Books
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Don't Kiss the Gecko
Two women. Two secret lives. Two brutal attacks connect them.
Rebecca Cashmore was a brilliant barrister and a fearless TV broadcaster until a scandal exposed her private life, and almost cost her freedom. Now, a chance encounter with a woman living just as dangerously, pulls her into something far darker.
Eloise Grainger is a free spirit, entangled with Auckland’s wealthy businessmen, when obsession turns lethal. Rebecca becomes the prime suspect when police discover Eloise clinging to life in a riverside sanctuary.
To save herself, Rebecca must unravel Eloise’s past, which involves hidden relationships, a powerful family and a missing diary capable of destroying reputations.
Even worse, the man who could help Rebecca is DS Colum Blainey – the detective who charged her with murder.
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No Repeats
A city can hold a million secrets. Rebecca must hide one.
Lawyer and media star Rebecca Cashmore has what most people only dream of: wealth, glamour, influence – and a secret life she’s protected for more than a decade.
Rebecca has one rule in that sensually intense and private world: no second meetings. No repeats.
Until expat banker, André Mitchell won’t accept rejection. His obsession turns to stalking, threatening to expose the secret that could destroy everything Rebecca has worked for.
With her career, reputation and freedom at stake, Rebecca faces a terrifying reality: how far will she go to protect her perfect life?
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Dead on Target
The past was meant to stay buried.
But someone is digging it up – one body at a time.Six years ago, the Melbourne Spotlight current affairs team covered a shocking crime spree – a series of brutal, seemingly random attacks. As the body count rose, the police and journalists worked tirelessly to unmask the perpetrator.
When the killer was finally stopped, everyone assumed the violence was over.
They were wrong.
Now, an arson attack – with a chilling message – and a vicious assault in Apollo Bay on the Great Ocean Road, drags the story dubbed ‘the Tugga’s Mob saga’ back into the news.
It becomes clear: someone new is out for vengeance. And they won’t stop until justice – twisted or true – is served.
The mystery goes international when the lone survivor of the original crimes flees to the UK, desperate to outrun a past that won’t let go, and the roving Melbourne Spotlight crew chase new leads in London and on the Oxford canals.
But they’re not alone.
Because the killer is already there. Waiting.
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Kaikōura Rendezvous
Two Melbourne television colleagues are on a well-earned holiday, travelling New Zealand in a motorhome. Will they survive a monster storm and a shootout?
Kim Prescott survived a killer’s bullet in Melbourne but can’t shake the PTSD. For Jo Trescowthick, the trip is a chance to confront family demons.The third book in the Melbourne Spotlight series finds Kim and Jo on a road trip from Auckland in the North Island to the tourist mecca of Queenstown in the deep south: Rotorua mud pools, Kaikōura whale watching, the stunning Marlborough Sounds.
They won’t make it.
Debt-ridden South Island, fisherman and ex-con Gordie Tulloch, is offered the deal of a lifetime. Is it legal? He doesn’t care. All he has to do is survive the storm approaching the Shaky Isles. But Gordie’s every move is under scrutiny by a man whose own secrets are about to spill into public view.
And then of course Mother Nature has her own agenda. Cyclone Gita is on a serpentine path of destruction through the tropics that will see her smash into New Zealand.
The cyclone, the motorhome, the fisherman and the watcher all face an unexpected rendezvous in Kaikōura.
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Boxed
Three desperate women, their fates unwittingly aligned by a killer obsessed with retribution.
One is entwined by a selfish lover.
Her colleague charges into trouble to end animal cruelty.
The third scratches a record of captivity into a cellar wall.
Liberty is at stake for two, a bullet awaits the third.
Melbourne Spotlight journalist Kim Prescott is promoted to the TV reporting staff after the program’s exposé of the Tugga’s Mob murders. It was a ratings bonanza; the producers are overwhelmed with story ideas.
A tip-off suggests live-baiting in greyhound racing still flourishes, despite a national scandal which almost closed the industry. Images of possums and rabbits torn apart by frenzied dogs, all in the pursuit of money, are still fresh in the national psyche.
The trail leads Kim and her camera crew to the gold-mining ghost town of Steiglitz. They find horrific scenes at a trainer’s starting boxes – but not what they expect.
Production assistant Jo Trescowthick is the pawn of an activist with a vendetta. Where does her loyalty lie – the current affairs team or the lover?
The captive plots an escape as the media sleuths close in on the killer. Who ends up in the sights of the 9mm pistol?
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Tugga's Mob
What happens on tour stays on tour was the mantra for southern hemisphere backpackers who swarmed Europe in the 1980s. Foreign countries had to be explored and devoured in every way possible.
Waikato-born Judy Williams worked hard for her big OE: London, Paris, Rome, Gallipoli; and the adventures were dutifully recorded in her diary.
A diary that also recorded how the obsessive Tugga Tancred and his Kiwi mates turned Judy’s trip of a lifetime into a nightmare of sly sexual harassment. Their bad behaviour went unnoticed, or was ignored by fellow passengers like Australian Andrew Hackett who chose to party hard with Tugga’s Mob. After all, they were in Europe for a good time, not a long time.
And what a time it was, until Tugga’s fixation ultimately led to murder; a crime that went unpunished for 30 years.
But few things remain hidden forever.
The rediscovery of Judy’s hand-written diary sparks a trail of revenge that the original perpetrators never see coming.
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Dark Deeds Down Under 2 (anthology)
A Perfect Showcase of Antipodean Crime Writing
I’m thrilled to be included in Dark Deeds Down Under 2, the latest anthology from Clan Destine Press featuring Australian and New Zealand crime and mystery writers.
Spend time with 22 Aussie and Kiwi authors and our characters. You will find some of your favourite heroes and meet new villains – all while you travel the urban and rural landscapes of two stunning countries.
My Melbourne Spotlight, Mystery Series characters, are up to their usual tricks in The Cadaver Crew. They have been invited to record a television story at a Murder Mystery Weekend in Queenscliff.
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Peace Stick
What can you do when the Cold War goes from a simmer to boiling? In East Germany, the kinder create a symbol of hope to halt the nuclear missiles.
Erfurt, October 1962. Teenager Ingrid Richter's life involves adventures with the Pioneers, walks in the Steigerwald, the Martini festival in the medieval Altstadt. In a few weeks, she will be gliding across the skating rink with dreams of representing East Germany at the Olympics.
Ingrid’s schoolteacher shatters that peaceful existence.
“We are on the brink of World War III.”
The Soviet Union is secretly building missile sites in Cuba – minutes from the United States. Who will launch the first nuclear missile – Nikita Khrushchev or John Kennedy?
The political folly of angry men threatens Ingrid’s existence. Didn’t they learn any lessons from two world wars and the first atomic bomb? She understands there are no winners in a thermonuclear war.
Emotions sway from despair to hopes of survival. Ingrid wants a future: a career, her own family, a long life.
She enlists the help of her friend, Sylvie Witzenhause. They seek a lucky charm to protect themselves and the world – a peace stick.
Peace Stick was inspired by a real person dealing with a nuclear crisis that resonates to the present day.
“An enjoyable thriller entwined with the classic antipodean OE. Well-written with its mix of prose, diary entries, and news commentary.”
“With … penetrating insights into the world of newsgathering, Tugga’s mob is the story of a forgotten crime that refuses to stay buried.”
“What hooked me was the involvement of a current affairs television program whose producers, bit by bit, uncovered a plot – or plots. As I read, I convinced myself that I knew what was coming, but time and time again the story twisted and turned. At about the halfway mark, I was amazed to find a chill run through my body when another subtle twist revealed itself. I thoroughly enjoyed Steve’s work.”
“The author’s background of tour guide and TV journalism has been used as the backdrop to the plot - which begins with a diary entry from Judy Williams, off on her big OE in 1986. Johnson cleverly swings back and forth between diary entries, the TV show and its investigators, people on the ground involved in various deaths and as the investigators struggle to make sense of death after death, so too does the reader. Best of all - the ending (while not a complete surprise in one way) - is very apt.”
“It’s a delight to read books set in places I know well … Stephen Johnson’s novel, Tugga’s Mob, is bringing the Great Ocean Road to life again for me, and it’s giving me a vast amount of pleasure to travel to places that were a part of my childhood and youth. I ordered Tugga’s Mob from Clandestine Press and can thoroughly recommend it.”