OBSERVER: Dead On Target
Being a journalist leads you up all sorts of highways and byways, and most journalists have a pretty wide knowledge of what’s happening on their patch.
Former Australian journalist Stephen Johnson has taken the knowledge from his decades of journalism in Australia and New Zealand and poured it into his latest crime thriller, Dead on Target.
The novel is the third in his Spotlight series, which follows the adventures of journalist Kim Prescott and the Melbourne Spotlight TV crew as they confront yet another series of crimes.
An arson attack with a chilling message and a vicious assault in Apollo Bay resurrects a past series of crimes named the Tugga’s Mob saga back into the news. Someone new is out for revenge, but who it is becomes a baffling mystery.
The one original survivor of the crime saga has fled to England, leaving the Melbourne Spotlight crew and Kim to head to Britain to try to establish what is going on, but there is a killer in waiting.
Stephen says his lead character Kim is an amalgam of all the gutsy female journalists he has worked with over the years, from his early days with the Geelong Advertiser through the ABC Melbourne newsroom and then to commercial television in Australia and New Zealand, where he is now resident.
This journalist turned crime author writes a cracking yarn, so be prepared for a gripping page turner when you start to read Dead on Target.
It’s available from ANZ Booksellers of direct from publisher – www.clandestine
press.net
Julie Houghton (pictured)