As well as being a murder mystery, this story is a study of how the government of New Zealand became almost indistinguishable from a totalitarian regime as it saw to it that the Springbok tour of New Zealand went ahead. How a sport divided the people along political lines and brought confrontation to the streets of New Zealand cities where Springbok rugby matches were held.

Most of the novel takes the form of scripts of video interviews that Rebecca Thorne conducts with people from both sides, the rugby supporters and the police, and those protesting against the tour. Despite the violence perpetrated in the name of crowd control many of the police saw the protesters as dangerous and subversive, while the protesters saw the police as turning into faceless Gestapo-like troops. There are certainly political overtones running through the novel.

Thorne is seeking to give the television documentary, due to screen for the 30 year anniversary of the tour, a different twist to those that were produced for previous anniversaries. And she thinks she has found the slant she needs with the Lambs, two anonymous protesters disguised in woolly costumes,detested by the police and by some of the protesters too. On the night of the Wellington test one of them is murdered, and the other disappears.

But then Thorne becomes the target of heavy breathing on the phone, and she feels stalked, so convinced that someone has broken into her house that she has the locks changed.

A well constructed and engrossing story. And you will learn a lot about the Springbok Tour of 1981. ( )

Surely we've all got one of those authors. The author whose books languish on the To Be Read pile, even though you always enjoy them immensely when attention lurches into activity and you spy them sitting there. Even though they can, frequently, frighten the life out of you.

Paddy Richardson is one those authors for me, and in the past, she has frightened the life out of me, although I'm pleased to say that this time CROSS FINGER's didn't languish because of my fractured attention span, and whilst she certainly made me sit up and pay attention, this book wasn't flat out scary, rather a sobering experience.

In the early 1980's the Springbok Rugby tours in New Zealand and Australia caused considerable outrage. Even for a dedicated ignorer of football of all types, it was hard to miss the vehemence and passion with which fans of Rugby and people opposed to the tour took to their positions. Equally so in New Zealand it seems, where there were pitched battles in the streets, injuries and bad feeling that lingers to this day.

This book concentrates heavily on the character of Thorne. Everything is seen through her eyes, within her understanding. She goes about her role as a journalist with a dogged, almost fanatical dedication. Enough to make the idea that mysterious noises in her house of a night, strange phone calls and creepy photos being texted to her would obviously be something she'd put to one side, ignore whilst chasing a lead down - mostly in people's memories. The story of the tour protests is told through her "interviews" with a number of participants - protesters and cops, and it's the clues and observations in those accounts that lead her to the violent murder of the young man, onto his lover, his associates and eventually to her identifying the previously unknown "Lambs". That the Lambs, the protests, dodgy or over zealous cops all collide made sense, even though it's obvious from the start that they are going to. Her ex-boyfriend, the stalker and her new love also made sense, although the coyness with which the new boyfriend is revealed is probably something more for romance lovers.

It's strange to think of the 1980's now within a historical timeframe, but that's exactly what it comes across as in CROSS FINGERS. Historical in terms of the events, and particularly in terms of attitudes. Particularly sobering to realise that mindless anti-homosexuality laws still existed then. Although there is a small part of me that comes away from this book hoping the passion that sprung from the anti-Apartheid protesters still exists.

CROSS FINGERS is from the more thoughtful end of the thriller, investigative spectrum. Looking backwards into history might take away the immediacy of a threat (although that's compensated for by the current day stalker thread), but it does give this author a chance to look at history - and provide a timely reminder that sometimes you have to stand and fight for what you believe in.

http://www.austcrimefiction.org/review/review-cross-fingers-paddy-richardson ( )