This was a pretty thrilling descent into child abductions and supposedly perfect crimes. When husband and wife crime writing duo are shocked to find their son missing, all eyes turn to them and their previous claims of knowing how to get away with murder. There were a few stressful moments in this book and I had a few possible scenarios floating around in my head throughout. I didn't quite pick it so it was fun to see where Paul took us. A particular chilling moment was when one of the characters was explaining about the 'quiet people'. The neighbours you don't really notice and when the reporters and police interview them after a horrific crime they say 'they were such good polite neighbours and such quiet people that I would never suspect them of these terrible crimes'. Creepy. I also love that Paul is a kiwi writer and lots of his stories are set in Christchurch. He has won the Ngaio Marsh Award for crime fiction in the past. Definitely a New Zealand author worth reading if you like the crime/murder mystery genre.

CW: Child abduction and child abuse ( )

Filled with twists and turns this one! Even though I never liked Cameron, who screws up absolutely everything all the time, I quite liked the book.
Seven year old Zach goes missing from his family home one night. Shady bit is that his parents are famous crime writers who have always boasted that they could get away with the perfect crime if need be. So…needs must and are they involved?
You will never see the ending coming, so go read it. ( )

Back when I first discovered Paul Cleave's books and the Theodore Tate series in particular, I did wonder if he really liked frightening the living daylights out of his readers. I'm not talking horror or anything here, but the creepy, persistent sense of terror that invades those books has been responsible for some lost sleep hours and locked doors in these parts. Lately though I'm starting to realise it's his characters he's trying to exact some sort of revenge on. In the beginning of THE QUIET PEOPLE you could be forgiven for wondering what Cameron and Lisa Murdoch did to deserve the intensity of the wringer through which they are being slowly, excruciatingly drawn.

Cameron and Lisa Murdoch are a husband and wife writing duo, specialising in thrilling crime fiction. They are renowned for their festival appearances, their books are loved the world over, and they appear the closest and most loving of couples. At home things are a bit more tense as their son Zach is a handful.

It's not just that Zach went missing at a fun-fair one day, Cameron leaving chaos in his wake in his frantic search for him. It's that when he vanishes in the night after that, everyone is left wondering if Cameron and Lisa are the victims of a cruel and dreadful kidnapping, or the perpetrators of something much more sinister.

Told mostly from the viewpoint of a gradually cracking up Cameron, he's left scrambling for answers as his life spirals. Is he going to lose more than just his son, or is he playing one enormous last role of the dice to try to get away with the unthinkable? As is always the case with a Paul Cleave novel you're going to be guessing right up until the last page. You're also going to be feeling slightly guilty about the sly, dark humour that populates this tale of unimaginable loss and grief. You're also probably going to find yourself wondering just how you'd react to a child like Zach, which is guaranteed to make a lot of readers even more uncomfortable.

Which is exactly what this author specialises in. He takes a bad scenario and he twists it, and makes it worse, better, harder, more complicated, discomforting and wrong-footing readers with aplomb. I never seem to know what what's happening or where things are going to end up with any of this author's novels, and I've never once been disappointed to get there.

https://www.austcrimefiction.org/review/quiet-people-paul-cleave ( )

"Just because we can write about serial killers doesn't mean we are those people. Otherwise every crime writer in the world would be in jail."

Cameron and Lisa Murdoch are successful crime writers. They are married and have a son Zach, who can sometimes be difficult; he's sensitive, a bit different, and prone to meltdowns. Cameron and Lisa face every parent's worst nightmare when they wake one morning to find Zach's bed is empty and Zach is nowhere to be found. Soon they face a nightmare of a different sort as it becomes apparent that they are the chief suspects in the cases of their missing son. After all, who better to pull off a perfect crime than a pair of crime writers?

I've liked most of the crime novels I've read by New Zealand crime writer Chris Cleave, and this one had many good features. It kept me turning the pages until the very end. It had perhaps a few too many red herrings. The one thing that really bothered me, though, was that Cameron's temper was on a very short fuse, and ended up getting him in way too much trouble with the police. I suppose there really are people like that, but everything would have gone so much more smoothly if he hadn't kept doing stupid things, and that really annoyed me. One reviewer stated that he had "the worst decision-making skills."

First line: "Lucas Pittman has to hurry."

Last line: "Presales of Cameron and Lisa Murdoch's new book, due to come out in June next year, have already topped one million, and publishers are saying they have struggled to keep up with demand for their previous titles"

2 1/2 stars ( )

This is Paul Cleave's newest book. I preordered it, it arrived and now I have already finished it! Luckily, when I read my first book by him, I bought all of his books! So, I have a lot to look forward to! This book is about a successful crime writing couple whose challenging 7 year old son, Zach, disappears. Did they pull off the perfect crime? ( )