Published 17th May 2023 by Embla Books.
From the cover of the book:
In a beach paradise, an unspeakable crime is committed. The only witness lies in a coma, fighting for her life...Australia's Gold Coast: On a stunningly beautiful stretch of coastline, a young mother is brutally murdered and her daughter, Gabby, is left in a coma, with her life hanging in the balance.
DS Lucas Walker has just arrived in Surfer's Paradise for some much-needed recovery after injuries sustained in his last investigation. But he is soon pulled into the dark twists and turns of this home invasion gone wrong, vowing to find the men responsible.
As Walker digs deeper into the dark underbelly of this shimmering city by the ocean, a case from his own past resurfaces, with deadly consequences.
And as eight-year-old Gabby, the sole witness to her mother's murder, wakes in her hospital bed, Walker is in a race against time to stop those responsible before they return to silence her forever...
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DS Lucas Walker, recovering from injuries sustained in a previous case that went awry, is seconded to the Gold Coast while his superiors consider his future. All in all, the beautiful surroundings of Surfer's Paradise offer a pretty nice spot for Walker to recover, and he is looking forward to some rest, even if his career prospects are not looking too good.
Unfortunately, the quiet time Walker envisaged is soon knocked on the head when he is asked to investigate a murder linked to his own past with a drug trafficking biker gang - one which brings him the kind of attention that is very bad for his health. In parallel, Walker is compelled to begin looking into the horrific case of a home invasion in one of the swanky parts of town, in which a young mother was brutally murdered and her daughter attacked. Something about this case, and the claims of the husband that his family are the victims of a revenge plot, does not quite add up - he suspects that the daughter may be the clue to solving this crime, and he is determined to protect her from harm.
Paradise, is a slow-burn police procedural set in an affluent part of Australia, with twisting plot lines around drugs, corruption, and domestic disturbance. It did take me a little while to get into the story, as there are a lot of references to Walker's backstory, connected to a drugs case that went horribly wrong, which I have not read about. The legacy of this case has a big influence on the drug dealing storyline here, which makes it a little tricky to read as a standalone, so I recommend reading the first book, Outback, before starting this one, if you can. However, the home invasion case is thoroughly compelling, pulling you right in from the shocking prologue.
Wolf packs a lot into this story, and Walker is kept very busy tracking down leads to get the bigger picture in both cases, with some inspirational help from his former colleague Barbara in Berlin. While the Gold Coast police seem a little slow on the uptake, Walker has intelligence and grit that make him very likeable, and I really enjoyed the back and forth between Walker and Barbara. There is lovely use of forensics and getting into the nitty gritty of less obvious aspects of the cases too. At times, the story does feel like it could do with a bit of a nip and tuck for the sake of a tauter plot, but the suspense ramps up nonetheless, and there are thrills and spills galore as the reveals drop and the violence explodes.
There is plenty of mystery, and nice character development across the board, with a central core that hooks you into the next book in the series - which intrigues me, as it promises a lot more of Barbara! Highly recommended if you like your police procedurals on the complex, multi-stranded side, especially if you are a fan of Australian crime.
Paradise is available to buy now in paperback, ebook and audio formats.
Thank you to Embla for sending me an ecooy of this book in return for an honest review and to Compulsive Readers Tours fir inviting me to be part of this blog tour.
About the author:
She grew up in outback Australia, in a mining town called Mount Isa in far north-west Queensland – eagle eyed readers will have spotted a small reference to it in her first book, OUTBACK.
Patricia loves the rugged beauty, indigo sky and wide horizons of the outback, but left Australia after university to travel the world and became a journalist. She lives in Berlin, Germany, but the outback always calls her home.
In 2019, just before the covid pandemic locked us all in, Patricia spent two months in northwest Queensland, taking a four-week road trip. As she drove and spent nights and days surrounded by the beauty and rugged harshness of the outback, DI Lucas Walker and his stories came to be.
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