All or None

 

Returning to Sydney, Detective Ramesh Ryan is promoted to the Homicide Squad. Zoe Yang joins him there. Now a detective herself, she is assigned as his junior partner. Straight up, the cops are off and running—investigating the discovery of a murdered company director. Following the clues, Detective Ryan finds that this and a second murder may be linked to past events.

 

As the pressure mounts for a quick solution to the case, the detective finds that he too, is in the killer’s crosshairs. But Ryan is distracted from the investigation by a romantic encounter with an old university friend. He also worries about his mother, Mumta, and her new obsessive desire for grandchildren from her only son. Could this be linked to her recent medical tests? And there’s another pressing problem—the plague of rats in his apartment block.

 

Detective Ryan’s hands are well and truly full.

My review...

All Or None is Book 2 in the Detective Ryan Murder Mystery series. It takes no guessing about what has happened to him in the previous book. I thought this, somewhat a loner, probably hard to work with cop was described well, and the background of the first book blended in quite skillfully.

Ryan gets a new partner in his newly promoted position, and she must have the patience of Job to put up with him, but he’s a good cop, and they seem to manage several layers of crimes throughout the story.

Really liked the characters and the story. A continuing book in the series would be nice.

read an excerpt...

There were eleven of them squashed into the red Ford Transit van. All were in high spirits—except, that was, for the driver, Tommy Clarke. He wasn’t happy. 

Tommy had thought long and hard about offering his services locally as a driver and wouldn’t have if it hadn’t been for Anne, his wife. She had heard that people were looking for transport into the city for a protest march and saw it as the perfect opportunity for them to earn some money—even though it was scheduled for Saturday, which would mean Tommy missing the big match: the Swans versus the Eagles.

He had tried to argue, but it was a waste of time. Anne Clarke was an unstoppable force of nature and opposing her was an exercise in futility. Still, it was that same determination and persistence that had attracted him in the first place—that and a body that could stop traffic.

Before meeting his wife, Tommy had drifted like a ship without an anchor. But Anne had plans—lots of them—and the principal one was to buy a house. Of course, properties cost money, and Tommy had no idea where they would get that. Luckily, Anne did.

She stuck a big whiteboard up in the kitchen, taping it to the wall. Using a black marker, she split the board vertically into three columns: incomings, outgoings, and savings. Then, she crossed the lines with dates. Every week, she filled the boxes with numbers—money they earned, spent, and saved together. The savings column had gotten larger and larger, but they still needed every cent they could get, which was why Saturday’s driving job had to go ahead.

Tommy picked the passengers up outside Absolute Muffin, Church Point’s only bakery. He stashed their banners and signs in the back of the Transit and then set off to Sydney Town Hall, where they would join the others for the Future Is in Your Hands march. After they returned, Tommy would drive them back. He would get three hundred dollars cash for the job.