Silas

"The longer a case remains unsolved, the greater the chance there will be another murder."Retired police officer Silas Makarska is in his forties and living on a pension half his old salary. He looks after the widow of a close friend killed in the line of duty, and is fiercely supported by his new girlfriend. The rest of his life, however, is a non-event.Trouble builds quickly, and Silas cannot ignore the many cries for help. The old case of a murdered tourist and her family, who need answers, returns to haunt him, and then a local hunter disappears, followed by another. Shot at, threatened, driven off the road and his car set on fire, Silas hides the people he cares about at an unlikely friend's motel. Then he uses his 'death' as a smokescreen to fight a bent lawyer and a criminal mastermind. This is a new kind of policing, with a hard edge he hasn't experienced before. Using his friends in the police force, and his 'eyes and ears' – the Alcoholics Anonymous organisation – he unravels the truth behind recent events.This book is an extended version of a short-lived novella that had a GOODREADS score of 4.33 from 9 ratings.

This second book in the Silas series is set some ten years earlier than the first one. We see Silas rescue Gords from a street gang, and then decide to raise him as his own. It's a gritty story, closer to the problems that can arise around country life in New Zealand. An action packed read that is populated with unforgettable characters. A retired chief of police who doesn't play by the rules, a broken-down military man, a battered wife who gets a second chance, an SAS captain Silas trained in martial arts as a boy, a cafe owner with a heart of gold, a visiting nurse who takes an intense interest in Silas, a collector of early muskets who is always experimenting with them, a street kid Silas rescues, an old hunter who never misses, a Croatian mountain dog, the dishonoured head of a motorcycle gang, and Alcoholics Anonymous members who will do anything to be useful again.Silas will always be a policeman. He has taken early retirement, but keeps a close watch on his small town and everything that goes on there. It doesn't help that the chief of police who replaced him is a career man, and the two clash whenever Silas wants to get things done.