The Ihaka Trilogy
Includes Old School Tie, Guerilla Season, and the winner of the Ned Kelly Award for Best Crime Novel of the Year Inside Dope
by Paul Thomas
Hodder Moa    Price: $38.99

Old School Tie (aka Dirty Laundry), Inside Dope, and Guerilla Season are a trilogy of New Zealand-based comic crime thrillers by Paul Thomas.

The common thread in the three books is the character of the maverick Maori cop Tito Ihaka, a detective sergeant in the Auckland CID. Despite treading on numerous toes and breaking most of the rules in the book (and thanks in part to the indulgence of his boss, the dour Ulsterman Finbar McGrail), Ihaka eventually gets his man – and sometimes his woman.
As well as incorporating elements of the New Zealand underworld such as Maori gangs and the Karangahape Road vice scene, the Ihaka novels also have a significant international dimension, featuring characters good and bad from various intelligence agencies and organised crime groups and locations ranging from Bangkok to Washington.

Old School Tie
Something sinsiter is happening in the City of Sails. A private eye with a briefcase full of scandalous photos is blown away. A businessman falls from the Harbour Bridge leaving a clue to the mysterious death of a teenage girl. Turf warfare involving the Sydney mafia and a fearsome gang called the Blood Drinkers breaks out along Red Light Mile. Who are you going to call? Who else but maverick cop Tito Ihaka.

Inside Dope
The race to find the lost treasure of the Mr Asia syndicate has attacked an impressive field: there’s a disgraced ex-cop fresh out of a Bangkok jail, the Auckland underworld’s drug kingpin, a rogue DEA man, an alluring CIA assassin, and a bunch of wild card entries including Tito Ihaka.

Guerilla Season
New Zealand is in the grip of urban terrorism. The shadowy Aotearoa People’s Army is on the rampage leaving a trail of messy corpses. The counter-terrorism experts think they’re on top of it, but Tito Ihaka reckons they couldn’t catch a terrorist if someone’s life depended on it. Pretty soon he’s in danger of being proved dead right.

Another one of The Bookman's poicks for Father's Day. And you get three books for the price of one!

About the author:

Paul Thomas is the author of seven works of fiction.  In addition to the Ihaka novels he has written two Sydney-based crime novels, a collection of short stories, and a New Zealand-based non-crime novel. He has authored seven sports biographies for Hachette and its predecessors. His column appears in the Weekend edition of the New Zealand Herald.