Vanda Symon, a Dunedin author, has written a series (now four books) about female detective Sam Shephard, set mostly in our city. Now she breaks new ground with The Faceless (Penguin, pbk): new characters, including a Fijian woman Billy, with the Auckland criminal "jungle" of Karangahape Rd in the forefront of the scenery. It is not a standard detective story, since we know the identity of the villain early on - more of a horror crime book.
Luckily for Billy, a homeless man watches out for the young hooker and goes on a crusade to find her. I couldn't feel much of the plot was compellingly credible. Bradley, a middle-class man with a young family and a domineering wife, has a bad day at the office, so cruises Karangahape Rd and picks up Billy.
From then on Bradley's mental state and behaviour deteriorate and disgust.
There is no relieving humour in the darkly embroidered tale that goes from teenage prostitution to kidnapping, torture and worse.
Characters are sketchy and language in dialogue throughout the novel unnecessarily crude (a black mark also given to the early books). I liked the snappy brevity of chapters, but they raced on without ever grabbing this reader. Chapter headings were the names of characters but this device of ever-changing viewpoints soon tired and confused, having the effect of a frenetic musical chairs.
The Sam books were more interesting because of local references and the perky nature of the policewoman.
This is the first book by Cleave I have read. It would have helped if I had known more history of his character Theodore Tate, a former detective introduced as leaving Christchurch Prison after six months' incarceration.
Tate is met there by a former police friend and asked a favour; he is immediately plunged into the job of looking for a missing girl.
Tate's lawyer has also lost his daughter and begs Tate for action. We soon meet Cooper Riley, a psychology professor who seems to have a split personality, a mix of hero and nasty villain. He veers off to the dark side after being kidnapped by Adrian Loaner, a former mental patient who wants to collect living trophies. There are also links to Melissa X, a serial killer who has been terrorising Christchurch for three years. The story is quite confusing until the book is more than half read, and by then it has become more and more distasteful with unrelieved violence, arson, sadism and murder.
Cleave's style of writing uses longer chapters with more detailed description than Symon. But this is spoilt by its maze of narrators and time shifts, making identities and events difficult to follow, particularly in the first half of the book.
Plot credibility is too stretched, with the violence, torture and evil, centred in a derelict mental hospital, becoming excessive.
• Geoff Adams is a former editor of the ODT.
