Wow! What a ride The Maori Detective is! From the prologue to the final paragraph, this is one action-packed book. From gangs to blackmail and extortion to a vast foreign government conspiracy, the reader is kept on their toes.

Our protagonist, Carlos Wallace, is escaping his past in Australia and falls into a job as a Private Detective in Christchurch, New Zealand, a city recently ravaged by a devastating series of earthquakes. His boss is an absentee mystery man and his new assistant is a woman also running from her own past.

To some degree, I had to suspend some belief. The government conspiracy, subterfuge, and rampant murder just don’t mesh with “my” New Zealand. Mossad, the French, covert operations? Yes, it’s kind of happened before, but still ... Put that to the side and The Maori Detective is an intense read with plenty of thrills and spills. At times, there’s almost a little bit too much going on, and if I had trouble with anything, it was keeping up with which sub-plot we were currently tracking and I found myself having to skip back a little just to refresh my memory.

Now, here’s what I loved most about The Maori Detective - Christchurch, New Zealand. I spent a lot of time in and around Christchurch, even lived there for a couple of years. Our former home is now in the red zone, abandoned and dilapidated. I remember waking up the day of the earthquake, in my home in Vegas, and hearing the words “New Zealand” on national news. My heart dropped as I knew, without knowing what exactly had happened, it was going to bad. And as I watched the news reports and saw the pictures, talked to friends and family that still lived there, and waited 3 days for news of a missing Great Aunt, my heart broke. Those feelings came back upon reading Mr. Crossman’s vivid descriptions of the devastation in the days following, and even months later. Also, being part Maori, I loved the inclusion of Maori culture, customs, myths, and legends. Mr. Crossman does a great job of tying it in throughout the story, and while it may be confusing for non-New Zealanders, those interested in learning about other cultures will love it as much as I did.

All in all, The Maori Detective was tied up pretty nicely and I would definitely recommend it to anyone interested not just in the genre, but in New Zealand and Maori culture.