I started reading this last night. It was a coolish night after some horrible ones and I was looking forward to an early night and a good long sleep. Until I started BLOOD MOON. I was awake way later than I wanted to be and didn't mind in the slightest.
There's a bit of an edge to this latest offering - I think it would be fair to say that there are some "issues" forefront in the author's mind - to do with what's happening to the semi-rural area of the Peninsula, along with one or two politicians and the general ways of the world.
From the Blurb:
When hordes of eighteen-year-olds descend on the Peninsula to celebrate the end of exams, the overstretched police of Waterloo know what to expect.
Opening Lines:
On a Tuesday morning in mid-November, late spring, the air outside the bedroom window warm and pollinated, Adrian Wishart watched his wife urinate. He happened to be sitting on the end of the bed, dressed, comb tracks in his hair, tying his shoelaces. She was in the ensuite bathroom, perched naked on the loo, wearing the long-distance stare that took her so far away from him. She didn't know she was being observed. She tore off several metres of toilet paper, patted herself dry, and as the water flushed it all away he came to the doorway and said constrictedly, 'We're not made of money.'
When hordes of eighteen-year-olds descend on the Peninsula to celebrate the end of exams, the overstretched police of Waterloo know what to expect. Party drugs, public drunkeness; maybe even drink spiking and sexual assault. What they don't count on is a brutal bashing that turns political. The victim is connected. And for Detective Inspector Hal Challis, newly embarked on a relationship with his sergeant, Ellen Destry, this is not the best time to have the brass on his back. Especially when a bludgeoned corpse is found outside town and it becomes clear something much darker than adolescent craziness is going down.