By New Zealander J.P. Pomare, this was published in 2020. It's another novel that works superbly as an audio-book (it was first released in this format, actually, and came out in print only later). Aimee Horne does a great job with the narration in the Audible production.

Right at the beginning, there's a dramatic scene in which an unnamed woman pushes a man into the path of an oncoming train at Southbank station, Melbourne.

After that, we switch focus to psychologist Margot Scott. Shortly after taking on a new client, things start to go terribly wrong for her and her family. Their home and then her office are fire-bombed; their son, still at school but heavily involved in the world of online games, is viciously targeted by hostile players; Margot's other clients start to express fears that they're being stalked. Things only ramp up from there...

It offers everything you could really ask of a psychological thriller. It's fast-paced and suspenseful; it gives you plenty of clues, but also keeps you guessing; and there's a wicked little twist in the tail.

As always, I preferred the tense, looming psychological bits to the more action-packed scenes at the end.


Eureka Tower Skydeck, Southbank, Melbourne, 2011

Margot warns us that psychologists can't analyse themselves, and she certainly seems to miss lots of clues in the areas of self-sabotage and cognitive dissonance...

As this reviewer points out: "Margot is an unstable character, that much is easy to spot from the outset. She’s intelligent and determined, but she’s also easily deceived." Increasingly, we suspect that she's hiding something -- not giving us the entire truth about a particular episode in the past. (Punctuating the narrative are transcripts from a trial. The personal diary extracts that are read out give us ever more pause for thought...) Watching Margot in action, we often find ourselves thinking, "No, don't do that. Can't you see that's a bad idea?" But obviously, she can't...

True to genre, it's not a book that sets out to be profound. Nevertheless, as a story about the blurring of ethical boundaries, about the grey area between truth and falsehood, about the long reach of manipulation and vengeance, and about stopping at nothing to achieve your goal, it gives you plenty to think about.



I confess I had not heard of this Kiwi author.

Pomare now lives in Melbourne, but grew up on a farm near Rotorua: "I went to Kaharoa primary school where we were 'the Maori family.' It was mostly dairy farming kids, so I didn’t get much exposure to Maori culture as a boy. Then I went to Western Heights High School in Rotorua which is mostly Maori and I got much more exposure to te reo and Maori culture there."

He has some interesting things to say about the way support for Indigenous authors while they're producing "literary writing" tends to dwindle when they start to move towards "commercial writing". He continues: "There’s this idea that there’s a responsibility for Maori writers to write serious literature and be representative of the entire culture. People of colour and First Nation people, Indigenous people -- they’re not pushed towards writing commercial narratives, they’re always pushed towards writing auto-fiction of their memoirs or writing literary fiction. The problem is that their strengths may lie in writing commercial fiction -- crime fiction, sci-fi fantasy or whatever. Not only that, there’s just a much greater potential readership in those genres. So, as a vehicle for change and social commentary, crime novels are perfect because you’re reaching a larger audience... So I do want to encourage Maori and Pasifika writers to not feel as though they have to be an activist voice in a traditional sense -- they can be subversive in another genre. We want Maori and Pasifika writers to be on the world stage. We want them to escape what is typically a small audience." Sounds spot-on.

The bottom line is that I would certainly be up for more. And as Pomare somehow managed to produce five successful novels in the time between 2018 and 2022, there are plenty to choose from...