Author(s): Dinuka McKenzie

Crime

'Dinuka McKenzie has talent to burn'
— Dervla McTiernan

A parent's worst nightmare. A case that's too close to home. The tense, must-read new Detective Kate Miles novel from the award-winning author of The Torrent.

'I was in the shower. I left Sienna in her bassinet ...When I got out ... She was gone.'

Detective Sergeant Kate Miles is back from maternity leave and struggling on multiple fronts - the pressures of a second child, financial strain from her husband losing his job, and a corruption scandal that may involve her father. When an infant goes missing, Kate finds herself fronting a high-profile and emotionally fraught case. Was baby Sienna removed from her bassinet by an unknown abductor or is the answer much closer to home?

Amidst a frenzied media demanding answers, and a station chief looking for any reason to remove her from the investigation, Kate is pushed to her limits, pulled between the competing demands of the family at the centre of the case and her own spiralling personal life.

Praise for The Torrent:

'Such a good read' — Val McDermid

'Vivid, pacy and refreshingly original. A gripping whodunnit with heart.' — Emma Viskic

'Brings a fresh perspective to the crime genre ... This gripping debut will keep you turning the pages late into the night.' — Petronella McGovern

'A realistic, character-driven policier that holds a mirror to contemporary tensions in rural Australian life and builds expertly from slow burn to adrenaline-fuelled climax' — The Age

CONSTANT READER STAFF REVIEW: SIMON

The disappearance of an infant drives Dinuka McKenzie’s outstanding sophomore novel Taken, which sees the return of Detective Sergeant Kate Miles, back from maternity leave and the tumultuous events of The Torrent.

McKenzie strikes me as an unrepentant classicist when it comes to crime fiction, and here, once again, she keeps the traditional police procedural alive and well, combining nuanced character development with methodical detective work.

It’s decidedly unsexy, I realise, to proclaim McKenzie’s work as unpretentious in a world where every book needs a zingy superlative. But it is precisely this unpretentiousness that makes her mysteries so enthralling. McKenzie follows a traditional model that has proven popular time and time again: there is a crime to be solved, and McKenzie’s endearingly flawed detective is charged with leading readers to the case’s conclusion.

Nothing high-concept — just a well-spun tale of abduction and murder, told with McKenzie’s clean, clear prose. I can’t wait for more.