Slash by Gavin Strawhan

New Zealand crime author Gavin Strawhan returns to the dark world of ex-police officer Honey Chalmers in Slash, the follow up to his award winning debut The Call. Once again, Strawhan digs into the darker aspects of rural New Zealand – bikie gangs, drugs and alcoholism – but in this case also the despoilation of the landscape by logging companies. The title itself –  Slash  – refers to the loose offcuts and debris from logging operations.

When Slash opens Honey is working for a private detective agency trying to get evidence that a senior executive is having an affair with his secretary. She is still clearly traumatised by the events of The Call. When she finishes that job, Honey is talked into taking a private job for a young policeman and his father. They want to find out what happened to their brother and son Nick who was accused of a series of armed robberies and now is in the frame for the murder of a couple whose car he stole. That murder happened in the chaos of Cyclone Gabrielle, a real event that decimated the New Zealand coast. Nick asks Honey to review the police file and let them know what she thinks. But Honey soon finds that there is much more to this story than she first thought, and once she is on the case cannot let go until she finds the truth.

While the main narrative stays with Honey, Strawhan drops in other point of view chapters, both contemporaneous and flashback, to fill in some of the gaps. But it is Honey who is once again the centre of the action – damaged, impulsive, lacking empathy but a dogged investigator. While readers will stay with her and can understand the source of her trauma, most are likely to side with her best friend Michelle, who comes into the story and tries to soften Honey’s sharper edges.

As with The Call, Strawhan wants to use his story to shine a light on bigger social and cultural issues. In this case it is the rapaciousness of the timber industry which comes in and destroys landscapes, an impact that is exacerbated when events like Cyclone Gabrielle happen, and then restructures to avoid responsibility. But also, again, is the drug trade and impact of meth on people and communities. Only this time Stawhan is able to also look internationally when Honey goes to Fiji to track down a potential witness.

Strawhan says in his Acknowledgements that readers were ‘quite pushy’ about knowing what happened to Honey after The Call. This was because he established her so well in that book. In Slash he answers that question and delivers another dark, compulsive crime tale. But he also clearly sets Honey up to possibly return again (maybe just to stop readers asking).

Slash by Gavin Strawhan

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8.0/10