Outback: The Desmond Bagley Centenary Thriller (Bill Kemp Book Two) by Michael Davies

 

Outback: The Desmond Bagley Centenary Thriller (Bill Kemp Book Two) by Michael Davies.

Published 11th May 2023 by Collins Crime Club.

From the cover of the book:

IF YOUR ENEMIES DON’T KILL YOU
THE TERRITORY WILL

Insurance investigator Bill Kemp had never wanted to trek deep into Australia’s remote interior. But after his clients Sophie and Adam Church inherit an abandoned opal mine, they become the target of threatening letters, urging Sophie to abandon the inheritance claim … or pay the price.

Though the mine appears to be worthless, someone is clearly desperate to stop them from discovering more – about the treasure that might be hidden within and the circumstances that led to Sophie inheriting it in the first place. Was her uncle’s death truly self-inflicted or are there nefarious forces at play? After Sophie narrowly escapes an attempt on her life, the group are left with no choice but to head out into the blistering desert in search of answers.

How far will their unknown enemy go to stop them from uncovering the explosive, long-lost secret of the Deakins family mine? And even if the group can uncover the truth, will they make it out of that vast and hostile wilderness alive?

Outback celebrates the centenary of bestselling thriller writer Desmond Bagley with this new adventure featuring his protagonist Bill Kemp, described by Jeffrey Deaver as ‘part James Bond, part Philip Marlowe, and all hero’. Michael Davies, who completed Bagley’s first Kemp novel Domino Island for publication nearly forty years after the author’s death, now weaves an original tale of danger and death under the Australian sun.

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Insurance investigator Bill Kemp is at a bit of a loose end, and makes a long overdue trip to visit his old Army friend, lawyer Kenny Hines, for an Australian Christmas. Bill is given a warm welcome by Kenny and his wife Dolly. He is enthralled by the views from their house across Sydney Bay, especially of the newly built Sydney Opera House, but it is one of Kenny's legal cases that really piques his interest.

Newlyweds, Sophie and Adam Church have come out to Sydney to meet Kenny, in order to find out about an unexpected inheritance from Sophie's uncle, George Deakins - an uncle Sophie did not even know she had. The details are hazy, but it seems Sophie is now the owner of a remote farm and opal mine in the Outback, at a place so off-the-beaten-track that even the nearest town of Oodnadatta is several hours' drive away. It all comes as a bit of a shock to orphaned Sophie, to say the least.

While Sophie is trying to get her head around her potential windfall, things start to get ugly. Someone is determined that she will never get her hands on her inheritance, and when veiled threats spill over into shocking violence, the only answer is for Sophie and Adam head out to the Deakins property under the care of Bill Kemp to get to the bottom of the mystery.

Outback continues the story of insurance investigator Bill Kemp that began in Domino Island - a novel completed by Michael Davies from an unfinished manuscript left behind by best-selling, thriller writer Desmond Bagley, after his death in 1983. I have not read Domino Island, but this all new adventure can be easily read as a stand-alone, as Davies helpfully fills in just enough of the backstory for you to get a handle on Kemp's character right from the kick-off.

This novel begins very much in slow-burn country, with a cosy reunion between old friends, at a time when Kemp is assessing where life takes him next. His skills are a perfect match for a little bit of digging into the mystery around George's Deakins' surprise legacy, and as it happens, they are very much needed when events take a menacing turn and the Outback seems an unlikely respite from danger on the streets of Sydney.

The story really takes off once the road trip gets underway, with Kemp at the helm, attempting to keep Sophie and her apparently feckless new husband Adam safe from the perils of the Outback - and the hostile environment is soon made even more dangerous by less than welcoming locals, and the appearance of a group of mercenaries that mean business. The pace heats up nicely in line with the rising temperatures of the sun-baked wilderness, and there is plenty of action and intrigue to keep you on the edge of your seat, with a delicious National Treasure-esque thread as our little team of adventurers put the pieces of the puzzle together. There are some nicely contrived twists, and Davies does a splendid job of bringing the Outback alive. 

I am a sucker for an Outback tale, and although this does lack the intensity, emotional kick, and jaw-dropping reveals of the more seasoned Australian authors that have made this genre their own, such as Chris Hammer and Jane Harper, its old school thrills and spills are enormous fun. This has such a nostalgic air, and it really echoes the feel of a classic adventure in the style of Desmond Bagley and co - which I take my hat off to Davies for doing so well. As a first, and very entertaining, solo foray into the genre, this book hints at great things on the horizon, and I look forward to what comes next from Michael Davies.

Outback is available to buy now in hardcover, ebook and audio formats.

Thank you to Collins Crime Club for sending me an ecopy of this book in return for an honest review, and to Random Things Tours for inviting me to be part of this blog tour.

About the author:

After abandoning a promising career editing newspapers, Michael Davies moved into fiction. Some would say that's not much of a leap. Since then, his writing has appeared on stage, screen, radio, the printed page and online.

His debut play, Rasputin’s Mother, won a national playwriting competition and subsequent work includes scripts, novels, radio plays and short stories. He wrote the book and lyrics for Tess – The Musical, an adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s classic novel Tess of the d’Urbervilles, and completed for publication the posthumous release of Desmond Bagley's 'lost' novel Domino Island, published by HarperCollins in May 2019. Michael's original sequel, Outback, is released into the wild in May 2023.

Desmond Bagley was born in 1923 in Kendal and brought up in Blackpool, beginning his working life, aged 14, in the printing industry. He wrote 16 novels, becoming one of the world's top-selling authors, with his books translated into more than 30 languages. He died in 1983.