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  • North & South

    NEW ZEALAND BOOKS

    Aug 11, 2019 4 minutes
    edited by PAUL LITTLE

    Whatever It Takes

    Paul Cleave (Upstart Press, $38)

    Christchurch-based Paul Cleave has left our shores, fictionally at least, to set his latest crime thriller in small-town USA. There’s fun to be had trying to catch him out on detail as he conjures up leafy but murky Acacia Pines. I’m pretty sure Americans say “tests”, not “exams”, but apart from that I’ll be goldarn hornswoggled – as I believe the phrase has it – if I can detect a false note.

    Our protagonist, Noah Harper (the name presumably a nod to Ross Macdonald’s fictional detective) gets the wrong man but the right result in the book’s opening sequence, which centres on the case of abducted seven-year-old

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