Matakana’s queen of crime returns with the second thriller in her Matakana series (the third’s apparently well under way).

Madeleine Eskedahl’s 2021 Blood on the Vines was a confident debut with compelling characters, a twist-laden narrative and a colourful capturing of the local community. It was something one could easily see turned into a sort of upmarket The Brokenwood Mysteries, South Pacific Pictures’ wildly successful television detective show.

It also featured some grisly acts of violence - a hallmark that Rings on Water trumps with a particularly brutal and sadistic killing using the simplest of materials. While Blood on Vines involved envy and competition between friends in the local wine industry, here Eskedahl builds the plot around a suave drug importer and property developer who’s bringing in drug shipments to local beaches using amphibious boats.

Eskedahl throws us straight into the action in the opening chapter as one of the shipments is beset by tragedy when a rogue wave hits the boat - an accident that will have devastating consequences later in the novel. We then cut to nearby Omaha where Zac, the son of the local police chief, attends a wild party at a famous ex-rocker’s palatial home where drugs abound.

While Matakana and its environs may not feature high in the crime stats, Eskedahl paints a vivid picture of a tight and caring community - one of surf club charities, book clubs, quaint cafes and yoga classes - beset by corrupting external influences.

The effects are soon seen when the body of a young girl is found under a rowboat on an Omaha beach. She’s found by a local crime writer while out for a walk with her two dogs (a character clearly modelled after the author herself who writes about her love of her dogs in the book’s afterword). Local cop Bill Granger’s long anticipated quiet winter is shattered and the girl’s body is the first of several he’ll have to attend to in the next 11 days.

To make matters worse, for much of that time he’s suffering with broken ribs having slipped in the bathroom after one of his daughters neglected to wipe the floor.  It’s the sort of everyday domestic detail Eskedahl excels in.

Granger makes a return from Blood on the Vines but the central focus here is the friendship that develops between his wife, Annika, a painter, and Crystal, the partner of Andrei - the mysterious, Maserati driving property developer.  The two women meet at a yoga class and are soon having coffee together. 

From the outside Crystal and Andrei look like the perfect couple - both stunningly attractive, smart and articulate - but Eskedahl skilfully conveys Crystal’s slow dawning realisation that her partner’s charming exterior masks a secretive and controlling nature. She is effectively trapped in her gilded cage. As she observes at one point ‘what Andrei wanted, he always got, one way or the other.’

He insists she doesn’t work and has his assistant drive her everywhere so he can keep tabs on her whereabouts. She also seems wilfully ignorant of what he really does for a living. At one point, later in the book, when he wants her to accompany him as he oversees a night-time drug shipment, he asks her to bring a book to read while she waits in a nearby house. While Eskedahl presents Crystal as a victim and an innocent, her lack of curiosity around what her partner does stretches credibility. Better is the portrayal of the faded rocker, Jett, now in his 60s and ‘wears a headband tied around his scraggly grey hair like Keith Richards.’

The arrival of Andrei’s business-first sister from Sydney gives the book a jolt in its second half; Eskedahl clearly enjoys writing dark characters.  While an unexpected twist in the final pages will divide readers, this is another solid thriller from Eskedahl.

Reviewed by Greg Fleming