True Deception
by Loren Teague
Robert Hale HK$328
New Zealand police officer Mike McKenna is standing in for a colleague on what should be his day off, whiling away time in his patrol car on the west coast state highway when Kelly Anderson drives into his life at high speed on a Tiger Triumph motorcycle.
McKenna gives chase and eventually catches up with her, only to be offered a bribe to let her go - and that's enough to earn Anderson, a Scot, a night in the clink at nearby Greymouth police station. It is there that we learn there is more to the looker in leathers than meets the eye. She says she is a tourist but her Interpol record says otherwise.
She has a record for drug dealing and is known to be associated with Hong Kong triads. By a quirk of fate Anderson had befriended McKenna's cousin and her husband in Hong Kong and was on her way to stay with them when he arrested her. With their paths crossing socially and McKenna, who is chasing a career in the drug division of the Criminal Investigation Branch, suspicious of the purpose of Anderson's trip to New Zealand, their relationship becomes increasingly complicated.
As we - and McKenna - learn more about Anderson's involvement with triad boss Tino Chang it becomes clear it can be no accident that her visit coincides with a planned shipment of the drug methamphetamine, handled by a local triad chapter and a Colombian drugs cartel eager to extend its influence.