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I'm nothing if not quick on the uptake these days, and it's finally dawned on me that if I spend less time waffling on in blog posts, I can actually get some reading done!  Who would have bloody thought it....

Anyway, Dining with Devils is the latest book from Canadian author Gordon Aalborg who has spent a lot of time in Tasmania.  I'm reading this in PDF format so I'm not going to plow through it as quickly as I'd like as there's just no comfortable way to lie in bed with a laptop - but still, I'm a reasonable way in so far and so far it's feeling very authentic.

From the Blurb:

On a remote Tasmanian grazing property, a gundog judge is murdered—at first glance by a blind man shooting blanks at a dead pigeon—in an incident seen but not understood by Tasmania Police Sgt. Charlie Banes and his close friend, visiting Canadian author Teague Kendall.

Meanwhile, Kendall’s almost-lover Kirsten Knelsen, an ardent caving enthusiast, is kidnapped elsewhere in Tasmania, with nothing to even suggest the two incidents might be related. Then Kendall himself goes missing.

It takes all of Charlie’s “country cop” skills to discover the links, which involve Kendall’s vengeful Tasmanian ex-wife, a psychotic, American-hating ex-Viet Nam sniper, and a killer believed to have been dead for more than a year!

The killer everyone thinks perished in a Canadian cave is seeking revenge on Kirsten, the woman who trapped him there and left him to die. This time—as before—he intends to have Kirsten for dinner, and when Kendall’s ex-wife contributes Kendall to the menu, the killer fairly drools with anticipation.

Charlie’s rush to save his friends and end the killing spree is a race against time through the eucalypt forests of Tasmania’s east-coast highlands. Aided by a cranky old bushman and his even-crankier Jack Russell terrier, Charlie also has help from the ubiquitous Tasmanian Devils

Opening Lines:

At first, everyone thought the retrieving trial judge had been killed by a blind man shooting blanks at a dead pigeon. With typical Tasmanian logic and the blinkered focus of hardened gundog trial fanatics, they ignored the fact that the judge had been standing behind the blind man when the gun went off and the blanks in the blind man’s shotgun were loaded only with primers, and therefore harmless.

BOOK DETAILS
BOOK INFORMATION
ISBN
978-1-59414-749-4
Year of Publication
BLURB

On a remote Tasmanian grazing property, a gundog judge is murdered—at first glance by a blind man shooting blanks at a dead pigeon—in an incident seen but not understood by Tasmania Police Sgt. Charlie Banes and his close friend, visiting Canadian author Teague Kendall.

Meanwhile, Kendall’s almost-lover Kirsten Knelsen, an ardent caving enthusiast, is kidnapped elsewhere in Tasmania, with nothing to even suggest the two incidents might be related. Then Kendall himself goes missing.

It takes all of Charlie’s “country cop” skills to discover the links, which involve Kendall’s vengeful Tasmanian ex-wife, a psychotic, American-hating ex-Viet Nam sniper, and a killer believed to have been dead for more than a year!

The killer everyone thinks perished in a Canadian cave is seeking revenge on Kirsten, the woman who trapped him there and left him to die. This time—as before—he intends to have Kirsten for dinner, and when Kendall’s ex-wife contributes Kendall to the menu, the killer fairly drools with anticipation.

Charlie’s rush to save his friends and end the killing spree is a race against time through the eucalypt forests of Tasmania’s east-coast highlands. Aided by a cranky old bushman and his even-crankier Jack Russell terrier, Charlie also has help from the ubiquitous Tasmanian Devils … world-class scavengers with their own ideas about appropriate table manners.  

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Submitted by Karen on Tue, 12/05/2009 - 07:15 pm