Thrilling on all counts

Three storytellers put families through the ringer.

- BY CRAIG SISTERSON

LUCKY THING by Tom Baragwanath (Text, $37.99) Paris-based Kiwi storyteller Tom Baragwanath ventures home again to the fertile fields of the Wairarapa with Lucky Thing. It’s the second mystery starring intrepid Masterton police station records clerk Lorraine Henry, an unlikely sleuth first introduced in his outstanding debut Paper Cage. Lorraine is still feeling the effects of that book, as are others, but her days are brightened by regular horse rides and niece Sheena expecting baby No 2. Then some visiting hikers stumble across local girl Jessica Mowbrie, badly beaten, in a remote patch of the Tararuas. She's lucky to be alive. How did she get way up there, and with whom? Will she wake from a coma? As under-resourced local cops struggle to make sense of things, whispers fuel long-simmering tensions between locals whose families have lived and worked the region for decades.