An excellent read as always he keeps you guessing right to the end

Never Never was the first book in the Harriet Blue series by James Patterson with Australian author Candice Fox. This series is set in Australia and Harriet Blue is a hot-headed ‘wild-cat’ of a detective. Harriet Blue has been called in by Chief Morris in to an interrogation room and she is sat where there ‘perps’ are usually sat. Detective Harriet Blue of the Sydney Police’s Sex Crimes Unit is being reassigned, and she does not realise it just yet. She cannot go home as her house is being searched as part of an investigation where her brother Sam is suspected of being a murderer. Harriet Blue is told she is being sent to Western Australia where she was required, and she could not believe she was being sent to a mining camp to investigate an unexplained death. She is not happy. She has to accept that she is being sent to the Australian desert to a place near Kalgoarlie and it is where nobody would want to venture. She is met at the air field by her ‘partner’ Edward ‘Whit’ Whittaker a detective from Perth and neither of them is particularly happy to be there and they are not welcomed by the mining company. Neither Blue or Whit seem to make much headway in the case and it is not until Blue is attacked that they begin to make advances in the case. This is a good read and a pleasant change of country.

When Detective Harriet Blue's brother is arrested for a string of murders in Sydney, a media frenzy ensues. To keep her away from the press, Harriet's chief assigns her a new case in the middle of nowhere with new partner Detective Edward Whittacker from Perth. An employee at a remote uranium mine has been killed in suspicious circumstances and the duo are sent to investigate. Hmm, what can I say about this book except it's rather silly. In my view it seems most implausible that a detective from Sydney would be teamed with a detective from Perth — the two locations are at opposite ends of a vast country! Whilst I liked Harriet Blue and her no-nonsense approach, her actions were somewhat fanciful and unconvincing. Whittacker, on the other hand, was a nice guy but a bit of a limp lettuce. With a cast of few main players, it wasn't difficult to figure out the killer's identity. That, for me, weakened the entire story. Of far greater interest was Harriet's brother's arrest, yet it hardly featured (although I suspect it's an ongoing storyline). Will I stick with the series? The jury's out on that one! I just wasn't convinced by this first instalment.