I cannot begin to tell you the sheer joy on opening the parcel containing this book. I read book 3 in this trilogy Guerilla Season ages ago and simply loved it. Went on a quest for book 2 - Inside Dope which I managed to get hold of, but the quest for book 1 - Old School Tie has never come up successful.
Until now (okay so it wasn't my quest - just my extreme good luck to be sent a review copy). Despite the pressure of all the other wonderful books on my MtTBR pile this set of three went straight to the top and I read Old School Tie in two sittings. Now well into Inside Dope and intend to finish all 3 books by the end of the weekend.
Did I mention I loved these books. But more on them when I do a VERY timely full review after I've finished Guerilla Season.
In the meantime - if you're looking for something that's fun, very tongue in cheek, hilarious at points, a bit on the violent side in places but not overly so, but just wonderful, not exactly a police procedural / not exactly an accidental detective style book - well there are shops that sell books and The Ihaka Trilogy should be in them as of now!
From the Blurb:
Old School Tie - Something sinister is happening in the City of Sails. A private eye with a briefcase full of scandalous photos is blown away. A businessman falls from the Harbour Bridge leaving a clue to the mysterious death of a teenage girl....
Inside Dope - The race to find the lost treasure of the Mr Asia syndicate has attracted an impressive field: there's a disgraced ex-cop fresh out of a Bangkok jail, the Auckland underworld's drug kingpin, a rogue DEA man, an alluring CIA assassin, and a bunch of wild card entries including Tito Ihaka.
Guerilla Season - New Zealand is in the grip of urban terrorism. The shadowy Aotearoa People's Army is on the rampage leaving a trail of messy corpses. The counter-terrorism experts think they're on top of it, but Tito Ihaka reckons they couldn't catch a terrorist if someone's life depended on it.
Relentlessly tough yet hilarious, ingeniously plotted and full of killer one-liners, and featuring a rogue's gallery of weird and wild characters, THE IHAKA TRILOGY brings together the three novels that put New Zealand crime writing on the map.