors in pubs and clubs all over Australia, and somehow ended up with an Economics Degree. He started writing in 2015 and has a fascination with the darker aspects of the human condition; the addicted, the malevolent, the scarred. He cheers for the outsider, the slacker, the contrarian, the non-conformist.

When he is not writing or pondering the darkness within men’s souls he works part-time in financial services.