I don’t think I’ve ever read a novel from New Zealand before. The setting in Dead Ground by Justin Warren is kind of exotic. My main takeaway is that it seems to rain a lot on the west coast.

Dylan Harper is a young police detective in Christchurch. He and his older partner are surprised when they’re sent over to Westport on the west coast, to investigate the disappearance of a newspaper reporter who also worked a second job as an environmental inspector. Dylan isn’t keen to go, because Westport was his childhood home, and he has bad memories from the place. Not to mention enemies.

When they arrive, they quickly suspect the missing man’s attractive wife of murdering him. But as they poke around, questions arise about his last known movements, and about water samples he took at a remote farm. Dylan begins to suspect dirty work at a Chinese-owned mining operation in the mountains.

Now, whenever people talk about mining in a mystery these days, you can be pretty certain contamination and some kind of cover-up can’t be far behind. And when the Chinese are involved, that pretty much seals the deal. The real mystery here is who has been corrupted and how high the corruption goes.

The writing in Dead Ground is okay, but nothing to crow about. Author Warren does make some effort to provide colorful descriptive passages for the reader. The major weakness in the writing, from my point of view, was homophone confusion.

What I liked least was that the book ended in a cliffhanger.

There are further books in the series, if this one grabs you.