Hot Spot East

New Brighton beach, dawn. A body in the surf. And two detectives who have no business working together.

Herbie Bergenstein is a former Volkspolizei officer from East Germany, rebuilding his life in Christchurch on a bicycle, with no driver's licence and a wardrobe sourced entirely from the local op shop. Amiri Metekingi is a polished Māori cultural liaison fresh off a career with the Seattle Police Department - precise where Herbie is chaotic, controlled where Herbie runs on instinct. Paired together as a joke by their exhausted station boss, they become Christchurch East's most unlikely "dream team."

What starts as a single drowning unravels into something much bigger: a hidden network of predatory property developers circling a city still stitching itself back together after the earthquakes, a biker gang guarding secrets that reach back decades, and a cold case that connects a forgotten explosion to a grief no one has been allowed to name.

They don't work alone. A fearless crew of boy racers become the closest thing to backup Herbie has ever trusted. Frederike, a sharp-eyed widow with a shopping trolley and a past she's never spoken of, turns out to know more about the East than anyone gives her credit for. Even the local can collector has a part to play.

Underneath the case is something quieter: two men carrying two different histories of loss. Herbie fled a homeland that dissolved beneath his feet when the Wall came down, watching the machinery of "reunification" strip away everything his community had built. Amiri carries the long, unfinished story of land taken from his own people, generations back, still being fought over today. Neither man says much about it. He doesn't have to. The city they're trying to protect is built on exactly the same kind of quiet theft - one insurance payout and one predatory mortgage at a time.

Hot Spot East is a crime novel with real teeth and a real heart - funny where it can afford to be, unflinching where it can't. For readers who want their thrillers to mean something after the last page turns, and who like their detectives a little bent out of shape.