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Dead Heat

by Caroline Carver

Caroline Carver writes a fast-paced, exciting murder mystery – something you might expect from a woman who drives like a maniac in car rallies. What you might not expect is that Ms. Carver is also an excellent writer who grabs your attention right away and never lets go until the very last page of whatever book you're reading. This is especially true of Dead Heat. The hot, humid atmosphere portrayed in much of the novel – along with the bugs, crocodiles and other unpleasant denizens of the area – jumps right off the pages to engulf you in sweaty misery. If, like me, you're big on snow and the cooler side of life (I live in Vermont), it says a great deal about Caroline Carver's writing that I literally couldn't put the book down until the final chapter was finished, even though I loathed the setting!

Georgia Parish is the protagonist of Dead Heat. She's only come back to her hometown of Nulgarra in the north of Queensland for the funeral of her grandfather. Impatient to reach the little airport and return to her job as a book rep near Sydney, she manages to ford a storm-swollen stream in time to see another vehicle fail in the attempt. She rescues the two inhabitants, Lee Denham and Suzie Wilson, and finds they're also going to the airport. Luckily for Georgia, the other passenger, Ronnie Chen, hasn't shown up, so she can have his seat in the tiny plane.

Lee is evidently another pilot. When the plane unexpectedly runs out of fuel, he takes over and helps Bri, the pilot, to crash land. Bri manages a Mayday call on his radio, but the plane is totally destroyed and everyone is wounded. Unfortunately, Suzie dies In Georgia's arms. Just before she dies, Suzie makes Georgia promise to give her fanny-pack to Suzie's brother. Then all are rescued by helicopter, including the dead girl, and flown back to a hospital in Nulgarra, where those still alive are treated. There Bri dies shortly after telling Georgia his plane was sabotaged.

India Kane, a journalist, visits Georgia in the hospital. India tells her Ronnie Chen's body washed up on a beach with a bullet hole in the back of his head. Then when Georgia leaves the hospital to stay with an older female, Mrs. Scutchings, to recuperate, a Chinese man enters the house in the dead of night in a foiled attempt to steal Suzie's fanny-pack. The police arrive, and it's a Sergeant Riggs with his sidekick. Sergeant Riggs, aside from ogling Georgia's breasts, seems convinced that she knows where Lee has disappeared to – which she doesn't. Then a man – also a cop – comes along to take over, and Georgia recognizes him at once. Daniel Carter was a boy with whom she attended school there in Nulgarra – and on whom she had a teenage crush.

When Georgia opens Suzie's fanny-pack to see what anyone could be after, she discovers a floppy disk – but its contents are indecipherable. Then Georgia is kidnapped and savagely beaten by her Chinese captors. They're after Lee, and like the cop Riggs, refuse to believe she doesn't know where he is. They have also captured her mother, an inoffensive woman who reads tarot cards and once lived in a commune. The Chinese men use a baseball bat on her mother and cut off a joint of Georgia's ring finger with a pair of pruning shears. At last they throw her out with the threat that if she doesn't come up with Lee's address in seven days they will also chop off all her mother's fingers and toes, then kill her.

Georgia is caught between the two men she's attracted to. On one hand, Daniel Carter, a cop who is out to get Lee Denham, and who tells Georgia Lee has done some reprehensible things. On the other hand, it was Lee who rescued Georgia from the burning plane, and Lee who has vowed to find and rescue Georgia's mother from the Chinese.

The story accelerates, involving a special antibiotic Suzie had discovered, an escape with Daniel and Georgia using Lee's huge boat (only to
have it explode under them with Georgia subsequently adrift in an angry sea alone), then the harrowing rescue of Georgia's mother from the vicious Chinese, and a frightening escape with one of her two attractive men becoming dinner for a huge crocodile.

Dead Heat is literally filled with sweat, blood and tears. Caroline Carver has created an all-too-realistic environment peopled with all-too-realistic bad guys and other characters whose personalities come alive as you read. Whether or not you're a fan of the muggier portions of Australia, this is a well-crafted novel that guarantees to rivet your attention and root for the good guys to win. Dead Heat is a murder mystery that perhaps you should keep for a weekend evening when you've nothing else planned – because you won't want anything else to interfere once you begin to read it!

Alan Paul Curtis

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