I found this book to be a fast read because I couldn't put it down. It has a catchy start that just get's better. I would recommend this to anyone. It incorporates, techy computer work with racing stables friends family and travel. A womans best friend - but is it? There are lots of twists that keep you guessing right to the end.

Approached to crack a safe by the owner's suspicious wife, reformed hacker Henrietta 'Harry' Martinez can't resist the challenge. However, an almost impossible challenge becomes devastatingly dangerous when the owner returns home unexpectedly, only to become the victim of a ruthless assassin, who also has a vested interest in gaining access to the vault. With her mystery client having made good her escape with her spoils from the safe, Harry is left trapped with the body, the sole witness to a brutal murder; next in line for silencing by the ruthless killer and his bosses, who don't like loose ends; and a police team who, suspicious of her past and unconvinced by her rather shaky story, are convinced she knows more than she actually does. It's up to Harry to track down her mystery client and the missing diamonds, before the gang find either of them, a journey which leads Harry on a chase from her office in Dublin, to a top racing yard in the Irish countryside, and on to a smuggling operation in the South African world of illegal conflict diamonds. To get to the truth requires all her secret skills, but in a business populated by bloodthirsty mercenaries and financed by ruthless exploitation, even Harry realises she is going to need help, especially when the bodies begin to mount up, the life of her rather frail father is also put at risk and the police always seem to be a few crucial steps behind her, despite her best endeavours to convince them of her innocence. So, who can she trust, when, alone and abroad, she needs to pull off her most audacious heist ever - and get out alive? … This is another paperback plucked from the depths of my overflowing bookshelves, although once I began to check out the author, I quickly realised why it was probably still languishing alone and unread. 'The Courier' is in fact, the middle story of a three book mini series featuring Harry Martinez, published between 2009 and 2011. Undeterred in my mission to clear the shelves and yet still unwilling (indeed unable) to relinquish a book until it has been read, I began my journey alongside Harry - and boy! am I pleased I did! There was obviously a backstory, which the author clearly didn't try to disguise. However, enough detail was added to this page-turning thriller, in such a non-intrusive way, that I never felt that there was anything missing from my reading journey; whilst I suspect that, for anyone who had already completed part one of Harry's story, there were few additional wasted words of repetition. Apart from a few pertinent flashback moments, the story was written in a single, present-day, timeline. There were two main theatres of action, one in Harry's home country of Ireland, the other in and around the diamond mines of South Africa's Cape Town. The narrative and dialogue was almost exclusively delivered in the voice of Harry herself and Mani, one of the abused diamond miners in Cape Town; which meant that every change was clearly marked and the fast-paced action kept flowing freely. It seemed to me that Harry was desperately trying to make good on the promise to change her lifestyle and stay on the right side of the law, although convincing the police of that was almost impossible and indeed, almost came at the cost of her own life. The one time she really needed them to believe in her, there was only one investigator who was willing to stick his neck out and follow through on the information she provided and by the end of Harry's ordeal, there was an obviously growing feeling of respect and even slight attraction between them, which it would be nice to think might have come to fruition in the final part of the book trio. Admittedly, given her history, having faith in Harry was never going to be easy, particularly when the body count began to rise at an alarming rate wherever she went as part of her investigation to track down the missing diamonds and clear her name as prime suspect in the murder of their owner, a corrupt diamantaire who had never really operated on the right side of law himself. However, even a very world-wise Harry was completely thrown off course during this investigation, having her eyes well and truly opened to the not so glamorous side of owning a racehorse stables, or indeed, being one of its most successful jockeys. Also the injustices meted out by some of the more unscrupulous mining companies operating in South Africa was a far from welcome revelation, given the slave-like conditions the mostly indigenous population of miners were kept in and the way in which they were abused and treated. Their avarice, greed and stranglehold on the diamond trading market, resulted in corporate manslaughter at the very least and sickened a robust Harry to her core. To then discover that her own father, now increasingly frail and losing his touch at the gambling tables, was in some way involved and in perilous danger, turned Harry's stomach and caused her to take risks which she knew could be fatal for them both if she got it wrong. I really enjoyed the dual locations of the storyline, with there being more than sufficient description of both to hold my interest as a rather keen 'armchair traveller', only adding to the detail of the plot, rather than distracting from, or overwhelming it. Overall; some excellent characterisations, a hard-hitting often difficult to read storyline, plenty of plot twists and turns, and a gratifying ending which I didn't quite see coming!