Cleave, P. Cemetery Lake. Auckland: Black Swan, 2008
Cleave is probably New Zealand’s most internationally published and read crime writer of the twenty first century. Although in his novels he calls Christchurch a “broken city” it is because of the crime he describes as taking place there not because of the earthquakes. His first seven novels take place over the period of one year and it would have been impossible to incorporate the earthquake into the plots even if he had wanted to, which he did not as he had no wish “to use the earthquake to entertain”.Trust No-one, which was the 2016 Ngaio Marsh award winner, is his most complex and ultimately satisfying novel to date.
